We would like to move users into their own environment where they can participate in forums, community funded projects, shop in a community.

adilas cafe- what are your needs? Find what you need. Who has what skills and how can we promote them?

Bryan Dayton did a first round draft. Has been released but hasn't been merged in. User can login and vote on up to three projects, add a new project, and make comments on existing projects.

We would like to make this part of the adilas community funded project and eventually the adilas cafe.

The Community Chooser Project allows developers, business owners and consultants to add project ideas. They can then vote on them to help Adilas prioritize the projects.

Where people can go to get help. Adilas is producing by-products.

Concept of market is a place to offer these services.

Adilas Café options as well. Come and work, play, learn, buy, sell, participate, etc.

https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_for_business/adilas_market.cfm

It must be Monday... We started out on the morning meeting and only Steve and I were on at first. We chatted about the transition over to the AWS (amazon) stuff. We have a number of questions and aren't really sure which way to turn. Steve needs to provide some of our clients with an answer, can we service them or not, and we need to know how long it will take to get the AWS stuff fully up and running. Lots of unknowns, but some great potential. Part of us wants to return to what we know (older stable ground) and the other part of us wants to keep pushing forward (new and uncharted but promising ground). It creates an emotional battle of sorts.

We switched gears and Steve had some questions about a project where he is tying in balance sheet numbers to vendors. As part of his project, he was trying to come up with a switch that we could flip to help us know if a vendor was an inventory (parts or items) vendor or just a normal vendor. As we talked about it, we decided to take it out to an app type level (the 12 main system players). We talked about that and Steve liked that idea. I got him some code to help him get started. It is amazing how much, as we keep going, that the system keeps organizing itself into main player groups and what kind of relationships are needed per system or main player group. Very interesting. Almost like it likes to be organized into groups and related functions. We sure have learned a lot along the way.

Alan joined the meeting and we were talking about some of his projects. He is still working on automating some of the reoccurring invoice stuff. We also talked about having Bryan work on the dynamic field names and settings per main player group. That is pretty deep and we may keep it tabled for now. Also, as we were talking about it, we were talking about how an object oriented programming approach may be a better solution for some of these new settings and defaults. Currently, we build and break, build and break (speaking about pulling and accessing settings). It may be nice to keep and hold some of the persistent or permanent settings and features. An object oriented model may be better equipped for that type of transaction. Currently, we look things up just in time. In the future, we may need to catch and hold those settings and maintain them in the user's session (stored in memory) options.

Eric popped in and we did some check in and follow-up with his code review on the sub special account tracking project. This project is a sub of the balance sheet and deals with special accounts (mini bank account type objects) like customer loyalty points, gift cards, in-store credit, etc. That project is promised by next Monday. I will be trying to focus on the code sign-off this week.

After that, Eric and Steve and I started talking about some of the new look and feel, CSS, and user interface stuff that Eric is wanting to help with. Both Steve and Eric were talking about a virtual "Adilas Cafe" or a global landing spot for the adilas users. This all goes back to separating the users from the main application code. There will still be a tie-in, but we are seeing a bigger need to keep users on the outside as a single entity and then allow them to go in and work or be a part of a corporation. We have many users that  have and/or will need access to multiple corporations, and even be able to bridge across physical servers. Currently, our model is based on users per server and then tied to corporations based on active permissions to those corporations. We are seeing a need to break that down even further and have a master or global user id (virtual pool of users) and then allow them to be bridged to different corporations on a more global scale vs just per server (physical box) vs the possibilities of dynamic cloud networks.

As we got deeper into the conversation about the potential of the Adilas café type model, we were talking about doing mock-ups, flow charts, etc. Eric had some questions about authentication servers and how that would all roll into the mix. We told him that he would need to get with Wayne to get more details. As we talked, we decided that Eric and Wayne should work together in a mini team type environment. As we explored the options, some of Steve and I's concerns (listed at the top of this entry) started to go away. We ended up somewhat asking Eric to be a project manager type role for this transition project between Newtek and AWS. That little tweak in the plan and how the developers were paired up, made a ton of difference and some of the anxiety started to go away.

We need to crate a list of specs for Wayne and what we want the application to do. Plan and play as if for years. We also talked about in-house coordination and communication. That is a huge key and helps all parties involved. Steve was talking about skating to where the puck (pretend we are playing hockey) is going to be. He and Eric were talking about the existing login pages and the corporation chooser page as being the beginning of the adilas café (landing spot or centralized common ground area). Good discussion.

We would really like to keep pushing the ball forward and making each system its own entity. This means having a centralized database controlling users and access to different corporations and/or entities and then having the individual entities having their own database or system for just their stuff. Currently, there are a number of tables that are shared between parties. For speed and efficiency, we really need to split things up more. This may also affect how we are able to bill for storage and processing vs a set monthly system fee. Anyways, as the conversation progresses, Steve and Eric were talking about using the choose corporation page as the starting common spot or commons area. Steve was also saying that he would like the users to be able to go to work (assigned or authorized corporations) as well as go play (demo sites, play grounds, or play sites). Basically, anybody could have an adilas account, and then they could either go into a real site (aka work) or a play site (aka play and testing). Fun ideas.

One of Eric's and Wayne's first item of business will be to do a virtual inventory check of where things are at on the project and what will still be needed and/or stands in the way. That will be awesome. It really was an mini answer to prayers that we decided to team up Eric and Wayne. It helped us let go and be willing to embrace some of the unknowns. As part of that, we are hoping that having the guys work together in mini teams helps us prioritize what really needs to be done and when. Sometimes, by yourself, it is hard to know what needs attention first, especially if it feels like everything is vying or trying to get the input, attention, and/or priority. Crazy stuff, I'm been there before and will be back again.

Steve and I talked about cycling through hardware and how that is just part of the line of work we are in. Later this year, we will need to buy some new laptops and upgrade some of our development environments.

One of the breakthroughs for today was the mini team concept. We have Steve and I, Steve and Dustin and Josh, Brandon and Alan, Wayne and Eric, Shari O. and Pat and Drea, etc. There are starting to be all kinds of little teams. That is awesome.

Shawn popped in and reported on some payroll updates and changes. We scheduled a time to meet again tomorrow. He is also willing to help me out with some of my projects and such. After that, I spent the rest of the session recording notes and trying to get caught up (as good as I could).

Met up with Shannon and we decided that the two of us would try to focus more on the education side of the puzzle. We may have to split our time, but we were thinking news and updates, help files, user guides, screenshots, videos, adilas university, adilas market, adilas café, sales and marketing materials, etc. Along those same lines, we will start meeting twice a week to help make some more progress in that arena. That is exciting.

Shannon spent some time adding some content to elements of time in the adilas university site. I had to help finish some emails out to an adilas consultant.

We were going to have a meeting with Kelly and do some online whiteboarding and business planning, but that didn't happen. Instead, Steve and Brandon had a couple hour brainstorming session about their own ideas on a business model and business plan. Super fun brainstorming meeting.

- Steve and Brandon were talking about the role of the adilas market, adilas university, and the adilas café.

- Steve was talking about ideas... are you buying or selling? What section of the market and/or café do you play in?

- Just jump in... see a need, fill a need - we love it

- Another piece that we may be missing is marketing and sales type literature and media pieces

- We would love to recruit some others to help with the heavy lifting - There are tons of great adilas users out there who have some great skills

- It takes time and energy to get things going - the goal is, once it gets going, hopefully it will keep feeding itself.

- Steve is having fun tackling the business model - analogy - like a friendly pirate ship. It could be a boat, a ship, a car, a plane, or anything that moves over time. The fun come in as you start asking questions. Are we friendly? Are we mean? How many sails do we put out? What direction are we going (what is our heading)? What kind of crew do you want? How big and how small do you want to be? Etc. Fun stuff.

- Sometimes as we write and record these log notes, it may expose some of our underbellies, but we really gain from it in multiple ways.

- Steve and I would like to be open to discussions from any parties. We also acknowledge that there is a cost to being open and listening to those ideas.

- There seems to be many cycles that interconnect and play as the ball gets kicked down the road.

- Zipper analogy of bringing operations and accounting together. We started this a long time ago, we want to keep going but some of the steps are bigger and harder than others to conquer. Problems exists and that helps keep things going. Problems force decisions and hopefully a solution.

- Working in teams and pulling through things together - it helps get the ball across the finish line and you build relationships along the way.

- A constant mode of refinement - dive and resurface, dive and resurface - build and break, build and break - the concept of maintenance.

- Building blocks of teams - forming, storming, norming, performing - where are we at in our team development process?

- As we keep coming together as a team, there will be some normalizing and efficiency as we keep going. Good stuff.

- Steve is always on the hunt for the better and better ideas. He loves the hunt, in theory and in practice.

- Different angles, different views - false summits, operations, accounting, task oriented, dreamers, managers, etc. Like a pie analogy, we need the whole (in the end), and certain people are doing certain pieces (delegating tasks and processes), but hopefully as you bring it all together and it becomes the whole.

- The proof is in the pudding - if you have a great idea... let's put it to the test... we don't have a monopoly on all of the good ideas. We want to be open to those around us. Ideas by themselves don't really stand too long... those ideas have to be put into action and start applying those concepts.

- You can fund a company through investment, equity, sales, or leveraging debt. We are leaning towards sales and equity.

- Talking about models, we are even seeing some morphing models (mixing and blending), client/services, budgets, and strategic customer care projects. Customer tune ups, targeted tech support, and other customer care and retention efforts.

- Hoist anchor! Starting to get the ship out of the harbor.

- Models - rep model, hub/shop model, 3rd party solutions and white label model - We are seeing a small mix between the basic rep model and the basic hub/shop model. - Russell's word "Dependable" model. A loosely bonded hub/shop type model where the bond is the dependable type and/or dependable people who service other parts of the service model. Basically, they stick around to help pick-up and service the by-products that are created (training, consulting, setup, design work, custom code, tech support, project management, training, and other by-product services).

- Being able to clone some of the main core players - Steve, Brandon, Shari O., etc. Small teams forming under some of these key players and creating loose bonds (dependable type bonds). Very interesting.

- Talking about sales and white label options, we have no boundaries and no zones - people could consume our product wherever they are - we don't plan on adding any boundaries and/or zones.

- Anybody could identify a problem and/or issue - what we really want and need is those who help come up with and are willing to work on solutions.

- Steve was saying that the employer/employee relationship is a kin to slavery - it can work, but over time, it has other costs and drains. Steve really wants to keep moving towards the dependable type model - It is very loose but it can and does work - We want to keep helping those around us - if you look at it... we have so many by-products, the by-products completely outweigh our normal products. Very interesting. One of the key pieces is, you have to want to play the game. If you are just coasting, it doesn't work very well.

- Finding that balance point - We were talking about the difference between a normal company that has an employer/employee model vs this loose community of dependable - We also talked about how some companies are replacing the traditional model with robots, AI (artificial intelligence), or automated services. Where are those balance points and what makes things tip to one side or the other? One of the core concepts that we have is, our main product creates tons of subs or by-products. We can allow others to pick-up any of those by-products by offering their services (basically an open market type option).

- Some of this is just happening and we are figuring it out as we go... We have plans, we try things, we fail sometimes, we go backwards and forwards, we try to listen, we harvest other's ideas, we experiment, we tweak, we refine, we circle back around. That seems to work for us. It is more of the try storming type mentality vs just a plan it and build it type model.

- Randomly enough, we keep getting people circling back around after years of talking with them initially (old sales leads). We also have other people who are looking for and needing some of the functionality that we are working on and/or already have. The general public needs keep advancing right along with us. Step by step building process. Keep building towards the full system (fully interconnected pieces) and even full world building levels.

- Talking about commissions and outbound monies and such - Steve used the word semi-dependable (not a full dependable, but still part of the whole team).

- Finding the glide plane - like an airplane coming in for a landing.

- Tag teaming based on abilities - Coach, put me in... I want to play or give me a shot.

- People putting in time to help move the ball forward - Steve would like to move the company into a trust at some point.

- We are excited that we are moving some things over to deeper and more expanded technologies - tech stuff and server models.

- Keep working to get out of the way

- There is some magic in having a business plan but it can have limits - we do need some direction but it also helps to have your head up and be looking around. Our current business plan is "we are heading North" or something like "we are heading to the top of the mountain" - we have a direction and a way to go about it, that's about it. Fill in the gaps and cross the bridges as they come up (we know they are out there, but we don't have a full plan in place for every little thing).

- What about enjoying the journey? There is some fun in planning out the journey and then responding to cause and effect relationships that happen based on those decisions. That sounds like world building, in a way. The five core concepts of world building are: Characters, relationships, trouble/problems, decisions, and consequences - see this element of time for more information... https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=3634

- Some people will like what we do and sadly, we may make some enemies - we want to keep it as an open model - there are tons of options out there. We welcome those who want to play and we'll keep refining and building as we go. We want people who are looking for a solution and are willing to help and invest in their solution. We want to make adilas consumable... what do you want and how can you make it work for you?

- Model of being able to charge for different components - it all needs to exist - what if we showed all of the 12 main players and what part of their bill gets charged out and/or applied to what part of the 12 main players? That could be pretty cool.

- We may want to open up the adilas ecommerce piece to all of our clients. Currently, they have to pay for the extended ecommerce functionality.

- Data - the new currency... people are offering features and functions for free, just so that they can collect data. Very interesting.

- Steve would like to help push forward the ideas of the adilas café - a virtual community of users and/or other companies that offer their services - that will be really cool - helping to push the ball along the path using the skills and talents of others (a community of adilas power users and/or outside services). Once again, the by-products are a huge part of the model.

- We do need some standardization pieces, but some of our model is the flexible ways you can do it... We need both side of the fence.

- We ended by doing a brief look at where we have been and where we are going (historical summary of invoices and client based financials). Good stuff.

Wayne and Eric jumped into the morning meeting. We went over a few things with Wayne and got a better idea of some timelines and what to expect with the transition over to AWS. Still lots of unknowns, but making progress. We also talked about some contingency plans and how fast we could switch gears if needed. See attached for a few new notes (bottom page with a date of 5/21/19).

After Wayne left, Eric had some questions about some of his current projects. Eric is very good at doing custom work and also trying to help circle the wagons and help people get onboard the main platform vs always doing the custom one-off jobs. Good stuff.

Steve and I chatted about using technology to help us promote our products and then also using technology to help promote the services and byproducts that get produced from the main adilas system and/or platform. The byproducts are amazing and we have some folks generating $10,000 to $20,000 a month, by themselves, just off of the byproducts and services. We want to keep pushing things more and more out to the open marketplace. We briefly talked about the adilas marketplace, the adilas café, and adilas world. Lots of options to get those power users more jobs and options to sell their skills and services.

At the end of the meeting, Josh popped in and had some git repository questions. Small session helping him get his stuff in order.

We are seeing a need to add an adilas URL (web address) on a per corp level vs on a per server level. Currently, most of our redirect options are all based on a per server basis. Also, we may need to go back in and change some of the existing links and hardcoded web links.

- We need some options for manual load balancing.

- Wayne was showing us his custom functions and how he is combining code into custom tags.

- We also talked about some of the aliases and how certain field names show up. As a side note, we will have to update our API socket documentation to note some of those changes.

- Wayne has been doing some mappings to certain relative and fully expanded paths.

- Lots of simplifying code and things. There is still tons to do, but we are starting to make progress.

- Having a centralized spot to help Wayne know about errors and/or issues with the transition to AWS.

- We need a community based process that allows us to publish wiki type information, definitions, best practices, etc. We may even want some of this wiki info to be automatically generated. We need to keep things up to date to make it relative and productive. As a side note, Wayne has setup and contributed to wiki type things and has some know how there. He will be a great resource on that stuff.

- Ways of harnessing the skills and knowledge to help others. Letting people be part of a cause and participating to the overall adilas community.

- Steve would really like the adilas users to have options to play, work, participate in the adilas community, learn, train, sales, place for their stuff, participate in the marketplace, sell their skills, contribute, etc. This could be part of the adilas marketplace, adilas world, the adilas café, etc. Lots of options.

- Being able to share our knowledge with others. Helping to speed up the process.

- Steve popped in and was saying that maybe we could use our WordPress and/or our news and updates section. We also have help files, web/API socket documentation, developer's notebook, user guides, elements of time, etc. We have also made and created a number of self contained PDF files with specific topics. We would like to make sections for developers (super techy), users (definitions, help files, tutorials, etc.), reps/consultants, community, and other sub sets.

- Currently, there is a deficit on the training and education side of things. We may end up going in and checking stats on some of the older inactive adilas users and see who did what. We also need to open up the adilas market and adilas café to all of the users who have some great and awesome skills and skill sets. That is a great way to even out our tri-facto model of clients/users, system, and education stuff.

- Steve was seeing and talking about co-founders of adilas. It doesn't come from just one person. It comes from a community effort.

Towards the end of the meeting, Brandon went back to doing some prep work on the adilas user guide. As part of that process, he spent some time reading an old history bio from the adilas team. See attached for a copy of the bio. It has a publish date of 2011. Lots of fun info.

Shawn wasn't able to make it. So, I ended up doing some review on the adilas café project and re-reading a number of past entries that dealt with that project. Trying to formulate a plan and get a new adilas designer (graphics guy) up to speed on that project. I also had Eric pop into the GoToMeeting session and asked a couple of questions. Mostly a research session.

I merged in some code for Will and did some email follow-ups on questions dealing with the adilas label builder. Sent some emails out to Calvin with some questions.

Had a great meeting with Jonathan. He reported on some of his findings. He met with Shannon and got a light tour and then did some additional research. We talked about some of his initial thoughts and feelings. He said that it was kinda overwhelming. Pretty normal. Once he got into it and kinda started to understand that you could virtually move around and look at things from different angles, it started to make more sense. We spent an hour and talked about three main concepts. We talked about the adilas café (new entry point for adilas users), the ice berg analogy (reskinning based on industry-specific needs and wants), and other adilas concepts (photo gallery of ideas). Good conversation and good ideas already starting to flow. I loved it. My goal was to transfer some vision and let him start exploring and playing around.

These are some outside links and pages that we went to for background.

A link to some of our plans for the adilas café - https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=adilas%20caf 

I'd like to get Jonathan started on working on the mock-ups for the adilas café and/or the adilas world and/or the adilas marketplace. They are all somewhat tied together. Future home and hub for the adilas community. We want people to come here to work, play, shop, sell their skills and their goods, and participate in different ways.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=ice%20berg - notes and research on the ice berg analogy of reskinning the adilas engine

https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_for_business/photo_gallery_full.cfm - small concept photo gallery of core adilas concepts and direction

Steve, Jonathan, and I were on a meeting. The meeting topic was the adilas café and some ideas around that subject.

- Where operations and accounting meet

- Launch adilas (aka go to work) - maybe show the top couple corps that they frequent

- Play in a demo site

- Get some training

- Hire a consultant

- Advertise my services

- Advertise my products

- Join our community

- Vote for next features

- See what's in the pipe

- Show stats - personal and over arching (full adilas community)

- Steve would like to keep adilas all lowercase (just for branding)

- The ultimate sophistication is simplicity - DaVinci

- We are looking for a style (the new look and feel)

- Talking about snow owl theme settings, logos, watermarks, and basic styles - talking about customization and even customization with some elements of control (not too much power, but enough). Templates and being able to help people make decisions quickly and keep some virtual rails on the platform.

- Jonathan wants to learn more about the software (web platform) and how our customers are using our product.

- Helping our users and clients interact better - create a single entry environment

- Ratings, communities, money transfers, commerce, skills, and exposing hidden treasures that already exist

- Power users becoming mentors

- Being able to both add and subtract from the visual of what is showing

- MVP (minimum viable product) - the smallest usable piece and then build from there

- Single login, give you access to the adilas café. Maybe show the last corps, top 3 or top 10 corps, etc.

- Maybe bring in the adilas doggie as part of what is available

- Looking for patterns and how people use the product

- Older link to some top level training - https://data0.adilas.biz/training/

- The cart and the shopping cart are the main heart of the application. So many transactions and cause and effect relationships get pumped through there. A vital piece of the puzzle.

There are a number of screenshots attached for some visuals of what we were talking about. Good meeting.

On a work session with Shannon. When she first came in, we started out with some global updates and letting her know about a few of the current happenings. We spent the first half an hour going over changes in servers and configuration options (virtual servers at Newtek), the adilas café (new layout and design work being done by Jonathan), and other happenings inside of adilas. I have a ton of fun sharing and helping Shannon keep up to date on what is happening. After that, we jumped in on the glossary and did some new entries in the G's and H's.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=4030 - link to the glossary that we are working on

Shannon and I met up with Jonathan. Shannon was mostly just listening in from the background but she chimed in a couple of times. As part of the conversation, both Shannon and Jonathan will be getting together to go over system functionality. The deeper Jonathan gets, he is becoming more able to interpret the training and information that Shannon could provide (virtual tour guide/trainer/consultant). That's exciting.

We started out the meeting and Jonathan gave us a new demo of the progress on the mock-ups for the adilas café. See the link below for a small clickable demo. As a side note, the contents may change if the project gets re-exported for viewing. We talked about some options for saving and archiving different versions. We have some plans and will try a few of them to see what works best. Also, see attached for some screen shots.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/9759489c-676e-48f5-7bd8-d85c6a6b7699-e168/ - graphic and clickable demo (temp link)

The next topic switched to Jonathan's "clean out and organize the garage" project. He has gone all the way through the customer section and is listing page names, topics, functions, links, and what pages connect to what other sections and/or pages and sub pages. Basically, he is mapping out the system and what plays with what and how things work. Very cool. Along with that, we expressed that we want him to keep going in this exploration project and allotted a new budget amount to keep going in that direction. The end goal is to virtually figure out the "adilas family tree" and who (what) is related to who (what), inside the system. Kinda fun.

Merged in some code for Eric. Uploaded and launched some videos from Jonathan dealing with mock-ups for the adilas café and system mapping project - clean-out the garage. Emails and other clean-up.

Steve and I met with Jonathan Wells to go over some progress. Below are some notes from our call.

- Creating user stories - basically scenarios and simulations - help to visually lead a user through the system and even know what is possible and how to do it.

- Question about obscure features vs basic or super needed functions and features - those extra or obscure tools and features create an expense (extra burden) to other customers (it makes it a little bit harder) - We need to narrow things down a bit.

- Settings - 4 main levels - world, group, page, user

- Templates per industry - basically, a way of controlling bulk settings per industry

- Cause and effect relationships - the deeper you go, the more you get into cause and effect relationships.

- Helping customers succeed - eventually you may need all of the different business tools and/or features and/or modules - there is nothing wrong with having the tools, you just may want to keep some of them in the shed until you need them. Only use or keep out what you will need.

- Each company may need to pick and choose what tools they want and how they want to play

- It also gets into size of the company. Even though they are the same type of company, the bigger they are, they need more tools and options. It gets deep fast.

- Features, advantages, benefits - great way to think about things and options.

- How do we get the word out and let out clients know about some of the new changes? Even then, do they read the news and updates?

- It comes back to the adilas café type model and having  a place to show your stuff, work, play, train, be part of the community, etc.

- Classic vs snow owl - what does that mean? It actually deals with a set of standard look and feel templates, headers, footers, and display options (visual themes).

- Map overview - Jonathan started showing us some of his new menu and nav systems - See the attached screen shots to get some ideas of where he is headed and some of the mapping concepts, mock-ups, layout options, and direction.

- Stacking the view and the nav - getting into graphical homepage and sub homepage and sub navigation. We didn't get super deep into this, but there is tons of potential there. Have a very easy to navigate frontend. As you get deeper, you still have a very friendly and visual navigation page at the sub homepage or graphical homepage level. Don't be confused by the word homepage. Each sub section inside system would need it's own sub or graphical homepage. For example: Say you have a main overview map or nav page. You would then also need a sub graphical overview page for say customer homepage, invoice homepage, time homepage, user homepage, PO homepage, deposits homepage, flex grid homepage, media/content homepage, etc. Hopefully that makes sense. See attached for some mock-up graphics and ideas including flat maps, icons, icon lists, mind maps, and related pieces. You could even virtually zoom in/out as needed to get more detailed views.

- What about a simple search (by typing) type interface? Be able to search for things like gift cards, payroll, inventory, discounts, etc. Once the search is completed, it shows options. This is kinda like a google type approach to the system. They, Google, tried to simplify the whole Internet. We could do something similar to that inside of adilas. Just another option.

- Google map view - zooming in and out - to expose different levels - mind maps (see attached for some concept art for mind maps)

- How visual education could really help them know what is involved and where things are going.

- Ranking pages and sections and what is the most important. That would really help to find the common threads.

Steve and Jonathan kept going with the meeting after I left. Steve told me later on, that he and Jonathan went for another hour (ish). They ended up on the reports homepage and Steve was going to have Jonathan give that page a small facelift. Good stuff.

Working with Shannon on 11/7/19 - this was in prep for a demo for a local tech college and trying to make it more simplified. We had a good brainstorming meeting and here are some of our notes:

- Every business offers a service or product to their customers.

- Milk before meat - only run as fas as you are able.

- Pain is a huge motivating factor for change.
>> - We can handle certain levels of pain
 >> - If it gets unbearable, we are looking for change

- We want to make it easy, digestible, and pretty (yet still powerful)

- We need to show you that it is doable and we can do that by breaking it down into simple chunks.
>> - If you have to bounce everywhere... it may look like it is super complicated. Being able to bounce is super cool, but it may look intimidating.
>> - They want it to do the super complicated stuff (the little stuff) but they (meaning users) sometimes get overwhelmed when you show them without some of the other context.

- We may not even realize that we are in a world... our world becomes just part of what we do and how we do things.

Ideas on a general tour...
- top level...
strip mall** (think of the diversity in a strip mall - tons of little shops, right next to each other)
big hallway
universe
worlds
departments
locations within those areas
business needs
point of sale
invoices
collect monies
customers
tracking things - sales, customers, inventory, expenses
paying our people, timecards
accounting
paying taxes
reports
data storage and processing
ecommerce
analize and adjust accordingly

- Business functions - we have already defined 12 of the business functions

- Tools - I really liked how Shannon kept saying the word tools - that's what they really are.

- Processes are going to change based on needs and industry (business vertical).

- Meet the tools** (players may be the wrong word) - pages and options (not 1,000's of  pages but only 6-10 pages total - make it chewable - little tiles)
 - group and simplify, then go deeper as needed. think of being able to fly over the whole and drill-down as needed. Be able to navigate at any of those levels

- Using tools to get the outcome that you want.

- Mixing and blending tools, goals, and outcomes to build your world.
>> - As you are picking and using tools, you are virtually building your world.

- What tools do you use all the time? Those become important and you want them right at hand for the task that you are doing.

- pull pieces from what Jonathan is already working on
>> - go, do, see
>> - Almost a geo tourism type level. Basically the reasons why you go where you go to do what you want to do. What else is in that area? If you have multiple things in the same area... that increases the pull for that area. Getting the biggest bang for your buck.
>> - Look at all of these other pieces and features that you get. Instead of just getting one of the things that you want, you get 10.

- Be able to jump from the tour into real live scenarios
>> - What if there were canned scenarios that you could walk through? That would be awesome.
>>  - Be able to link out to other resources (videos, photos, graphics, images, help files, articles, research, etc.)

- World building (advanced concept) - maybe talk about such and such land, and this land, and that land... they are really worlds or part of a world, but maybe the word land or area or department may help people follow things better. Be able to flex as needed.

- Data assembly line - what an awesome concept, but it sometimes takes people time to warm up to that idea.

- Visual outline (foldable or unfoldable - maybe use +&- signs) - be able to jump where ever...

- The adilas cafe... work, play, buy, sell, learn, community

- Working on a stacked, layered, and drill-down type learning model. This is somewhat of a presentation gallery of sorts.

- Start gathering these resources and help to organize them. That is my goal.

- Let's look at some of the levels... Thinking of the ice berg type analogy (show a little bit and then expose more as needed)

- Top level -- similar to the adilas café - work, train/play, learn, participate in the community, sell, buy, research

- Flipped over to Word to build an outline. Hopefully see attached...

Small video recording with Wayne. He started out with a question... Is the world flat or round?

- People will often use examples to base their judgements off of.

- How we think and what we think we know. The perception of knowledge.

- Senses and how people perceive things - say choosing and seeing a color - lots of variations - first the physical pieces are different, secondly how does the brain perceive things. 

- Distraction, multi-tasking, true focus

- Training and a preset of memory items - recalling learned pieces and then mixing those things together as things happen in real time. 

- In certain scenarios, we start filling in certain blanks based on what are brains are giving us vs what is being actually shared.

- At times, some of the people involved can almost see a picture in their head of what is needed and where things are going and how things will work. They have the original vision even before they start into the project. Some people will start catching the vision as it starts to unfold over time.

- Questioning our own belief systems - checking things at the door (to the mind).

- Meeting expectations - Was what was delivered what was really asked for? This is hard to hit this mark. Often we are off by some degree or another.

- Small story of linked pieces (security based) and what people perceived to be the problem. Sometimes they pointed to one piece but technically, it may have been some other contributing factor or some other process that occurred. Some times the end user, using our site, they see a certain problem and assume that it means something. However behind the scenes we have multiple servers, different technologies, permissions, settings, user interface, etc. All of those things get mixed together to make the outcome.

- In Adilas, we have a mixed bag due to how many different things we offer and how many different ways these people use what we have to offer. That makes it a challenge. Wayne also started talking about some historical aspects and how things came to be. At the time, based on the needs, the knowledge, the skills, the technology, the outcome came from those mixed variables. If looked at from that historical perspective, things may make more sense vs looking at things later on based on a new set of variables.

- Group effort - it takes a village to raise a child.

- Wayne was having fun and wanted to serve in the church - As part of that, he moved to Portugal and wanted to get involved. He has been involved. Kinda like a senior mission of sorts. Sometimes higher leadership callings are a ton of work. Wayne was talking about different callings, responsibilities, and options to serve. As you get into things deeper, you end up learning tons from who you are working with and serving vs just teaching them in a one-way direction. It becomes a great two-way street of learning. We are constantly learning. Enjoy those learning opportunities.

- Often we think that we are right about something (pick a subject). If someone proves us wrong (in a nice way) and helps us think in a new direction, we become an advocate for that cause. This really comes into play when working on a team or in a team setting.

- Customers - super important. We get paid to do a job (whatever that job is). We may not get extra praise for doing our job. Our customers have certain expectations. They may not compliment you on doing your job. If they, the customers, have a problem... and you help them and fix the problem, you could gain a customer for life. That is where you get an elevated level of praise.

- Customers are always right except when they are wrong - kinda funny. At times, you even need to fire a customer. Wayne was talking about being a nice guy vs transacting business and still being a nice guy. There may be a difference. Being able to say no.

- Rationalization - still thinking of being in a start-up mode. We are getting better and better at that. It has been a slow process. We were talking about sales, but this could go into a lot of other areas.

- Steve was talking about some future goals and where we want to take things. We would like to keep progressing the ball down the road.

- Light talk about server issues and getting help from our team (aka Wayne on the server side). Good stuff.

- The dream and where are we headed... even with a dream, we have had multiple 90 degree corners that we didn't expect.

- The reoccurring revenue model is kinda like an insurance agent and basing things off of those reoccurring services and playing as a group.

- Pioneering the road. We are constantly unrolling and watching what is happening all around us. We don't have a book or a full plan to follow.

- When a new business starts... it tends to be on a smaller level. Everybody knows what is going on and hopefully following the same vision. As you grow, you start getting some new variables and they may not be part of that same vision. As it grows from there, it could completely change. It grows in needs, complexity, resources, etc. Sometimes the original startup people may not like and/or accept all of the changes and complexity.

- Light talks about changing job titles and job responsibilities. What are you passionate about? Do you like what you are doing right now?

- What is our model? Currently we are trying to structure our model so that it could keep persisting. We honestly don't know where all of these things are going. Wayne said... Ok, how do you get there (meaning the vision and dream)?

- What is it that we are selling? What is our model (in writing)? That is somewhat hard to put a finger on. It is so flexible and versatile it makes it hard. We have a lot of customization and lower priced offerings. Some of those pieces have been huge for us. From big to small - we are finding that if we can help the customers out with their dreams, things for us keep unfolding and unfolding for us and for them. Taking the next logical step. We don't want a tidal wave, but we would like to increase sales.

- Questions about managing pricing and updates (what is rolled out) - Who pays for what and who uses what?

- Wayne has a brother, Scott, who does a lot of consulting on sales.

- Steve's idea is you get everything vs selling a multiple module application. It seems easier to sell the whole thing and then just set the prices based on their sizes (business sizes). We talked about seed money and even doing some project fund matching to get the project pushed forward. We have full custom (black box code) and we have core products that everybody gets. Steve was saying that we are a somewhat community funded, open source product, but still slightly different. We are a software as a service type model (SaaS).

- Wayne was talking about direct metrics - What are our customers using and doing inside of the system? What can we measure and what can we check? Basically figuring out a price per value type metric. Subscription and what are you getting for your dollar value. We have even talked about giving the software away for free and living off of the other services (byproducts) that get produced. We have talked about charging for hosting, storage, processing, etc. vs just charging for the software.

- One of the extra services that they were talking about was "business coaching". Sometimes, as we go down the road, we have seen some of these same scenarios play out and we are gaining knowledge. Some of the knowledge and experience is worth quite a bit of money. What if the system could help coach someone through the process through navigation, processes, and training.

- Steve is trying to get into some of these CPA (certified public accountants) groups and helping them run with all of the off shooting products and byproducts. If we allow for some white labeling options, these CPA groups could really run with some of the other pieces of the puzzle.

- Steve turned some of his thoughts to the adilas café and getting this single login and then they could come and work, play, learn, train, buy, sell, and participate in the adilas community. We just build the software and then let the others who are around us help provide the other outside services that are needed.

- Steve would really like to help change the business model and the ways that employees and employers work and coordinate together. As a fun side note, we, at Adilas, are already doing some of this. It is very loose right now, but we are currently helping companies get interconnected and plugged into the correct pieces (reps, consultants, designers, customer code, business coaching, oversite, fulfillment, etc.). If we use the adilas café correctly, we could allow so many other parties and/or individuals to help provide a piece of the puzzle for any number of different companies. We would like to make that part of the adilas model.

- Wayne was talking about even outsourcing inventory control and inventory management. Often we think that topic, inventory management, resides inside the company, but it doesn't have to. More analytics, more oversite, more management tools, etc. We could build that.

- We, as a company, need to really look into the user login process and how to separate the users from the systems (single sign-on). They the users, need to exists outside the systems but still be able to play within the different systems. Eventually, we want to turn the request and accept process out to the users.

- The deeper we get, the deeper we are seeing more and more needs to be built out on the global adilas café model. The system is too big for one single person to know everything. It seems natural for the adilas community to help fill those needs.

- Wayne - What is your action list? Where do we head from here?

- Steve - Let's get the servers and database stuff super stable. Then we work on the single sign-on and the database split up (datasource and/or world building model). Build up the adilas café and the adilas community - this could be the adilas marketplace, adilas university, and the main system (adilas as a platform).

- Wayne wanted to know what the tick list was and then also how are we going to make that happen? Goals, budgets, timeframes, etc. Basically, going beyond the dream and into the logistics of getting there. Making assignments and allocating funds and time and resources.

- https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=adilas%20caf&sort=asc - link for some research on the adilas café concept.

- If we were to get super busy, say 10 times or 100 times more than what we have, we would need some major help. The adilas café and the adilas market would really need to be in place for that to happen.

- From Wayne - The art of leadership is helping other people do what they want to do because they want to do it.

See attached for the video recording of this meeting.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

After the meeting, Steve and I kept talking about some options.

- We could use the camp adilas project as a precursor and even be able presell an industry specific buildout. That could be really cool.

- Help push the adilas café and help people see that they could make some great money by learning adilas and providing different skills.

- If we got enough of the community into the adilas café, they could virtually help staff the adilas university model.

- Steve talked about giving away personal adilas accounts and then allowing them to schedule, train, or do work for other clients who need their help.

- Steve wants to build the ultimate business tool and then let others provide the services that come from that product.

- Light talks about playing at the wall (API sockets) and custom white label solutions.

- Our goal is to head North (speaking about a general business plan vs a perfect goal setting and fully budgeted business plan). Everything that we are doing is in a constant state of flux. That gets really hard to nail down.

- There is a fun paradigm shift taking place using Adilas and the adilas café and adilas market as tools to help solve the employer/employee relationship. Tons of great options.

- We are surrounded by tons of cofounders. Each person is playing a role.

- The next biggest thing is a step in the right direction.

- We are going to keep breaking our projects into more and more chewable pieces. That will help with energy, moral, and code sign-off.

Talking with Calvin and Jacob from the IT Dream Team. Steve joined us part way through the meeting.

- What is the dream?

- Who has access to Calvin and what would that look like and/or cost? Currently, Calvin may be approached by clients, reps, consultants, adilas tech support, and other adilas developers. This may need to be defined more.

- Problem and incident management. Also, change management and future development. We may need to look at some standards such as ITIL (information technology infrastructure library). Great starting point for setting up best practices.

- Communication breakdowns and having too many middle men - adds to loss of communication.

- Helping all of our clients take advantage of new changes.

- Building processes to help standardize things.

- Products that are on our future tick list - text messaging (big and small, group and individual), auto processing (transactional data to aggregated data), label building, and other API socket tools.

- IT Dream Team would like to help us get a strategy of where we are going. Basically an IT partner or part of team on an ongoing basis. An outsource CTO (chief technical officer) type role

- Vertical design and keeping the user involved

- Challenges of just in time project management, just in time funding, just in time bug fixes, just in time development, etc.

- What trends are we seeing and needing? Along those lines, where are we headed and what else if needed? Even to the fact of reoccurring services (IT, servers, developers, management, software, consulting).

- There tends to be a few type of programming - maintenance, bug fixes, and enhancements (new things that need to happen). There is also operational vs emergency needs. If we can be proactive, we could eliminate lots of the emergency type levels. Making a plan and then working that plan.

- We have an independent model... which also allows us to have work (jobs) for you guys as well. There could be a lot of back and forth sharing between clients, projects, and needs.

- Steve was talking about how our end goal, for our model, is helping to bring together operations and accounting (the zipper analogy). Steve was also talking about helping the users really want our product to the point that they need it. The system becomes one of their favorite and most used tools.

- There are tons of other sales type options - we can dream it up and then put together a plan. We would love to play together in different ways. Let's figure it out.

- Knowledge management - key players that have the correct knowledge pieces of the puzzle.

- There was lots of talks about oversight, helping, managing, and even finding the correct solutions on the accounting side of things.

- There were talks about setting up a marketplace that service the adilas clients and markets. It come back to our planning for the adilas café type model. Here is a link to some of our research on the adilas café.

- We were talking about outsourcing some of the babysitting pieces to different CPA firms. Lots of options and vision - huge potential.

- How do we move this thing out to the next level? Let's get some proposals going.

- We have two main things that we could look at. One deals with the development side of things (building and maintaining things) as well as a possible relationship in the revenue sharing and bigger picture.

Emails and other to list stuff.

Talking with Russell over the phone. We had a great conversation.

- Concept for fracture - Being able to remove any of the extra pieces. This goes clear down to the permission level. If they, our customers, only want invoicing and time management. That's all that they see. Even on the permission side of things. They only see what they have turned on. That may require us to stack and group the permissions better. It goes clear down to the ice berg vs the mountain model. We have to be able to remove all of the pieces otherwise the user still sees the mountain even though we are trying to just show an ice berg.

- The other really important thing for fracture is smaller getters and setters. This allows us to add/edit things in a very modular manner. If you want to change something, you can just change it. If you want to add something, you can just do it. This could help out with API sockets, quick calls, and even web components. Back to the old adage, build it once and use it many.

- We lose so much in our transition times - switching between projects. It is very costly both physically and mentally. It is real.

- Working models - if you look really close, we have a number of great working models and proof of concept stuff. There is some real value there. Keep building on that keep working to bring all of those working models and proof of concept pieces more into fruition.

- Empower the users - you can make it happen - we can help you build your dreams. A big part of what we peddle (sell) is potential and hope.

- We spent some time talking about the concept of elements of time. We have build in so many pieces that it becomes a virtual mountain. Russell was talking about a Leatherman (multi tool) vs a simple knife, a simple screwdriver, etc. We really want to help the users. Sometimes they want the big multi tool and sometime they just like the simple knife. We may need both.

- Because of the load, we are able to gain some traction.

- Talking about database pieces and options. There are multiple different models. You have file share databases, server databases, relational databases, document databases (objects and JSON storage), transactional data, aggregated data, object data, etc. You gain if you can mix and blend and get best of the different worlds - connections, storing, searching/filtering, and reporting.

- Helping other people to succeed. That is a huge piece of the puzzle.

- Creating the ecosystem that feeds the people who provide the byproduct services that are needed and wanted.

- Futuristically speaking - There may be some new business needs. This could be adding new departments underneath of adilas or it could be completely new companies (mother/daughter type companies). Thinking of things within the concept of the adilas café - we know that we will eventually need a company for the adilas market, adilas university, core adilas, tons of other options for the other products and services that are needed.

- As we get more into project management, some of our project managers may need some stacking underneath them. For example, Steve may have some projects that he pushed off to some other project manager(s) underneath himself to manage some of those projects. Organizational stacking (who reports to who and how is that organized).

Jonathan from Epic Enterprises came over to my house to meet with us. We started out listening to Steve and Eric over the GoToMeeting session. After a little bit, I started to explain some things to Jonathan. We went on mute but had the meeting with Steve and Eric going on in the background. Every once in awhile we would catch something and it would send us off on a tangent and/or direction change. We were waiting for Steve to join us.

Once Steve joined us, we had a good multi-hour meeting with Jonathan, Steve, and myself. Here are some of my notes.

- We talked about analogies between showing a whole mountain vs just an ice berg (how much do you show and/or reveal - it deals with perceptions of how much there is and how much needs to be learned).

-  We talked briefly about the need for the adilas café and a good starting place for our users to come in and be a part of the community. Some of the people come to work, play, learn, buy or sell their own product and services, and participate in the adilas community. We went over some concepts, graphics, and needs in that area.

- I pitched to Jonathan that we have at least 3 businesses that need to be funded, staffed, and managed. We have the main adilas system, the adilas marketplace (others who are buying and selling their services and products to help support the system), and adilas university (education and training).

- We talked about some progress from one server and being able to share logins (one login allowed access to multiple corporations, based off of permissions and assignments). We also talked about how that model still exists but gets tougher as we keep adding other independent servers. Currently, we can share logins on a per server basis. We can't do a single login and allow that user to access multiple servers. The logins are specific to each server right now. As a side note, not everybody needs to be bridged between servers, but certain users work in tons of different systems and on multiple different servers.

- Jonathan recommended a movie called "The Pentagon Wars" - dealing with scope creep. Basically a project that should have been fairly simple turns into 17 years of development and $14 billion to create it. A comical stab at the mismanagement of government spending and scope creep.

- We as humans, are designed to push too far. We tend to go to extremes.

- Making the system more human like... anthropomorphism

- People tend to be either: stable/reliable (45%), warrior/artisans (27%), idealist/humanist (14%), analytical (10%), other (4%) - all rough figures or ish

- Business is a projection of/from psychology.

- Going from order to chaos, order to chaos, and so forth - cycle that has been repeated over and over again in all ages.

- Suggestion - On the invoice homepage and the graphs... maybe add a projection line on the invoice homepage graphs. Show a forecast and/or projection. This could also be done with an average based on number of days. This came up due to the fact that the existing graphs take month over month data and create a graph. Well, if you have just started a new month... you only have a small number of days worth of data vs a whole month worth of data. Sometimes it makes the graph look like it is trending down sharply when in reality, things are actually doing pretty good. Visual helper.

- Talking with Steve and Jonathan - light intro and talking about their respective backgrounds and interests.

- Jonathan wants to help us improve our company.

- Consultants tend to do one of the following actions:  diagnose, analyze, and/or provide feedback. - Sometimes in that order or 3 step process.

- SaaS (software as a service) is a crazy business model.

- Question (dealing with approach) - How do you sneak up on the elephant? Talks about approaches and why's.

- A consultant informs and convinces. A consultant sees from the outside.

- A few things that Jonathan sees right now, without getting super deep: overdiversification, scope creep, scope seep, lack of structure, possible lack of leadership.

- We don't really like to babysit.

- We are trying to work on our to do list or our tick list.

- People have different skills - putting the people in the right place.

- From Steve, sometimes the environment changes how we act and interact with it - it is not just personalities and traits.

- We haven't spent much on selling and marketing.

- We would like to focus on the adilas café approach.

- From Jonathan, book recommendations - "Good To Great", "Rocket Fuel", and "The Go-Giver"

- Building a company is different than running a company.

- By helping our people better focus, that could help us be more productive.

- Steve would like to involve as many good people as possible - He is ok with not knowing everything.

- Steve wants to keep an independent model and/or have multiple cofounders.

- At some point, you will hit the borders of certain things unless you comply with certain principles.

- So many moving pieces - that makes it tough to both see and figure out the roll out and the plan.

- We may need a plan for who will run the business - we like to create it (dreamers and doers).

- Where does one start? Jonathan wants to start with the minds of the owners.

- We just build things... we don't even stop to try to sell them. We love the building process.

- Steve seems to be the creative type and the organizer type.

- Mixing and blending the persons and personalities - we need all of the players.

- We are trying to create a community.

- Analogy of the bee hive... well, if we have a hive, we may need a queen bee, a tree, and some flowers - we need all of the pieces.

- Steve loves to recruit talent and skills.

- Business philosophy and playing the game.

- Jonathan sees, as far as what we offer: stacked valuable services upon other valuable services.

/////////////////// challenges for Steve and I

1. Use more of Jonathan's time
2. Take a personality test from 16 personalities - Try it in different moods, happy, sad, tired, stressed, etc.
3. Trying to align to business principles
4. Steve and I, discuss some of our known disfunctions - see other notes - search for the key word rejecting

Steve was leading out on the morning meeting today. Both Dustin and Danny checked in briefly. After they were done, Steve and I spent over an hour chatting and talking about direction and options. We had an assignment from a business consultant to talk about a some disfunctions (places that need work). We spent some time and worked on one area. The disfunction area was rejecting structure. There are about five areas that we will end up looking into.

See attached for some notes. The main take away was we need to keep going and doing what we are doing. We would love to focus more on the adilas café ideas and concepts as well as opening up the market to allow our power users to help staff that part of the puzzle (buying and selling services - part of the adilas marketplace). The other topic that we talked about was employees and employers. Steve really likes the idea of the dependables and keeping a small core team of independents that can run and manage themselves.

We invited a couple of the guys to meet with Jonathan today. The main topic was the shopping cart or internal cart. So many things go on inside of the cart. It really is a heart or very viable piece of the equation. On the meeting today we had Chuck, Alan, Steve, Jonathan, and myself. Chuck started out by showing a few shopping carts and point of sale (POS) options from his WanderWays - camp adilas project.

Jonathan then showed us around some of the things that he is prototyping, including the custom navigation options, settings, and custom configuration pieces. We also went over things like the education mode, simplified searches (hide search form fields until needed and/or wanted), and combined searches. Lots of stacking, tabs, and just in time access menus.

After that, I did a small demo on how the cart works and how things get configured and used inside of the internal shopping cart. We switched carts, we did discounts, assigned customers, restored quotes to cart, added notes, payments, and all kinds of options. See attached for a small video recording of the walk through.

The last part of the meeting was dealing with some critiques and ideas from the different guys on the meeting. Good stuff and making progress.

Updated - as of 2/3/20, two new video links were added (see attached) for concepts of the invoice mode (mock-up for fake data) and also a proposal for the education mode and how adilas fracture interface could inter connect with the adilas café project. See the attached videos for some overviews.

Meeting with a number of folks. The goal was dealing with the shopping cart. We had Steve, Chuck, Jonathan, Cory, and a client on the meeting. The first part of the meeting was the client going over some of their requests. Here are some highlights from them...

- They would like to be able to send text messages from the customer queue

- They would love to have a hand-held scanner and have it automatically be able to update an unmanned cart. Some talks about using the built-in cameras on certain tablets and such. Other talks about hardware and software problems and solutions. Through the web, sometimes those pieces are hard to get to perfectly talk to one another.

- Lots of questions about barcodes, labels, and auto/bulk actions.

- They would like possible popup/modal type windows to see customer notes, maybe the last invoice, and even a modal popup on the ++ or advanced add to cart (haggle tools)

- The also spoke about major needs for tiered pricing - the same options that work on my cart favorite buttons and smart groups and tiered pricing. As part of this discussion, there were options mentioned about parent attributes, barcodes on buttons, advanced barcodes (QR codes), mini conversions, etc. This becomes a bigger and bigger need. It also needs to be more standardized. Lots of options, but because it could go so many ways, it is hard to find the correct path. Too many options.

- Along the tiered pricing vein, there was also a request to be able to assign items (subs or child packages) to a pricing tier through the build new PO process (bringing in the items and assigning them to a pricing tier as part of the inbound process).

- They really want a fully interactive cart, yet still locked down, yet still super powerful, yet super simple, yet, yet... Lots of requirements.

- Training mode, how to get to the best training and how to connect the dots. We have help files, news and updates, videos, etc. - but we need a way to get to that really quickly. They, the client, were also requesting that each new feature has a full tutorial and/or video. They only wanted the things that were fully done to be added to the news and updates.

- They would love for more onsite or local training options. They love the time and are willing to spend the money. They would love to get the training options to be standardized and regular (scheduled and consistent).

- They love the bulk update cart functionality

- Being able to bulk print labels and skip steps (save as a quote or cart checkout). The also wanted to be able to flag certain items that they only need one label vs multiple new labels per quantity, etc. It sounds like it could be pretty deep. There were also requests to be able to bulk print labels from the PO. Calvin's new adilas label builder does do bulk labels for invoices and PO's. They just might need some training.

- Online orders, ecommerce, and even options for delivery.

- In the cart, being able to see it at all times. Having some sort of split screen where there are items or look-ups on one side and all of the items on the other side. Lots of one pagers with asynchronous connections and easy flow through the sections and/or pages.

- We love ideas and helping to push the ball forward. The needs keep coming. We just try to keep solving those pieces as we can.

- We also allow the clients to chime in and help us prioritize, fund sharing, and have a say in where things are going.

////// more notes after the client left - Just Chuck, Jonathan, Brandon, and Steve

- Steve - a big thank you out to both Chuck and Jonathan - you guys are stepping up the game. He was also talking about collaboration between the different developers and how cool that will be.

- There may end up being 8-10 versions or variations of the shopping cart. At some point, we need to separate the logic from the view/design. Jonathan was also talking about putting the specialty features into settings so that each cart may be more configurable. Good stuff.

- Questions from Jonathan about market analysis and what does that say for us? Sadly, the reality, we haven't done anything there. Lots of options.

- There were some talks about having a system to run your stuff vs trying to marry all of the individual pieces together. There is pain on both sides, but we are heading towards the systematic type approach. Trying to bring all of these things together.

- Time to value - how many clicks to get those needs fulfilled. Not that we can't do it... we just need to figure out how to help speed up the process and make it easier and more easy to get to those pieces and features.

- Smoothing out processes and making it easy to get to the places that they need to. It kinda comes down to navigation and visual flow process. Aka - the full user experience.

- Steve was talking about how making these pieces work together to get all of the POS (point of sale) systems, inventory tracking, CRM (customer relationship management), CMS (content management systems), accounting, reports, and backend storage all in one place. That is the dream.

- Some of our clients are virtually starving for instructor lead training. Jonathan is saying that there is a barrier to entry to this... meaning the learning curve to fully know adilas. We need to help provide it and also help to standardize it. Small talks about competition, reps/consultants, and ways of teaching the processes, pieces, and principles.

- Small mention of the adilas café and how some of that would help us provide training and service type options. You could get training from the adilas university or you could get direct training and/or hire a certain person to help fill a certain need. Think of all of the power users that could offer services and/or training. What if we could show user stats on who has done what and what level they qualify.

- From Chuck - what about a monthly webinar? We could plan it out, record it, charge for it, etc. We could do digital meetings, in-person training, instructor lead trainings, etc. As we keep updating the system, we need to keep updating the videos. Maybe even using YouTube as a primary source of training. Possible Facebook groups, tips of the day, etc.

- From Chuck - doing light idea mining when we are out and about. For example: Hey, what processes do you do to sell things? We then record that and start making some settings, permissions, and selections together to help them with what they are doing. Presets per industry. Sometimes it is so overwhelming... we could really create virtual profiles and help with settings and configuration stuff.

- From Chuck - small talks about web components and being able to customize things on the fly. Separating logic, functions, views, displays, processes, etc.

- Lots of settings and even helping those people get to those settings and help it make sense for each industry. Settings and configuration options. Groups, categories, settings, nested presets, tiered pricing, labels, etc.

- From Chuck - he really doesn't like it if we do a process and then virtually dump him in an unfamiliar page (backend navigation). That comes back to page flow and user interface. We will keep working on this. If we send the users to the correct spot, we don't lose them and we even help them know what the next step should be. This may take some mapping and design stuff.

- Trying to stay small but still looking for talent and help.

- Help file on barcodes - https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/help.cfm?id=413&pwd=cart - barcodes can really speed up shopping carts and there are tons of options. This is an area that could still be developed out further and enhanced. Just an idea.

See attached for a number of other resources. There are a couple of videos and some research on shopping carts and POS interfaces (point of sale interfaces).

Code review and pushing some new changes to the fulfillment homepage. New code changes done by Bryan.

I also got on a meeting with Jonathan Wells (designer) to talk and go over the ++ (advanced add to cart) options and functionality. He would like to break it down into smaller pieces to make it more consumable and usable for a beginner. Good meeting. I also mentioned to him that we would like to wrap up the cart stuff and start heading back towards sales and the adilas café project.

Monday morning. There were 4 of us on the meeting to begin with. Later on, Wayne joined as well. Steve and Sean were talking about sales. Danny jumped on and has some questions about code repository stuff (Git and bit bucket). We also went over projects, touching base, server stats, sales tools and backend server stuff. As part of the sales stuff, Steve had me show Sean what we were working on for the presentation gallery and what the status of that project is or was. Good stuff.

Once Wayne joined, we jumped into a number of other topics including:

- Breaking up the databases and dealing with the single sign-in or single access login. World building and adilas café stuff.

- Manual and automated load balancing

- The concept of the value add-on core model - with different rings to denote the other levels of add-on value pieces. We have determined at least 5 levels as of right now. 1. Core, 2. Business vertical or industry specific, 3. Custom level, 4. BI or Business Intelligence level, and 5. Enterprise or multiple corp(s) level. Each of those value rings has to be purchased and serviced. You have to have the transactional data core to get it started, but anything beyond that, is extra or a value add-on piece. Very configurable.

- Speaking of configuration stuff - We need to be able to configure the servers in or at the enterprise level as to who they serve, how many instances per box, and where they point. All configuration type details, but on the server levels.

- Wayne was explaining a bunch of terms and how things work on the VPS (virtual private servers) realm. Somewhat of a controllable shared space based on settings, needs, and what not. As part of this discussion, Wayne used an analogy of a fleet of cars/vans/trucks for lease by a company. The company that is using them does have to worry about the tires, paint, and repairs, they just have to use them and pay for gas. We did a similar analogy with what we are offering on the server/IT/tech side of things. Our clients just want it to be done and handled, we have to figure out what the configuration is, for their IT/server needs. Is that 3 web servers and 2 database servers or is it a cluster of web servers, a dedicated content server, and a cluster of database servers. All configuration pieces. We need more control of what and how we set things up (server configuration options).

- Steve and Wayne got into monitoring servers and how that too could be a value add-on service. They spent some time inside of pingdom.com and talking about packages and options for both monitoring servers, uptime, and page/user specific processes and flow. Once again, it got back into value add-on services and being able to offer those add-on or add-in services.

- There was some talks about persons who could reset servers and some training that might be needed there. Trying to get everybody who needs it, ready to help.

- As we, adilas, incur a direct cost, we need to be able to pass those costs on to our clients. Wayne used the term "transfer" direct costs to our clients. More add-on service stuff.

- One of the next steps for us is in the performance and reliability side of things. We really want to be able to optimize our code and split up our databases. That would help a lot. Once again, more configuration options and settings on the code and server levels. 

Emails and then meeting with Steve to talk over ideas and options. We spent some time talking about our ownership structure and options in case we wanted to see if we could get some more funding by offering a certain percentage (basic share stuff) and what that may look like. Just talking and playing around with ideas.

- Businesses - going up the chain

- Our optimal size seems to be high side of small and low side of medium. Basically, small but almost to medium.

- We are really good at building stuff on our platform

- Light talks about the adilas trust, adilas café and community

Working with Shannon on vision statements and general goals for the next 1 year, 5 years, upto 10 years. See attached for our progress. Here is a list of some of our semi-short term goals that we will be adding to our business plan and vision plan:

Without going into too many details here are some elements that will be included in our plan:

- Keep tweaking on the transactional core

- Move client services more internal to Adilas 

- Expand into other verticals

- Allow for custom code where needed

- Get into aggregated and/or business intelligence (BI) type levels

- Grow the platform into an enterprise level app/system

- Along the way there are plans to do a full re-write under the code name “Fracture”

- Revamp the look and feel - improve user experience 

- Create and facilitate the Adilas Café and community

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We also talked about using the key word "core" for different starting spots or base level options. This could be core transactional systems, core database columns or fields, core or main pieces. An example may be something like: Using the word or phase core values vs parent attributes, sub attributes, flex attributes, etc. Hopefully that makes sense.

Prepping things and doing some pioneering. All part of the game.

At the end of the meeting, I ended up pushing up some code for Danny and his custom labels.

Steve and Cory were on for a bit talking about finances, plans, billing, and other options. After Cory left, Steve and talked about harnessing user clicks as a way to get things done. We keep coming back to that as a possible option for getting big migration tasks done without us (our internal team) doing all of the clicking and migration of the data. A way of harnessing what is already happening with small side tasks that need to be done. We've considered this and thought about this before. Somehow, we keep coming back to it. I'd love to see it get put into play.

Once Shannon and I got on our part of the meeting, we did a little bit of review and then split up to work on our own part of the info graphic harnessing project (picking up the pieces from years of doing the developer's notebook and other concepts and drawings). Shannon was doing some research. I was going through folders with screenshots for R&D on the adilas café and our future project called fracture. Going through screenshots from Jonathan Wells. As a side note, I made a small folder on my local box to pull the best shots into one place. Eventually, they will be part of the R&D photo gallery. Part of this page (we'll add a new section).

Danny and some of the crew on the morning meeting this morning. There was a small sales theme going on in the meeting. Danny was commenting about sales and getting good communications between sales and the developers. The developers, me included, build and build, but don't let anybody know. Constant moving platform. Good communication is key. We talked about ways of improving those communication lines.

I ended up showing those on the meetings some of the Adobe XD files that I got from Jonathan Wells, just the other day. It was like Christmas. I was showing them stuff, zooming in, panning out, scrolling, drawing, and pitching some of the ideas and concepts for fracture, new shopping carts, and the adilas café. For the record, Brandon has a whole folder that has tons and tons of Adobe XD files that were done in 2019/2020 by Jonathan Wells. All of it was graphic R&D and research. Very much a little treasure box. Here is the file path (www_adilas/extras/jonathan_wells/xd_from_jonathan)

Marisa  was on the meeting this morning as well. She was getting excited to see some of the prototypes and mock-ups. We want to start harvesting some of those R&D projects. Lots of work and efforts have gone in there and some of the mock-ups look great and make us (and our clients) excited. As a small side note, we somewhat switched gears and talked about outside investors and seeking outside funding sources. I pointed them to a document that we made a couple of weeks/months ago that talked about some of our plans. We called it the questionnaire summary report from an internal questionnaire. Here is a link to the doc (pdf) - questionnaire summary. Light talk about investors and seeking funding. Danny, Marisa, Sean, and Steve were chiming in. Good meeting!

On Friday, June 11th, 2021 we had an internal conference day for just the adilas team. We went from sales to internal code to ideas and plans. All over the place. See attached for my notes. Many great things were discusses. Once again, this was an internal team meeting, but we don't mind sharing what we were talking about. :)

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The attached notes are better formatted, but I wanted to push some of them here for searchability:

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Group Sales Meeting

Marisa, Danny, John, Cory, Sean, Steve, Dustin, Shari O., Dawn, Brendan, Steve (mac), Brandon, Chuck, Alan, Kelly, Bryan

- Kelly was saying that there is some public records per states

- We may try to pull our own list

- Questions... who, what, where, how good, etc.

- Maybe look at a sample of 10

- We may need a more focuses approach

- What about different industries?

- We need to get the name out there

- Kelly was pitching a social presence

- Do we know anybody who wants to do the social stuff

- Word of mouth

- Testimonials

- Some new video graphics

- To the penny, to the gram, every day

- What about small streaming commercials – focused and pointed

- Kelly recommends that we maybe focus on a slightly larger pool

- Dawn – maybe focus on start-ups or that small to medium range

- Get them at the beginning – maybe even tradeshows

- It is a pain in the but to switch over – pain creates options for change

- Focus on services... deployment, oversight, consulting, training, best practices

- How can we deploy something easily and repeatable?

- It is tough to get some of the people started, but once they get all in, they tend to stay

- Kelly has done this over and over again

- Using the professional resources that are available

- From Kelly – Help get the clients all the way in – full system and platform

- Getting the success on the first implementation and then building from there

- What about focusing on those who are having trouble and/or are struggling

- Dawn loves the support, training, and feel good part of it – duplicate that feeling to others

- How quick can we respond – we jump pretty quickly on custom needs, development, training, and support

- Get more testimonials from our clients

- We have some experience to offer to those who want it

- What about pitching best business practices

- It's ok to be non-traditional

- Being Relevant!

- Focus on helping over sales – from Steve (mac)

- Simple things that bring the relevant pieces

- Social webbing – group effort

- Danny, straight up, I don't want to be the social media guy! We have to find the right person and/or persons (small little team)

- We are not QuickBooks... what does that mean? Be our own style!

- Packaging this platform based on the target audience

- Formulating a plan – ease the lift – maybe a monthly meeting with some planning

- Influencers and YouTube options

- Small info tips...

- New age marketing – we have to play to the current market

- Big Dumb Animal Pictures – super simple

- We have to do a cost analysis to see which one(s) make more sense for us

- John, what if we setup our own little social piece (aka maybe the adilas cafe) – we could allow all of our users and power users to pitch and promote – we may need to approve things, but we have tons of very knowledgeable people and users

- We are looking for engagement – back and forth – a relationship – maybe get an intern to help handle this

- Danny – Switching over to the modal message marketing

- How to save the app to your phone

- Make the email piece better

- Small web tool to help with building special html links to embed promotions, direct add to cart, discounts, campaigns, etc. A simple form to help with the backend tech of those URL's and web links.

- Maybe, we need to upgrade our email platform. It is a small holdover from years gone by.

- What about the delay on the outbound emails?

- Marisa – maybe outsource things as needed

- Steve – would like more input on the bulk tools

- Better filtering and target marketing

- Steve wants to work direct with Dawn and Branden

- Matrix and target marketing – even predictive

- Maybe a little itty bitty (super small) native app on the different phones – iOS, Android, etc.

- Steve wants to get into possible predictive marketing

- Steve – looking for great feedback and even ideas and dreams...

- Archiving, saving for later, dismissing, etc. We have the data, what do we want to do with it? – Wet clay...

- Danny – Going back to past clients

- Version 1 vs Version 2 – type attitude

- What kind of clients do we want? We may not want certain kind of clients.

- We love people who like details and are willing to play

- We love people who take things to the fullest level

- We love people who just need a small little piece – there is a gap in their current model and they need some help. We can then grow from there.

- Do a full comparison of what we offer

- Pitch what we do differently – we help deploy and maintain your ERP

- White glove approach

- Playing with the tools that we have and flipping those into marketing messages

- Chuck – maybe check out some groups on Facebook

- Blog posts, articles, info snippets, quick videos

- Talking with Kelly – how have we helped small businesses become bigger or big business – showing the potential – dreams to reality

- The small goals to achieve – steps to get to the next level

- Small goals lead to bigger goals – getting some small successes along the way

- Clients and expectations – not all money is the same – budgeting and planning – what kind of client do we want

- Reoccurring revenue vs one-time revenue

- A quote is just one of many pieces that needs to be done

- People, skills, and cogs in the wheel

- We all care... where would you and your skills fit in best

- Seeing the bigger picture

- Maybe looking at personalities and figuring out the mixing and blending of our options and resources

- Slowing down and taking the time to see where we are at? Virtual time travel – child, youth, adult – as a company

- What's the difference between a goal and dream? A plan!

- The internal group summary that we did... a great start

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Second session - Servers & Infrastructure - Refining Our Processes - Tech Support & Training - Project Management

Steve wants us to show the online label builder

- We had some good talk about where we want to go

- We pointed to our internal summary report

- Steve McNew – helping with the strategic marketing plan, technology road map, timelines to position, plans for action

- Scale – can we grow and can we shrink

- Conversation between big and small – perspective – big and small (sales, number of team members, lines of code, etc.)

- Molly – Is adilas the big guy or the small guy? Think of code (lines of code). We could be considered a big guy if you were looking at code and functionality.

- We like being small (ish), but what if we are big already

- If we want to grow, that means that we want to get better – grow in a good manner and sustainable manner

- The underlying services that support the whole

- Be your own style!

- Steve McNew – old classmate with Steve Berkenkotter – guest speaker – part of the adilas team to help us get some things more standardized – processes and procedures

- Defense contractor for the military – 28 years

- Testing, software, management, auditor

- He has already called, interviewed, and talked with a number of different team members

- He did a 20 page audit and report on what he was seeing

- Getting into some testing and processes – he would like to see more of this

- Not trying to derail the train – we are trying to polish the Ferrari (spelling – awesome car)

- Whitepapers – catering to a higher audience – going beyond stick figures and into technical docs – not everybody will want to read some of these, but there will be some that require it

- Steve B – if we try to sell our product to those who can't afford it, it doesn't really work. They have to be able to pay for what we do (really do – billing for our time and efforts)

- Fin-tech – financial technology

- Using whitepapers as part of our marketing plan

- John M – unit testing – confidence of the developer team – currently only Wayne and Alan are doing this (unit testing)

- Going to ease into this – refining our testing plan

- Version control and when do we update these systems? The older way was wild west... we may want to figure out some specific micro builds.

- It would be nice to keep track of the versions and options.

- The balance between core and custom development

- The application needs some spring cleaning – what is being used, what isn't, what is going slow, etc. – Refactoring

- Priorities – customer priorities or our internal priorities – what is the mix and blend of these pieces

- We all ware many hats... we may need to define that so that we don't overstretch ourselves

- We all use (and can use) the system in different ways – how do we translate that information to our clients, other developers, and other team members (upstream and downstream)

- 2 minute videos – no more

- Work instructions – even giving it to someone who has never done anything in the system

- Danny – Shoutout to Steve and Brandon – we have done great – what is coming next? Resources?

- Talks about earn and burn ratios

- Prices have to match the services

- We are a growing business

- Kelly – going from 1.5 to 10 (millions) – that is a huge change

- We are competing with companies that are hugely funded... what do we want to do?

- There are some real things in our path – there is tons of potential – what do we want to do with it – also, sometimes there is shelf life on potential or advantages

- We don't want debt – however, there is a time for debt – cost analysis and being smart about it

- Making choices, but also being willing to fail

- Marisa – look at our new website

- Steve – there are some percentages of adilas that are available – not looking for vulture capital (just being silly – vulture vs venture)

- Someone looking to take on some risk but helping us to get to the next level, without taking over the company

- Kelly – pitching our vision and business plan – we have to define the vision – Danny seconded the define the vision before looking for the funding – goals, sales, budgeting, maintenance, and getting a business plan.

- Adilas Trust option – co-founders

- Possible option – Maybe take some of IP (intellectual property) and sell that to a new entity and then restructure those new pieces

- Dustin – thoughts on corporate structure – we are all on our own little islands – Ferrari to a tricycle – frontend compared to backend – splitting up those pieces and functions – he wishes that we could be more collaborated.

- John – teams and buddy projects – small sub teams – full stack (all levels) vs specific skills or somewhat limited skills – this needs to be part of our plan.

- Sean – we already have some small teams that are working on some of these projects – cogs of the wheel – buddy tagging the workflow and processes

- John – the adilas docs project – and being able to go to it and also add to it – working on standardizing the pieces – filling in the gaps

- Danny – Navy Seals – two is one, and one is none – at least two on a project – two-by-two

- Kelly – scale – having a back-up

- Danny – accountability back and forth

- John – confidence levels

- Kelly – what about a succession plan?

- John and Dustin – real life buddies and how they help out each other – seeing a different angle or perspective

- Marisa – tooooooooo much weight gets put on single persons

- Kelly – relieving pressure and helping with scale

- Marisa – Cory, Kelly, and Marisa – wonderful training slides, presentation, and delivery for the conference. Awesome job!

- Alan – modularize things – able to be reused – code concepts can relate to business functions – one to many relationships – translating knowledge into real life and different scenarios

- Chuck – last summer Chuck was on a joint project with he, Russell, and a different John. It worked out awesome – Keep pushing towards that kind of rollout of the project

- Molly – thinking and coming up with ideas. Keep it going!

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Next Session - Deployment & Oversight - Design & Layout - Internal Core Development - Custom Development 

- Deployment – where are we going and how can we make this all work – team effort

- Shari O. – first touch and setup corp, Sean and Shay first hour or so, Sean helping to coordinate the next steps and pieces

- Sean does a great job of reporting back

- Report on things, record the notes, get back with us to help us keep pushing

- Doing great with testing and prototyping

- Kelly – who is on settings, who is on planning, maybe even looking at pre-deployment options

- Before Kelly even does a demo, do some consultation – figure some things out without doing any pitching or selling. This is called listening.

- What are you looking for, wanting, expecting, hoping for?

- Make the demos custom to the pain points or key wants and needs

- The prep work is huge to help them be successful

- This platform is not a turn on and go type system – there may be pre demo, consulting, custom planning and demo, then custom hand holding to get them going down the road

- Picking the point of contact... who is going to own this thing?

- Owners, managers, and users

- Users want the easy button – Steve calls this the tail wagging the dog vs the dog wagging the tail – what is and how can we get buy in?

- Tools are great, but solutions to problems and pain points are even better

- Give to get! If you give too much, it can get you into trouble.

- What is the cost to fixing things... on the other hand, failing does help with major learning – there has to be a balance

- We tend to remember pain – setting people up for success

- Often users are looking for a quick switch. This system takes work. Please sell it that way.

- Not going to custom too quickly – learning the manual way – then automating it

- User buy in – light pain and then helping them learn a better way

- Change proposals and scope of work – setting up boundaries

- Feature creep – setting that scope of work – cause and effect of what they want and what they give – expectations and timelines

- Sometimes I start with NO – interesting

- A saying no - sandwich... Yes, I'd like to, no, I can't. Yes, I would love to help do this... - people think that no is a bad word

- Having a plan to say yes, vs just saying yes

- We like to please people – that is awesome – what does that cost?

- Help make the plan to say yes. Maybe, no (first), however we could do this...

- Making things repeatable

- What are the internal costs to do deployment?

- Say $350 for a setup fee – does that cover it? If yes, great. If no, where does that put us?

- Maybe on the setup, prep, an activation fee (define this – turning on the lights), setup and deployment fee (range), training, custom code, imports, labels, etc.

- We like to cater to everyone – that had bitten us

- Actual prices and then use discounts if needed. You can't really ever raise a price after the fact.

- Back-up our prices

- Use adilas to run adilas!!! This is our communication tool, let's use it.

- We are good at the dreaming and software building part of things, we need some major loving on the service side

- There is demand!

- What pulls at our time - It is time, money, skills, etc.

- Kelly – earn has to be more than burn

- Flipping the demand to sales or services that could be provided

- MVP – minimal viable product, plan, player, etc.

- Intangibles

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Next Session – Show and tell! What are you working on?

Calvin – Advanced file and folder finder, resize images, convert images

Brandon – harvesting assets from element of time

Steve – parent attributes report, items not on a recipe (manufacturing), modal message marketing for customers, log notes for vendors and employees (payee/vendor logs), backorders homepage, mini units, auto add item (quick PO behind the scenes), bulk update on the vendor – master copy paster... :)

- Branch 122 – fun

Bryan – cfqueryparams – stop SQL XSS (database hacks – cross site scripting)  - SQL injection – converting from dynamic queries to secure dynamic queries - Example: Corp_id = #Trim(some form or URL var)# or Corp_id = <cfqueryparam etc, etc,> - this stops the SQL hacks

Bryan is also working on eChecks for eXPO, Hypur checkout in the shopping cart (eComm), new API's for delivery (with documentation and samples)

John – Payroll project to allow holiday date picking, timecard flags, timecard totals (pre summing the math to go faster and lead towards bulk payroll), new timecard reports showing grouped sums and totals.

Page templates and style guide defaults with Chuck – Going from old school tables and links to the newer grid and mobile ready code. Part of the adilas docs project. Build once, use many (effective copy and paste). Basic templates (3 new ones). New information icons and popups (modals). Style guides and usage of those pieces.

Servers with Wayne

Chuck – Huge new web site!!! Awesome Job!!!

Global Design Dashboard, adilas docs, and new presentation gallery (sales tool).

Danny – message marketing, custom labels, sales team meetings – hats off to all of us! Keep listening and keep finding solutions. Open table – follow your highest excitement and be yourself! Be happy!

Alan – enterprise level catalogs, refactoring code (custom page settings), standardizing code for speed and reliability.

Random comments – Cory really liked having access to all of the team members, right here at the conference. Marisa – great to meet everyone – keep floating the boat. Sean – he likes the team. Molly – loved watching and wants to be involved. Chuck – idea of everyone joining slack

Thinking about different angles - What is most important right now? How can we change patterns? What have we learned from the past (retrospective reviews)? What could we do differently?

I on purpose stepped away from my computer, I tend to get drawn in if I stay at the computer, to try to think of different ways and angles to approach and try. I was doing some household work (cutting and splitting wood for the winter) and thinking of different ways of doing things. Sometimes I do my best thinking, when I'm doing something else that doesn't require the normal amount of focus (still active, but somewhat mindless work).

Anyways, I'm only going to record an hour, but it was way more than that. I also did some similar brainstorming a couple of days ago on the 19th (11/19/21) and needed a place to put some of my notes. See attached for a quick scan of my scribbled down notes. These notes are from the 19th, but fit in with what I was thinking about and brainstorming about. Most of these are just "what if's" but fun to think about.

- What if we used adilas to help sell adilas? What if a marketing option would be, find a company that needed some help (either getting started or moving forward) and then offered the adilas product as a service to help them get going in a good direction. If they needed some funding, use an arm of adilas to help with funding. Set them up for success, and help them get training, consulting, and even custom code to make their business a success. Once again, just ideas, but what if you set them up in such a way, using adilas and even marketing dollars, they are successful. If they use adilas and are successful, they most likely will stay with adilas as their software choice. That is one of the main reasons for this venture.

- This is part of a bigger plan. Call it client acquisition costs. Set a budget and then go for it.

- Setup a funding company to help people realize their dreams

- Use adilas as the software for the backend of the funding company as well as the primary software for the companies that are being setup - the adilas piece and using it, is the key

- Setup weekly check-ins with the client (companies that are being funded)

- Pay for adilas (monthly), any training, custom work, consulting - all using the funds that were loaned - in a roundabout way, using other people's money to fund your product or business

- Business consultant that helps them out - external person for their team

- Help make budget and plans, provide resources as needed

- Provide some kind of incentive or ownership deal (depending on how things were structured and initial or original ownership) - For example, if they turn a profit, do some kind of kickback plan. Maybe setup a 5 year or certain percentage per year type plan for profitable business and good management of the business

- Don't give all the money at once - allowance per month - a budgeted credit line - additional funds available as needed

- Adilas could really be a huge key... make sure that the company has someone to help run the numbers and do the adilas work - internal, sub contracted, assigned, or some other arrangement

- If they use adilas and are successful, they most likely will stay with adilas. That is one of the main reasons for this little venture. Providing good products and services and helping businesses succeed. Let it keep going in a perpetual cycle.

- There are tons of other notes about the adilas market and ecommerce marketplace in the adilas, developer's notebook. There was a guy by the name of Todd that gave us some good ideas but we were able to get to them at the time. They deal with a adilas cafe level market or adilas marketplace of sorts. Click here to see some of those notes.

- Once again, just some ideas... but the real key is adilas (as a platform, application, and product) could be the biggest key to making something like this happen and succeed. That is pretty cool! There is a value there!

Before the meeting started, some of the guys were talking about a game that they play and how they, the gaming company, is using the player base to fill out the local info for the game. I wanted to record that, as I think that we could use the same thing. Just another idea for the adilas cafe and community project.

Working with Chuck on his to do list on the view parts pages. Small little work session. Good back and forth on what he is trying to do and how to do it. His project is looking good. I think that this project is working as a good wire-up project for Chuck. That is awesome.

Towards the end, we switched over to talking about the shopping cart project. He, Chuck, is already reaching out to some of the power users to get some input. We will be having a meeting next Tuesday to talk about options.

The last topic for the meeting was Chuck and John going over some of the adilas docs and new changes and updates. Both of those guys have been great ambassadors for the adilas docs project (all of the adilas standards, code snippets, naming conventions, templates, style guide, etc.).

Small demo about the new global features for limited flex grid for both Steve and Sean. This feature used to be exclusive for the Ski School up at Beaver Mountain. We pushed it out to the whole adilas system earlier this week. It should be a great tool for those who are doing combos with flex grid tie-ins. Steve asked about the plan for the bike shuttle company. I told him that we are planning on doing 3 basic steps - prep, train on existing pieces, work on automation.

Hope (Experanza) reported in and wanted to do more marketing with a specific company. She has good connections in her industry. She and Sean are trying to get some advertising into magazines and in front of different parties. As a small side note, it was fun to listen in from the background. You could tell that she was a power user of adilas and those people tend to be our best salespeople or representatives. They have lived it.

Just for fun, Steve would love to go back through and figure out who else we could grab that were adilas power users. There is an untapped resource there - who has the skills and who has done what over time? Another idea was, if we can get the adilas cafe all setup, these power users could offer their own skills and services. That would be totally awesome! Also, if you take a power user and then teach them something else that they don't know (different section of adilas), they tend to pick things up really fast. They are able to build off of a good knowledge and skill base. They eat it up and see the potential.

We talked about other possible marketing stuff, events, swag, banners, the works. Steve and Sean were talking about options and marketing efforts.

Next, we switched gears and Steve and I started working on pulling in custom labels into auto print from the cart. We kinda got lost and couldn't figure it out until we saw that his browser (just a setting) was blocking what we were trying to do. We got it figured out but it had us stumped for a little while. After that, we talked briefly about the MMLLC (multi member LLC) stuff and where we are heading. We also talked about the upcoming scheduling stuff that is coming down the pipeline. As it gets developed, we will need to make sure and get the training and education stuff out there to help our users and trainers.

Sean and I looking into the older code from the Leafly integration (back in 2019) done by Will Hudson. We were somewhat going through some of the pieces and virtually reverse engineering what we saw (looking at existing code and trying to figure it out). Basically, what was built by Will and what did it do?

John showed me some stuff on his discount engine. We were looking into a CSS (display) issue. We decided to wait for Chuck who would be popping in on the next meeting.

Just recording an idea, but what if we had Bryan help us out with some training and education stuff. We are really lacking there. Bryan could build it and then we could have Chuck make it look nice. Basically, Bryan could help with content and Chuck could help with presentation. There is a huge need for training, flow, processes, SOP's, etc. Also, just another idea... What if we put Bryan on a project to see if we could write a grant for building out fracture and where we would like to take it (huge future project in adilas and revamping the whole system). That might have some merit. We could really use some major funding to push that whole project forward. I know that Bryan has written other articles and/or research papers. Just a thought.

If needed, we could use the adilas developer's notebook to do more research on the whole fracture project. Lots of notes and ideas have been posted and pushed up to the developer's notebook over time. A great resource. A lot of it ties in with the adilas cafe and community that we are trying to build. We also have tons of R&D (research and development) on new UI/UX stuff from Jonathan Wells. Lots of great little ideas and such. Good starting point.

Back to the main index for the master adilas plan

Master Adilas Plan - Jellyfish Model

Brainstorming Ideas and Topics:

- How big do you want to be? – See also the internal questionnaire responses and survey - tons of good info there - almost a mini plan by itself. Also, question 7 on the survey has a whole write up on the adilas jellyfish or jelly fish model and explains it further.

- The adilas jellyfish model - see attached - covers almost all of the departments and sub sections of what we are trying to be as a company. It is not the main product, but more of our internal and external departments, areas, and general areas that we will keep refining and working on.

- Possible numbers for the jellyfish model. Going from top to bottom and from left to right.
1. adilas.biz
2. Admin
3. Monthly Reoccurring Service
4. Sales & Marketing
5. Setup & Training
6. Tech Support
7. Design
8. Custom Code
9. Consulting
10. R&D
11. Project Management
12. Internal Development & Maintenance
13. Adilas University
14. Adilas Marketplace
15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World
16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

Areas, sections, and departments in more detail:

** for me - go deeper into each section **

1. adilas.biz

• Are we going to stay the same entity? Are we the same or are we different entities? Are we rebranding? Are we piggybacking?
• What version are we on?
• Adilas.biz or adilas lite? Branding? Marketing? etc.
• The thing that keeps us all together is the reoccurring monthly services subscription for the main adilas.biz system. It has been the glue that keeps us together.
• Offering upgrades from ship A (current adilas) to ship B (fracture or adilas lite)
• What are our goals for ship A? What are our goals for ship B? Are we building it up to sell it? Are we going to be replacing ship A? How do you transition between the two.
• We want to make our current product better. It then grew into a full or bigger rewrite. It seems to be changing more and more. Originally, it was pretty small changes.
• Timelines to get things done? What will it take?
• Ship A will be great salespeople for ship B, once ready.
• If people change from ship A to ship B, there needs to be an increase or at least a re-evaluation of monthly fees and services.
• Ship B, we are planning for tiered pricing and dynamic billing based on functions, sizes, usage, storage, and preset packages.
• Ship B, they can toggle on/off different settings, include other features, and change what they want. All of this will reflect on dynamic billing options.
• Talking about future plans - selling it, royalties, secession, retirement, etc.

2. Admin

• The admin's role is to manage the budget, make decisions as to the direction that we need to go, do HR type functions, payroll, manage the different groups and departments, communication channels, general running of the day to day business.
• This could be one person, multiple people, a board, a council, etc. Somebody or some entity needs to be in control.
• Co-owners, Co-Founders, CEO's, presidents, vice-presidents, board members, etc. We can figure that out.
• If we do one person, we need to have VP's or managers in the other departments.
• One of our problems is that none of us (on the current team) want to be that person or take on this whole responsibility.

3. Monthly Reoccurring Service - aka Billing (new name)

• This is billing, invoicing, receiving, dealing with monies coming in and reaching out to our clients.
• Accounts receivables
• This could be tied in with admin roles
• Debt collection, bad debt, accounting, financials, etc.
• Setting up new corps (currently) and sending welcome emails and collecting business contact info.
• Bank reconciliation, paying bills, prep the budget info, etc.
• We could automate some of this, in the future.

4. Sales & Marketing

• We like that they are together. This is anything to generate and keep new clients to keep coming in and paying for our services. This could be publicity, knowledge about the system, get new demos, entice our clients to buy and keep buying from us. Serving their needs.
• Currently, the main method of marketing is word of mouth and referrals.
• We have used sales reps, consultants, and light networking. Steve and Kelly have been some of our biggest sales type people.
• We want to listen to what feedback they are bringing back. Currently, the sales people and the developers almost live in two different places.
• Sales should have a good pulse on what is working, what is not working, and what people and our clients are asking for. We tend to get lots of good ideas from clients. Sometimes, what that takes or the priority, that can get tricky.
• How big do we want to be? Get everybody or get enough (sufficient)? Keep pushing into other markets or be content with good ROI?
• Helping with market research, looking around and checking out markets, and what do we need to do to penetrate those markets?
• We almost feel like being in no man's land - too big for just a few people to push on it, not quite big enough to really have the team that we need to push it. Do we push and go bigger? Or do we trim down and keep it like it is (not really coasting but strategically developing as we can)? There are associated questions about speed, reliability, and uptime.
• Along with sales and marketing, there are expectations that are set and keep changing (trends and expectations).
• We need to know who we are servicing. Currently, we are kind of all over the place. We have little accounts, medium accounts, and some big accounts. We could go any direction. We just need to decide. Where is the sweet spot?
• If we want to be big and grand, we will need some major funding and thus major sales and marketing. Or do we figure out the sweet spot and really refine and focus in on things.
• Making things more stable and more reliable. Keep improving.
• We have a lot to offer - no one has even heard of us.
• The new and upcoming business owners are going to be fully connected and have certain expectations. If you want to get those guys/gals, you're going to have to revamp things.
• Our current mix is very developer heavy. We really need to switch that focus and get things that people want. Easy, Powerful, and Pretty!
• We need this department to really keep us in the know on what is going on. Currently, we don't have anyone fully dedicated or assigned to this department. We've been missing this piece.

5. Setup & Training

• Originally, we didn't charge for any of this. We just wanted people to get on our system. We are now charging for this and even trying to presale some of the training, deployment, and setup stuff. We are finding and have found, that people who get setup correctly and have the correct amount of training stay longer on our system. It has a learning curve, and that proper setup and training goes a long way.
• Currently, one of our system admin persons has to go in and create the corp, do a bunch of the settings, assign the master users, setup the logos and colors, and get them going. Most of that requires someone from our team to hold their hand along that process.
• Futuristically, we really want to help automate a bunch of that. Have them setup their own corp, let them pick what industries they want to play into, help them with their settings (wizard style), and then even help them pull in their data (without any other involvement). Let them create a test account or a free version, play around, and then either upgrade or get some help.
• Offer services to help our clients. Also have a number of self-help tools and features to let them do it themselves.
• We would love to develop a number of preset packages and industry specific skins.
• We would like the setup and training to be coupled with education and the adilas university side of things. They are very related.
• Getting products, customers, vendors, and other info into the system easily. Currently, we have to do a bunch of that (data imports) on a one-by-one basis. We need to make that more global and self-help level.
• Provide a good starting point to help them succeed. Show them the benefits and advantages of doing it our way or how we help them succeed.
• This department or division could include the adilas university, training, tech support, setup, and training.
• Easy access to get help and direction if needed.
• We see a lot of user error type problems. Figure out ways of helping them stay in their lane better or put up guardrails or bumpers to keep them on track.
• It has only been recently that we have added more focus on the setup, deployment, and training.
• This department could also include on-going training and retention. That is huge. Things constantly keep changing and we keep adding on new features.

6. Tech Support

• Currently, we allow people to email or call for tech support. It's free but often bleeds over into full on training, not tech support.
• We could build out a report a bug or open up a ticket or an issue. Make it easier to get support.
• We could provide better help files, tips, how-to's, videos, tutorials, and in-person training events.
• Everybody uses the system so differently, that makes it kind of tough. It would be nice if we have tech support stuff that was industry specific or catered to a specific industry.
• Tech support really should be part of the training, setup, and deployment stuff.
• Tech support could be a small carrot for deeper training and/or offering other paid services.
• Helping to show the value of deeper training and education.
• Having a standard way of getting to training and even industry specific training.
• Offer some adilas university training courses - covering various subjects on scheduled dates/times.
• Really helping to push the training and education stuff. Tech support should be quick, temporary, and non reoccurring. Show them the benefits of getting properly trained.
• As we move forward, we are planning on simplifying things. That should help with the training needs and the tech support stuff. Helping them figure it out on their own.
• If people (our clients) really want more tech support, we could offer more robust or advanced support packages.

7. Design

• This could be websites, forms, reports, interfaces, dashboards, UI/UX (user interfaces and user experience). This is the pretty and easy part of it. The powerful may be from a feature or backend process.
• Most of our current guys are developers, not designers.
• We don't charge enough, as such, we tend to skimp on the design phases and processes. This tends to get skipped or minimalized.
• We tend to do function over form - however, most clients say that they want function over form, but really, they want form over function - they want it to work and look pretty.
• Our project management tends to be a simple one liner. Do such and such. No other plans, requirements, mock-ups, or fixed specs exist.
• Mock-ups, prototypes, samples, wireframes, flow charts, graphics, videos, etc. We want to show the plan, air it out, and then build to the specs.
• Modern look and feel and user experience keeps changing. We need someone to keep watching and keeping up with trends, expectations, and options. This needs to be monitored and maintained regularly.
• Figuring out and sticking to a style guide. We do have a section called the "adilas docs". We have been working on it, but it has not been fully adopted yet. We need to set those standards and then stick to it. This is our style guide, and we are sticking to it.
• Doing some test cases and getting user/client feedback. How did their experience work out and what did we learn from that?
• Planning in maintenance and upkeep.
• Our clients squawk at things not being consistent. I don't mind change but I don't like some change and other things not being consistent. We could also introduce settings.
• We could allow the users, or corporations, to choose their default layouts. Horizontal forms, vertical forms, stacked forms, or auto formatted. We also want to store those settings and allow them to change it on the fly on per user basis.
• We need some consistency - this deals with who the designer is, what we are designing and outputting, people's preferences and opinions, and where we are heading. We can all be different, but we need to be consistent.
• Allow people to try things out and/or fully switch over.
• There is a point when we need to keep moving forward so we don't have to keep supporting all of the older styles and themes. Help make that as smooth as possible.
• We have some needs for design work out in ecommerce, customer facing sites, portals, and even business websites or web presence stuff.
• We need designers to help with marketing and social media stuff. Once again, consistency, specific plans, strategic campaigns, etc.

8. Custom Code

• This is one of the things that really sets us apart from other systems. We love it and even encourage it.
• We currently have tons of black box options. That was a solution at the time. There are some great concepts there (black box stuff) but we did run into problems.
• The code base keeps changing. We have had people ask for things, we build it custom for them and then wrap back and make it standard. The ones who got the custom version are now off on their own vs being fully integrated into the main codebase.
• We offer a lot of this. Having said that, we don't charge enough.
• We would like to move as much as possible to data driven settings and permissions.
• One of our current issues in maintainability. If it was on the side (like a black box page) it got left behind. The main pages always got updated but anything custom was harder to test, and harder to main it.
• If we do custom code, we need to build in some maintenance costs to help maintain that.
• We could do a community type approach - who ever helps build it out, gets a commission or a usage fee for others using it. Kinda like a sponsorship or something. We just need to get enough to plan it out, build it out, test it, market it, and then do some sort of kickback or reoccurring usage fee. There may be different levels  - one-time, reoccurring, built in, full one-off custom code, settings, combined projects (we pay, they pay, we then get to use it).
• Custom code should be by our internal developers and internal development team. We need to make sure that it works and doesn't affect something else.
• We have had some maintenance issues. Who made it, what does it do, how does it work, what does it touch, what else does it touch up/down stream, where does it live, how can you get to it, and was there any planning or testing done to the custom code? Tons of potential far reaching questions.
• If we build something... we really need to get an ROI and market those pieces.
• We could do some pay as you go build outs. Monthly fees that get added to their bill. They could pay upfront and then get a payment plan, or set it up on a reoccurring basis, or whatever.
• We need to charge enough. We often shoot ourselves in the foot. We charge pennies to build on top of multi-million dollar platforms and applications.
• We need good planning, good project management, good estimates, and then good developing.
• Estimates - take what you think it will take and double it. Then double that. It's almost a 4x ratio. By the time you add the work to get the work, the work before the work, the work, the work in between the work, the work after the work. It all plays in.
• Paying for both quality and speed.
• On the estimates, we also need to think about opportunity costs and what are we not working on, while doing custom code work.
• Approving custom code. Just because someone wants it... doesn't mean we should build it out. How does it fit with our mission statement, goals, and overarching plans and rollouts?

9. Consulting

• Byproduct of the main reoccurring business services. Once we are in, the system starts generating byproducts and people need to know what is next, how to do certain things, where they could go, options, next steps, phases, etc.
• We haven't really tapped into this yet. We do it, but we could do it so much more.
• This could be tied into the training, setup, and education stuff. Teaching our clients the best way to use the system to get the most out of the system or platform.
• You start getting into paying for knowledge and experience and expertise.
• We have seen many of our power-users become consultants. They know the system, they know how to make it run, sing, dance, and play. That provides a value to others. Those people then offer their expertise and know how to help others.
• Currently, some of this is done on the side. Adilas has no part in it, and no kickback exits. We would love to bring this more inside but that takes money to keep those people on call or on staff.
• This could be a great thing to add to the adilas marketplace.
• We may allow some outside stuff to go on, but we need some rules. We could configure this any way we want, we just need some rules.
• This could be part of the adilas cafe scenario - our clients seeking out a professional to help them out.
• Do we want to manage this internally? What would that look like? Once again, we may need some rules here.

10. R&D

• Research and Development - You have to spend time here to move the ball forward. If you aren't going to move forward, nothing will happen, you will live and die. You have to keep up, especially with tech stuff.
• Exploring different avenues - there are costs for exploring.
• Cutting edge, bleeding edge, sweet spot, new ish, or older/classic?
• How much does it cost to be on that cutting edge?
• Vision, plans, and looking to the future. Where are we/you heading? Plans, how are you going to get there?
• It really comes down to where do you want to play (on the spectrum)?
• Training what is new.
• Maintenance for what was or has been developed. Technical debt.
• Stable and known or less stable and new - How quick will the older pieces change and/or be deprecated? If it's so new, it may not even stick.
• We make things and then it sits on a shelf. That hurts. There could be difference between development that didn't get fully funded vs totally new prototyping and experimenting.
• Is this something we should do? On not? Figuring out what it takes to make something happen.
• Looking into speed, efficiency, demand, cost analysis, needs analysis, scope, scale, and reality of doing certain things.
• Beta testing, prototypes, experiments, testing, pushing boundaries.
• Currently some of our R&D is mixed in with our code. We try things to see if it works. Without being consistent with other pages and code. We often have good intentions (prepping for the future - mini stubs or prepping for stuff) but then get pulled on to other projects. We do a lot of experimenting within our projects. Almost a revolving door or revolving code set. Basically, a fully working, living prototype.
• We are seeing a mix between custom code, R&D, and project management.
• Back tracing or reverse engineering things. Sometimes if you know what you want, you can then figure out a way to get there, that might be easier or better.
• Being aware of what's out there? How could I use some of that in my projects?

11. Project Management

• We have really been missing this piece. We do a ton of just in time project management. We are not very good at doing a more full design, plan, or architecture type layout.
• We do a lot of this one-on-one right now. One project and one developer.
• The project manager can and does act as the shield between the client and the developer. Buying some time or deflecting decisions.
• They help with quotes, estimates, and project specs, scope, costs, timelines, and details. Lots of potential back and forth communication is needed.
• We have spent a ton of time and money going back and fixing things that should have been planned out originally. We have also spent money where a developer makes a decision and just does something and doesn't ask or doesn't get any clarification.
• Teams - authority, accountability, and responsibilities - setting up clear expectations. We have played around here a bit. We need to refine things here a bit, based on our needs. We had some people who were so worried about how to do scrum that it didn't actually happen. We also had some problems with free riders. We want to use some small teams, but still need to get it refined a bit better.
• Dealing with teams, we were trying to do some training... and we didn't really have it all defined. Wasted time in meetings, talking about code, and what is needed. We then fall down based on assumptions or just verbal communication. It needs to be just a little bit deeper and more consistent.
• Team sizes and dynamics.
• As a project manager, not assigning yourself to a required task. Actually, make an assignment to do the project management.
• Someone needs to be available and be the virtual babysitter. Getting rid of hurdles and what is expected of them. Helping them stay on task/track. The project manager's job to help other people succeed.
• Slowdown
• We build and build and build... we need to slow down and test it, train on it, market it, and push it.
• Being able to plan it out so that we can reuse as much code as possible. Giving the developers guidelines, handrails, samples, and good instructions. If it's too tight, they don't want to do it (it takes out the fun of figuring it out). Figure out what developer needs what (how detailed) and then play accordingly. Developers need to accomplish something. Not just follow A-Z and you're done. It is a mix and a spectrum.

12. Internal Development & Maintenance

• This internally funded by adilas to work on adilas. This comes from revenue and budgets to keep the system up and running.
• Bug fixes, maintenance, changes, next steps, phases, testing, documentation, code review, etc.
• This needs to be tied into project management and custom code.
• This is the most defined area that we have inside of adilas.
• We get a plan from project management, we then build it out, test it, deploy it, and make sure that it works.
• We have had problems with guys following style guides. Everybody has their own ideas on what a good style guide is. This could be whitespace in code, tabs, naming conventions, etc. It also happens on the look and feel part of page or report.
• Alan had the idea of having a way of helping to force or standardize the output. Almost a forced style guide or validator of sorts. It all has to comply to a certain standard. Whitespace, naming conventions, comments, indents, variable names, components, etc.
• Keeping things separated - backend, database, objects, services, views, logic, functions, classes, etc.
• In object-oriented programming, you need good encapsulation (only contains what is needed) and low coupling (lower number of steps as possible).
• There is some great value in teams and getting different points of view. A better solution because we worked on it as a team. More well-rounded.

13. Adilas University

• This goes hand in hand with the training and deployment section. This is the training arm of the system. It may also tie in with tech support or consulting. We could combine some of this as needed. Similar type people and knowledge resources.
• General topics for training - One, how do you use the system? Two, how do you run your business? Consulting is a part of this as well - what are the best business practices and how to get the most out of the system.
• There could be standard stuff, custom stuff, and internal stuff.
• Each page would have how to videos, quick videos, and options for more or deeper training.
• We also need to offer some custom or live training events.
• For fracture, we experimented with a thing called the education mode. You could turn it on/off and the system would hide or show more options and information. You could turn it on from any page and all of sudden it would react differently. We have some great screenshots on this from Jonathan Wells. Along with this, the help files could be shown, side-by-side with the page that they are referencing. There were also options to toggle into the actual adilas university site as a tab withing the side-by-side help window.
• There is a known missing gap here on the education and training side of things.
• There could be free levels, basic stuff, and deeper more paid type levels of training and consulting.
• There could also be certification levels, requirements, status, and other testing and certification stuff.
• We are hoping that the adilas lite and fracture project will make it even easier to help train the users and because they can tweak everything, there will actually be less of a need for certain pieces of the education and training. They will still be there, just hidden as needed.
• This could be a whole other business entity, if needed.
• A new user really wants to be guided through - holding their hand. An advanced user may not want any of that stuff in their way, just let them do it quickly.
• Link to this from the adilas cafe.
• If we do certifications, maybe show or allow some of that basic info to show to other users, if they are seeking trained professionals to help them out.
• If we have trained users, those become a value to others who are looking for help or pros on those topics.
• Adilas University could be a stand-alone product, or it could be interwoven with the entire site. Both have the same content, they just either have a standalone navigation system or we help navigate for them based on what page the users are on (context stuff).
• There could be levels to the training... Think of a triangle - simple, basic, intermediate, advanced, and deep or backend logic or design level stuff.
• There may be both external and internal training pieces. Along with that, we may have to have permissions or something that open/closes those training modules for certain people or parties.

14. Adilas Marketplace

• Part of the adilas cafe. People could sell their products and services, buy products and services. Including adilas skills and other professional skills.
• Adilas creates lots of byproducts. This is a way to help harness and gather up those byproducts. 
• Options for 3rd party solutions, white labeling, advertising, marketing, etc.
• Online mini marketplace for adilas products and/or our users could sell their products and services on a mini Amazon or eBay type level (mini consignment type shop built for our users and companies that use our products).
• Possible payment solutions with interest, fees, commissions, and other small kickbacks for using the marketplace.
• Limitless potential for other byproducts and additional services that could be added on to this piece of the puzzle.
• This may need a separate team to help run, manage, and administer this piece of the puzzle. Automate as much as possible.
• Here is a rough draft - Russell did - way back - don't get stuck here... It could be so much more. Adilas Market

15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World

• A landing spot outside of any corporation or entity.
• A corp selector - where can I go (have permissions or access)?
• Get to the marketplace type stuff.
• Get to the adilas university stuff.
• Forum type stuff - ask Q&A type stuff. This could be answered by staff and/or other users. This would need a moderator or forum manager.
• Let people show that they have the skills that others (businesses and/or individuals) could be looking for. This may include direct messaging or some other way of communicating.
• White labeling options.
• Standardized portal - single sign in be able to jump between servers and corporations.
• Dynamic billing and making payments.
• Mini marketplace for adilas products.
• Sales and creation of new accounts - tiered pricing and auto setup options
• News and updates - configure news feed as needed.
• Interface with other companies and corporations. Get assigned, hub type model.
• Work, play (demo sites), buy, sell, training, social stuff, and participate.

16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

• This is the whole backend of the application or hardware side of things.
• Load management, reliability, up time, speed, redundancy, backups, storage, orchestration, etc.
• Lots of security needs and requirements. They will also be majorly involved in implementation of security.
• Code interacts with these things, but they are separate entities or divisions.
• We will need our own documentation, permissions, training, etc.
• Maintenance and upkeep, prototyping, standardizing, testing, databases, servers, hardware, clusters, network, security, IT stuff.
• Patches, updates, protection, hacker prevention stuff.
• Email servers, text or communication servers, web servers, database servers, backend logic servers (ColdFusion or whatever).
• Monitoring services, requests, traffic, load balancing, stats, specs, remote access, database indexing, automation scripts, tons of IT type stuff.
• Migration stuff, off-hour updates and maintenance, backups, restores, and other tasks.
• Move data around, put things into and out of cold storage, special bulk data manipulation stuff, zip and archiving things, etc.
• Future proofing things.
• Offloading bigger or longer processes.
• API sockets, API endpoints, and being able to load balance traffic, requests, deal with sessions, server config, clustering, and managing small microservices.
• We need a way to get rid or purge some of the pieces. The current system builds and builds. It never really releases or virtually poops (dumps).
• We would love to get a full data dictionary to allow our new frontend to be more data driven.
• This could be multiple people - DBA, IT/Server guys, etc. They could cross over, but these are high level skills and high level people or teams.
• Everything on the hosting side of things. This gets deep but just think - what do we need for hosting? - SSL's, domain names, hard drive space, spinning up servers just in time, pointer records, DNS, DSN, puppet, orchestration, bit bucket, code repositories, ColdFusion Administrator, Fusion Reactor, Papertrail, Nagios, tons of outside services and tools.
• Servers - hard drive sizes, backups, RAM, CPU's, configs, and the list goes on.
• This could go deep and deeper... Etc.

-------------------------

- Alan and I were playing with a mini version or what that might look like (see attached for a mini mock-up of the smaller mini model):

Adilas.biz - admin, monthly billing, and day to day running the company. They could do their own R&D (progress, speed, what the clients are wanting).

Sales & marketing - They could do their own R&D (advertising, pricing, features, marketing materials, etc.).

Consulting, tech support, setup & training, and retention. This could also be part of the adilas university (similar folk). They could do their own R&D (tied into sales, marketing, training, etc.).

Development stuff - project management, custom code, internal development, maintenance, & design. They could do their own R&D (code, frameworks, layouts, look and feel, etc.).

IT stuff - Databases, servers, hardware, hosting, etc. They could do their own R&D (speed, load balancing, redundancy, monitoring, etc.).

Marketplace and adilas cafe - This could be their own little piece or small team. They could do their own R&D (product research, options, pricing, hardware options, services, etc.).

We would love to see each of these sections or divisions (departments) be able to meet and interact with each other on a consistent basis (at least monthly or semi-monthly). Nobody is left on an island by themselves. Communication is huge.

Started playing with elements of time and setting up the main pieces for the adilas master plan. Here is a quick breakdown of the time id's.

Master Adilas Plan

All time id's are inside of adilas

2283 - Main Index

2284 - Jellyfish Model

2285 - Value Add-On Core Model

2286 - Adilas University

2287 - Adilas Marketplace

2288 - Adilas Cafe & Community

2289 - Fracture - Future Project

2290 - Budgets & Finances

2291 - Marketing & Sales

2292 - Other Timelines, Plans & Projects

Steve and Sean talking about gift cards, quick deployments, referrals, and other client retention stuff. John and I were going over flow and new pages. We got into a discussion about getting valued client feedback and making sure that we are hitting all of the requirements. John was saying that part of his job, as a frontend designer, was to get and decipher user and client feedback. He also said that he would like to talk with and get feedback from stakeholders (adilas co-owners) and others. That is awesome. He was also talking about "requirements engineering" and how that feedback is a vital part of the whole puzzle.

Note for me - as we go forward, maybe let the guys/gals define their own roles and jobs. That might be a good start and then refine things from there. Part of our plan going forward deals with defining roles and tasks better. This may fit right in and takes all of the pressure off of just one person. Just a thought.

John and I were talking about ways to get good feedback on new changes, pages, flow, etc. We also talked a little bit about the adilas cafe and community and how that may be part of our efforts for getting better communication channels. Good stuff.

Great phone call with Steve. We were talking about direction, options, and how to push the ball to the next level. We talked sales, staff, developers, projects, MVP, plans, adilas jellyfish model, value add-on core model, adilas cafe, adilas marketplace, and adilas university. Tons of different topics. We talked about raising prices, raising funds, selling percentage shares of adilas, and how to help make things smoother and smoother. Who is going to manage what and how to best define certain roles, jobs, and tasks. Great conversation and making progress.

Here are some other random notes:

- Client acquisition costs - Where are they at? Do we fully know or does it change from client to client?

- Increasing development or decreasing development?

- MVP's - minimal viable products and minimal viable plans and minimal viable persons

- Possibly selling up to 51% of adilas percentages and then reinvesting strategically in projects and pieces that we want and/or really need. Plan it all out and then push on what we want.

- As a side note, we went in a number of circles - ok, let's do this... ok, maybe we should do this..., no, let's do this... - next thing you know, you are back where you started. We did this over and over again. The funny thing is, we didn't come up with the same exact plans every time. That means that there is more than one option out there.

- Trying to work the long plan and long play

Long meeting today. Started out talking to Wayne and Shari O. about emails, internal emails, external emails (outbound to different clients), and possible options. Wayne repointed the IP addresses yesterday back to the original way we had the email system setup. It was kinda wacky for a couple of days. Anyways, we put it back to what it was. We still need to look deeper into this, but it should be stable for now.

Steve was asking about the bus to motorcycle project - datasource or world building project. Wayne was reporting that some of his new code is trying to deal with this issue or these issues. We talked about the current state and where things are going. Briefly touched base on combo primary keys and removing major dependencies on existing standalone primary keys (database connection and relationship stuff). Along with the datasource topic (which database to talk to as a single time) the conversation also included our ever growing need to do cross corp stuff. We didn't talk about it, but some of this is very similar to the adilas cafe talks and discussions that we have had.

If we get majorly into cross corp stuff, and each corp has its own database or sandbox, we may end up doing cross corp stuff through API socket connections. That sounded like a good idea. We'll have to look at it, as we may do unions, API sockets, or other temp database tricks to show and/or report combined data.

We flipped over to the new framework that Wayne is working on. He did a small demo for us on what he is working on. These are just a few of my notes. See attached for a 1:39 - one hour and 39 minute video of of some of meeting.

- Our switch to a new framework is not just a time saver. It goes way deeper than that.

- Lots of conversation about supporting different frameworks, themes, and versions of code.

- The whole new framework is setup as an MVC framework or MVC model - model, view, controller

- We need to keep moving forward in order to stay valid

- Layouts and views

- Everything is event driven

- We have both raw input (info and data directly from a user or customer) and we also have cleaned up and formatted data (okayed, approved, combed, retrieved, or sanitized data).

- These are just some keywords and concepts - handlers, events, models, interceptors, layouts, views, classes, methods, etc.

- One of the goals is to get rid of all of the repetitive, ticky-tacky maintenance code. This is stuff like params, validation, permission checks, making sure that certain values have been set, etc. Basically, the prep work before the real meat of the page begins. Some of our pages may be hundreds of lines of code deep before we actually get to the meat of the page. The framework would help us simplify and standardize some of the prep work stuff.

- If we build this way, it could open up options for multiple layouts and/or views (what it looks like). Keeping a separation between the business logic and the view or presentation of that data.

- Events, watchers, and triggers that help us run clean-up and other processes and routines. Key everything off of certain events.

- Getters and setters - smaller mini functions for each class, object, and property within that class. All built-in and/or available. We really wanted to do this for the fracture project (future project for adilas).

- Options for self-documentation

- Debugging, tracer options, logging, and security stuff already built-in

- Lots of talk about the benefits of using a framework.

- Mementos and smaller sub sets of data, that may be pre-formatted and/or setup how we need it - saving time in conversions and retrieving available data.

- Defining things and then using them over and over again in other pages.

- This is huge, but the framework already has a ton of built-in documentation and samples. That takes a lot of work and preparation. Also, it is able to self-generate basic documentation based on how we code it (based off of keywords, hints, notes, and rules).

- If we build off a new framework, we could use either Adobe ColdFusion (current model) or we could use Lucee - open source CFML engine. The framework can flip flop pretty easily between the different backend engines. It's basically a config option.

- We do lots of things over and over again. Make that more simple, standardized, and compartmentalized.

- They offer a standard set of options and configurations. We can use that and/or pick and choose or customize whatever we want.

- Light talks about the pros and cons of an ORM model (object-relational mapping - mixing of objects and relational databases)

- Shooting for a more modern approach - use of code, technology, and a layered approach

- Wayne really wants to come up with a process of how to convert our current pages and code into the ColdBox framework. Think of a set of instructions (virtual recipe) and then allow other developers to help convert the pages. Basically, a road map to follow.

- Our customers really need and want us to be more stable and reliable, as a company, and as a software system. This includes how we develop code, release and deploy code, and manage systems and servers. In a nutshell, they want us to grow up, as a company and have a bit more of a standard structure and presence.

- We are heading more and more towards clustering, enterprise level stuff. We need to build towards that.

- As a side note, Wayne says we have way too many includes (files that get included and/or strung together to make the whole).

- One of our major focuses on switching the backend architecture is customer reliability.

- Wayne sees a need for radical changes to simplify, stabilize, and build things out for the future. It has to be sustainable and sustainability. Light talks about evolution vs revolution or changes over time vs drastic changes all at once. Things are smoother if software can evolve vs just being harshly changed. However, sometime things need to majorly change, hopefully for the better. There are some pros and cons to both approaches.

- Building new has a motivation factor to it - true story - what keeps us going?

- This is a chance to rebuild it like we want it - build to the dream

/////////////

We switched subjects and were the guys were talking about hosting companies and how that scene is changing in the datacenters that we are using. We have seen a lack or lowing of the customer service levels. We may end up checking out some other hosting companies.

John and Cory were talking about other projects and timelines. They were also talking about uptime, downtime, and databases. We talked about coming up with new SOP (standard operating procedures) for pushing up code, code rollbacks, and deployment of new features. That got into talks about manual and automated database updates, scripts, auto processes.

That topic lead to a discussion on roles and responsibilities and who does what. There is a need to define some of the roles a little bit deeper and make it clearer who does what and in what order. More SOP stuff for the backend processes and procedures. There also needs to be good communication between the developers and the system admin persons. We have to keep up those communication channels. That is really important. Nobody can read minds.

Towards the end, John and Cory were going over projects and coordinating dates/times for testing, review, look and feel changes, and testing. Good stuff.

After the server meeting, just Wayne, Alan, and I stayed on to go more in-depth on the framework stuff that Wayne is testing, trying, and pitching. Wayne has been spending tons of time looking into the ColdBox framework and experimenting with things. He's really going for it.

We talked about files, folders, and structure of how the application could and would work. The whole thing is setup in a rest type interface with specific paths, pages, and URL's (web addresses) to make it work. REST API or RESTful API architecture stands for representational state transfer. Basically, that deals with logical paths, files, and folders to create organization. You then place special code at each end point to do a specific task. That is part of the way it is organized. Our old site has tons of pages, all bunched into a couple of folders (all mixed together). When I say a ton of files, I'm talking thousands of files. This newer site will have like or similar pieces and pages in specific spots or places. It's all part of how it gets organized and managed. Interesting.

Alan and Wayne were talking about object-oriented coding with options for extending, inheriting, and sub classing functions, variables, and conditions. They both fully get it. I haven't had any formal training on this, but I'm picking up some of the pieces and concepts.

Next, they got into talking about limiting the handlers (receiving pages or virtual doors and windows). We covered a number of other topics such as nesting, sub classes, pre and post level page handlers, and how all deeper business logic needs to be over in the service models. Once again, it was mostly Wayne and Alan talking shop and I was listening. To translate, our existing site and pages have a bunch of things that we do every time to make sure that the page gets valid information. They are talking about doing all of that pre validation and logic as a simple handler and thus making each page smaller and not duplicating code (hundreds of lines per page).

After talking for a while, Wayne was showing us what it takes to rewrite things and pages using the new architecture and structure. We kept jumping off on tangents as Wayne was explaining and we were asking questions and making comments. Fun little interchange. At one point, Wayne had to either jump off and/or deal with something at his home. Alan and I were talking about options for permissions and limiting things even before we show them. Keeping things skinny and lite.

Here are some of my other notes. They don't really flow into nice paragraphs.

- Currently, our main pages, inside of adilas are kinda like handlers. We just don't call them that. Sometimes we call them the wrapper pages and string together some black box and/or special page includes to make it all work.

- All business logic would need to be in the services.

- Lots of talk about separating logic and views (pages).

- Using fracture (potentially more complicated) to show less (looks more simple - based on show/hide settings and configuration stuff).

- Creating rule books and using the database to help drive the pages, logic, rules, and procedures. Basically, the code gets stored in the database, where it could be updated, shared, or tweaked as needed. The pages just process the rules and/or instructions.

- Migrating data, seeding things (pre work and adding things for setup), checking for pending actions, and processing different actions. Small data assembly line stuff, for our own setup and configuration. That could be pretty cool!

- Wayne was saying, not really rewriting our code, more of moving it...

- Alan would love to help with this restructure project.

- We talked about options of how to integrate these things together.

- There are still some core changes that are needed. The key word was "core".

- Lots of talk about scale - how fast, how many, etc.

- Too many includes (code pages pulled into other code pages). This gets hard to trace down dependencies and variations if different pages are mixed together.

- We have some master copy and paste coders and developers. If that is the case, let's help them out so that they can copy and paste what we want them to do and use. If you can't beat them (some of our team may never change), then join them type attitude (give them good stuff to copy and paste).

- Tiny servlets and micro services. Everything is based off of time or events.

- We talked about budgets for both time and money. How quick can we do this? Time, money, resources?

- How long do we have if we don't do this? Not sure... meaning making changes and/or moving things over towards fracture (future plans and making the changes listed). Just part of our discussion.

- Wayne will reach out to Ortus Solutions (maker of the ColdBox framework) and see what options we have. Is there any way to use some of what they have and still keep some of our older existing stuff? We are looking for a middle ground, if possible. Basically, just a quick check to see if an option exists - mixing old code and new code and old structure and new structure. We may have to just choose one or the other, they may not cross or mingle very well (water and oil).

- Small story of how the Utah pioneers had to stop building a temple so that they could finish up the railroad. Once the railroad was done (lines completed) they were able to build their temple faster using the railroad to haul rock from the quarry to the temple site. Fun story.

- We talked about a new possible name for fracture (current code name for our future build out) and/or something that has a nice ring to it. We were thinking about "adilas lite" or something along those lines.

- What about building out a mini version, creating small modules and then charging for those pieces? Everything could be broken down into modules and sub modules.

- Originally, we were going to leave the existing adilas code alone and build something new, using the same database. As we were talking, it became apparent that we needed to build new. Meaning new code, new data, new database, new, new, new. The whole thing. As we were talking, we kept referring to ship A (existing adilas platform) and ship B (new or future adilas platform - aka fracture or adilas lite).

- Our first prototype, that Wayne is already working on, will be for payees. This is for vendors and users and will include a single sign-on option. Once again, just a prototype and proof of concept.

- Lots of great conversation about the adilas cafe and community. This is dealing with a global or master level list and access to the whole platform and/or adilas application. Imagine a single global login and then you could choose if you wanted to work (only show corporations where you have permissions and access), play (demo sites), buy things (marketplace), sell things (marketplace for goods and services - professional services), participate (community and social media stuff), and/or get some training (adilas university). Here is a link to more info and research on the adilas cafe from the developer's notebook.

- After Alan left, I talked with Wayne about percentage ownership stuff in adilas. Wayne would like to get some more ownership. He's doing a great job! We have many on our team that are really pulling the load very well. That is awesome!

- For me - adilas lite - make a simple play or plan. It could be a rough sketch or simple layout plan. Keep it simple.

Working with Aspen to go over our plan for making the plan. Light review and discussing expectations and where we are going. Started in on adding some research links to part of our plan. Pushed up the new stuff to the google doc that John and I had started.

Here is a light version of where we are heading... (just barely starting - for the record, it looks nicer in the google doc)

Master Adilas Plan or Adilas Master Plan

1. Company Structure - Adilas Jelly Fish Model
2. Product Development - Adilas Value Add-On Core Model
3. Education & Training - Adilas University
4. Community & Outside 3rd Party Solutions - Adilas Marketplace
5. Social & Efficiency Options - Adilas Cafe & Community
6. Deeper Product Development - Adilas Lite - Fracture Project
7. Budgets, Finances, Marketing, & Sales - Other Business Plans

New note added on 8/14/23 - For a pretty good breakdown of these projects - just at a high level, see this element of time 10377 and it's photo gallery.

________________

Table of Contents. To-do

All time id's are inside of adilas

2283 - Main Index

2284 - Jellyfish Model

- Research on the Jellyfish model - link

2285 - Value Add-On Core Model

- Research - link

2286 - Adilas University

- Research - link

2287 - Adilas Marketplace

- Research - link

2288 - Adilas Cafe & Community

- Research - link

2289 - Fracture - Future Project

- Research - link

- Adobe XD mock-ups with options

2290 - Budgets & Finances

2291 - Marketing & Sales

- Adobe XD mock-ups with options

- World Building Concepts and Concepts of the Data Assembly Line - Pitching the concepts

- Research on world building, research on data assembly line

- Presentation Gallery - great start for an outline of what adilas does

2292 - Other Timelines, Plans & Projects

New transition today. I popped onto the morning meeting because that is what I normally did. I let the guys know that I wasn't going to be doing that any more. Sean was on the meeting and we chatted for a bit. By way of an update, he is doing great working with the dynamic adilas label builder. He is also willing to do some checking out of what our competitors are doing and providing me some competitive research. Nothing too huge.

John joined the meeting, and we were looking at some mock-ups. We would like to allow our users to interact with options to setup their own space, look and feel, etc. We would also like to do some early prototyping. Get it out and in their hands. Even things like settings for click vs hoover and other simple choices that affect their space (what they do and use - their space, their flow). We already have a bunch that we have paid for and haven't been able to use it yet. We have a ton of R&D stuff that Jonathan Wells did in Adobe XD for fracture, adilas cafe, and a new shopping cart.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Dramatize it, push up XD docs from Chuck on the content server. We have done tons of really cook R&D. Let's use that. This is how we are going to get fracture up and going and off the ground.

John and I talked about trying to centralize all of the data and assets. I have a bunch of it. We have pushed up a bunch to the adilas content server. We also still have quite a few assets and raw authoring files with the guys/gals who made them - Jonathan Wells, Chuck, Russell, Marisa, etc.

As part of our discussion, John was showing me some of the projects that he worked on for school. He's got business design docs, pitches, proposals, flow charts, etc. I'd like to tap into some of those planning and system scope documents. Not necessarily for his project, but more for what we could do for our projects. Once again, show them don't tell them. That is huge and reoccurring theme. Show them, don't tell them.

Here are some other notes from our meeting:

- We could make some awesome customizable dashboards

- Realtime data on what is going on (tables, graphs, charts, and quick aggregates), help them see everything without overwhelming them. Full visibility.

- "Show them" and then do it over and over again.

- Talking about dream salaries between John and I. Where would you like to be, salary wise?

- Keep idea farming - that's what we do

- Shari O. joined the meeting. She loves to do some gaming. I'd love for her to come up with some ideas on how to turn adilas and the daily work into a game of sorts (the game of business). Shari O. said that she could do some light research and maybe come up with some ideas. As we were talking, she said that she changes games based on moods. That's good information. We may want to come up with something similar - what mood are you in? Ok, let's play that way. This is just a dream right now. I'd like to see where it goes.

- Keep gathering things together. Eventually, we will make our own world.

- More ideas for the application and/or system - education mode, game mode, nuts and bolts mode (just get it done - speed mode).

- More talks with Shari O. about Facebook groups, other social groups, having meetings, setting up schedules, and giving people power to run what they want to do. Make the whole thing a team effort.

Paying bills, emails, and sending out instructions on how to log time in the adilas shop. Recording notes.

A few quick notes and ideas...

- On a hike yesterday morning, I was thinking about the adilas cafe. Imagine a person sitting down looking at a menu or a person looking at a digital menu board. What do you want? What do you want to do? Our menus may not be food items, but it could be what would you like to see? Do? etc.

- What if we offered our business functions such as CRM (customer relationship management) or POS (point of sale) options vs customers, invoices, PO's, items, etc. Basically, we have 12 business functions that we offer. We also have 12 business application players that help us get the business functions that we want. Maybe just some different ways to pitch or let our users choose what they want to do or see.

- I'd like to setup some rules for participating in the new build out (ship B). This is part of the bigger community effort. I'd like each person to be able to make their own timecards (already available, just need a small instruction doc to line it out). All actual hours will be held in sub dates and times (subs of the main element of time). I'd like to tie it out to an expense/receipt so that it goes into the accounts payable (A/P's). We could then clean out those payables weekly, monthly, etc. as needed. If something sits in the payables for over six months, we ask the person if they want to roll that over to the balance sheet as a form of investment. If yes, it would then start accruing interest and be held similar to a loan or investment. We could pay simple interest of 5% annually (just guessing at that number right now).

- If that model works well for our internal team, when we are ready, and if we want to, we could do something similar to potential approved outside parties. This needs more thought, but I wanted to put it out there. This would be an even deeper community effort of sorts. We would still setup rules, control things, but I have no problem with others who want to help and/or help build it out. Along those same lines, we would make sure that the rules and who they reported to (and any other rules or specs) would be assigned and set forth.

- Flipping over to ship A (existing adilas platform or application). What about an MVP for ship A? Getting that fully done could pay some major dividends. It could also help smooth things out and create harmony and unity. I would really like that. Here is a quick link to a possible MVP plan for the current adilas system.

- Only run as fast as you are able.

- I was thinking about the SBA loan. I would love to get it paid off or at least help pay it down. It's not huge, but it would help with the stress load.

Emails and research. Meeting with John. Quick update on servers. It sounds like Wayne and John are working on a small mini project for the adilas cafe model. After that, John and I spent time working on the SWOT analysis. We were going over our strengths and weaknesses and making notes on each entry. We pretty much spent the whole time going over that. The current authoring file is on the Adobe Cloud. Lots of little comments, links, and researching out stats and what not.

Work and planning session with Alan, Bryan and I. We were talking about ways of breaking things down into smaller pieces. We ended up doing some small user stories and lots of brainstorming on the adilas cafe. We also did some talking about a new pricing matrix and other brainstorming ideas. See attached for some of my notes.

Awesome session with Alan and I working on the plan for fracture and adilas light. We started out and I was showing Alan some of the R&D for the adilas cafe that Jonathan Wells did a few years back. I sent Alan some links to pull down the Adobe XD mock-up files. After that, we spent the rest of the session working on levels, tiers, user stories, and feature lists for adilas lite. See attached for our notes.

Before my meeting with Aspen, I was still on the meeting with Byan. We took the last 15 minutes and talked about possible ways of modifying ship A into what we want for ship B. Bryan may explore that a little bit to see what that might take. I authorized him to spend 10 or so hours checking things out. He may also look into using a mix of React and ColdFusion. More R&D stuff.

Meeting with Aspen and going over notes from Alan and I's meeting from yesterday - see element of time #10267. Defining and explaining some the notes and ideas. I was doing some drawings, using my hands to explain things, and took a few more general notes. These are things dealing with fracture or adilas lite - where we are headed.

- On the size and pricing matrix, we need to include file storage (photos, scans, images, media/content, and general files). We also need to include database size (how much we are storing).

- On the choose corp page, be able to set the default corporation right from there.

- Look into modern payment solutions such as Google pay, PayPal, Venmo, apple pay, etc. We already do some of that, just make it even smoother.

- Aspen was pitching the adilas portal vs the adilas cafe - naming convention. She liked the word or phrase portal better.

- Education will be a huge part of the marketing and sales. We need to include it from the get go. This may be a person who has to be hired just to do that role. Some of our developers may not fit that mode correctly.

- Aspen's comments on education - We need to pitch education as optimizing the system to be more accessible.

- There is a need for market research and test runs.

- As we were reviewing the document and notes from yesterday, we came across one that talked about simple tax info for small users. That would be really cool if we could help people out and put all of the simple tax info in one place for them. Make it super easy and convenient.

- Along with the taxes stuff, we may want to add more tax and payroll forms to the current system. Make paperwork as easy as possible.

- AI (artificial intelligence) - What do you want to do? What do you want to see? What do you want to track? There are tons of other things that we could let people ask or do. Help them out and even tie in some of this the industry specific skins. Aspen and I were talking about AI a little bit.

- Aggregates and sums, counts, averages, totals, mins, and maxes - Almost a reverse or reversing the direction of the reports and gathering the information. Now that we know where and what we want, let's build that in from the get go. Also, this is for me... If there is a discrepancy, I really want a tool that will help rebuild those aggregated reports and aggregate values. I'd like to automate as much as we can, but if needed, we will have and/or provide manual recalc tools. That's important to me.

- A.D.I.L.A.S. - All data is live and searchable - What does that really mean? "All data", that means that we catch and store it all (the whole system and all of the parts and pieces). That's a pretty bold statement. We love it! "Is live", that means that we allow you to look, retrieve, view, and interact with your data based on permissions and settings. It is a living application, not just a digital archive tool. It's alive. The more you give it (virtually feeding it) the more you will get back (business intelligence and decision helping information). "And searchable", full visibility and full searchability. Every history, every detail, every record, every supporting piece or pieces. Filters, sorts, exports, save as options, you name it. It's your data, we just help you organize it, store it, retrieve it, and secure it.

- Above, is a light overview of what the name adilas can and does mean to us and to our clients. As a fun side note, the actual name "adilas" was proposed by Steve Berkenkotter, at a lunch meeting in the small mountain town of Salida, Colorado. If you look at adilas, it is Salida spelled backwards. The first nine years of the adilas business existence, the primary co-founders and partners lived in Salida, Colorado. Sort of a fun little fact.

- Aspen and I were talking... Are we too detailed (meaning our planning). Do we need to zoom out? That is a great question. It is very easy to get pulled in to the nitty-gritty details and happenings.

- Dealing with zooming out - Aspen asked me what my top few priorities would be right now - without any planning - This is a small list that we came up with. See element of time # 10270 for a small list of current priorities. After we made the list, we then talked about how each one related to the others on the list. That was a fun exercise.

- The first goal, we need to centralize the data. Make sure and catch all of the pieces. Once we have that, we can then worry about how it looks and how to get the data out or back out of the system.

Meeting with Wayne over the GoToMeeting session. Wayne and I were going over the main login information and process. We looked at the auto login for the ecommerce site as well. Just gathering ideas. We talked about the adilas cafe options. Wayne is getting close to having some of that code done at a super entry level. He is going to work with John to get a small skin and good-looking interface put on it. Lastly, Wayne and I chatted about his brother and some possible involvement from there.

Lunch meeting with Jonathan Johnson from Epic Enterprises. Jonathan is a business consultant here locally in the Cache Valley, Utah area. Great little meeting and he was asking some great questions and feelers to check out parts and pieces of my plan for ship B, fracture, or adilas lite. We talked about pieces of the business plan and how to plan things out and proceed.

- One of the main topics was dealing with talent and getting excellent talent to help run the business.

- Went over our rough plan and talked through steps of the plan. See elements of time # 10179 for more details.

1. Company Structure - Adilas Jelly Fish Model
2. Product Development - Adilas Value Add-On Core Model
3. Education & Training - Internal and External - Adilas University
4. Community & Outside 3rd Party Solutions - Adilas Marketplace
5. Social & Efficiency Options - Adilas Cafe & Community
6. Deeper Product Development - Adilas Lite - Fracture Project
7. Budgets, Finances, Marketing, & Sales - Other Business Plans

- Lots of talk about division, departments, and managing the entity and the projects. Defining those roles and what is needed. Once that is finished, we will put or assign/invite the who (people and talent) to the what.

- We talked a lot about inviting and enticing the talent. Not all of the talent will be hourly or employee level people. Some of the talent or high-end knowledge workers contribute in different ways. That was a small paradigm shift for me, thinking wise. More of projects and contributions vs hours and physical output.

- What needs to be done for the product development pieces - plans, marketing, sales, and roll outs.

- Talking about building out a pitch deck to help pitch the project and product (the whole package).

- 5 main personality types - There are five major roles that need to be fulfilled in a company. Instead of just roles, ideally, you actually have people in place who can carry each of these roles and own it. Otherwise, you just have a smaller number wearing multiple hats. The five people are: An organizer, a doer, a creative type, a consultant, and a salesman. The goal is to align talents with tasks. I grabbed this bullet point from entry # 5295 - another meeting with Jonathan Johnson (early on, back in 2019).

- Talking about the root words in authority (author or create), accountability (count or manage), and responsibility (respond or react). Who does what and how that all plays into the mix.

- See attached for a napkin with some notes on it - Here is what Jonathan wanted me to do - 4 steps he wants me to work on... 1. Define the division and structure of the company, 2. Invite the talent to fill the roles defined, 3. Product development MVP, and 4. Build the pitch deck. All of these need to be at least good enough. Shooting for an MVP level on all of them.

Meeting with Alan on defining roles and responsibilities for parts of the adilas jelly fish model. See element of time # 2284 inside of adilas for details. Not finished yet but some great discussions.

Master Adilas Plan - Jellyfish Model

- The adilas jellyfish model - covers almost all of the departments and sub sections of what we are trying to be as a company. It is not the main product, but more of our internal and external departments, areas, and general areas that we will keep refining and working on.

- Possible numbers for the jellyfish model. Going from top to bottom and from left to right.
1. adilas.biz
2. Admin
3. Monthly Reoccurring Service
4. Sales & Marketing
5. Setup & Training
6. Tech Support
7. Design
8. Custom Code
9. Consulting
10. R&D
11. Project Management
12. Internal Development & Maintenance
13. Adilas University
14. Adilas Marketplace
15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World
16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

Tons more details and bullet points on element of time # 2284 inside of adilas.

Planning with Aspen. Doing some brain mapping on a huge board with post-it notes. See attached for some pictures. Lots of high-level planning for adilas lite, fracture, and sub projects within our bigger vision. Once again, see attached. We also got Aspen paid for her work.

Quick breakdown of the different projects:

#1 - Company Structure - Jellyfish Model - Knowlege workers vs hourly workers, define divisions, departments, the who (talent), combine areas as needed, optimize structure, overtime, and compensation. We also want to deal with the different personality types - organizer, doer, creative, consultant, and the salesperson (someone who does sales).

#2 - Product Development - Value Add-On Core - Players, features, each summarized (possibly in a video or multiple videos). Define the current core. Figure out industry specific skins. White labeling options. On the industry specific skins, go minimal for the start. Custom code - data driven, not code driven. BI (business intelligence) level - Model needs to be fully planned out because it doesn't exist as a standalone layer at this time. It is built into the system as a whole. We need to extract those pieces and make a better plan for those numbers, values, and pieces of BI. Enterprise - define it and prep the database to make the jump eventually.

#3 - Education and Training - Adilas University - Internal and external training needs - video clips, organize them (library of sorts), tracking education, SOP's (standard operating procedures) per industry, in general, and company specific options. Make all of this data driven. Easier interactions, easier interface, all dealing with settings (show/hide, rename, aliases, sort order, defaults, etc.). Once again, both internal and external training needs. Online and in person trainings. Minimize the need for education by building out a better interface (fracture and adilas lite). Dynamic content and settings. Program education directly into the interface. Be able to turn the education mode or help mode on/off based on needs and per person.

#4 - Community and 3rd Party Solutions - Adilas Marketplace - Access from the adilas cafe or as a standalone app. Adilas creates tons of byproducts (both products and services). This could be things like consulting, design, custom code, data entry, bank reconciliation, accounting needs, etc. We want to offer ways to both buy and sell both products and services through a controlled interface. Think of a mini Amazon or mini eBay type marketplace. We need a spot to send, organize, and direct 3rd party solutions. Advertising and marketing efforts. More white labeling options (in the marketplace). This section could be further explored and has lots of potential.

#5 - Social and Efficiency Options - Adilas Cafe & Community - White labeling, standardized portal, single login, single sign on, able to jump to any corporation on any server where permissions have been granted. Options for work, play, buy, sell, train, social, and participate. User profile page. Interface with other corporations, get assigned, hub type environment. Mini marketplace for adilas based products and services. Sales and creation of new accounts (automated setup options). Tired pricing. News and updates, this wouldn't be forced on anybody but would be more available. We could allow them to customize their news and update feed. Dynamic billing and making payments for our (adilas) clients.

#6 - Deeper Product Development - Adilas Lite or Fracture - Customize everything. Setup wizard, question to help with setup, industry specific settings and presets, sizes, features, and options to customize as needed. Show/hide almost everything. Other settings such as toggle on/off features, columns, reports, navigation, etc. Everything is configurable to some extent. Sort orders and the ability to move things around (vertically, horizontally, and free form). Settings and making all of these decisions data driven.

Inside of fracture (code name before we got adilas lite) we want to make some server changes, code changes, frontend and backend changes by using frameworks and different languages (code stuff). Entirely composed of API sockets. This will make everything more portable and will also allow other outside developers options to build custom pages, features, and interfaces. Another advantage of using the API sockets for everything, it will standardize how everybody interfaces and interacts with the system or application. It will also let other developers play along without letting them see the underlying code. They just see documentation, examples, and final output from the API socket calls or API endpoints.

Fracture will include testing plans, sections for unit testing, integration testing, automated tests, and good coverage on testing in general. Everything will be modularized and broken into smaller mini components. We plan on using dynamic billing for usage, features, storage, etc. Entirely new interface with the ability to setup your own navigation and your own dashboards. We want lots of white labels and white labeling options. Tons of industry specific stuff as well.

Be able to turn on/off the education mode. We would love to capitalize on numerous lessons learned from 20+ years in the business. Lots of prototyping, new databases with good indexing and normalization. Directly program in teasers and marking. There has even been some talk of using AI (artificial intelligence) to help with suggestions for products and features that they might use or want.

Everything will be mobile ready and responsive. Client-side and server-side validation. We also want to prep things and have a maintenance plan in place as well. That is something that has been somewhat missing from past versions. Basically, take what we have and build from there - learning from the past and building for the future. Everything has a life cycle, prep for the next phase or part of that life cycle.

#7 - Budgets, Finances, Marketing, & Sales - Other business plans - interactive wireframing presentations, SWOT analysis, funding and repayment stuff, timelines, mission statement, profit sharing, budgets per section, per person, per product/feature. Writing business proposals, project scopes, sales pitches, standardization, and master table of contents. Lots of good marketing and campaigns for sales. Sources of profit and ROI (return on investment). Prototyping, testing, and market research.

#8 - Other - Networking and meetings as well as more research. Get in there and get it done!

Emails and texts back and forth to John about the adilas cafe. Working with a document for Danny and YouTube training videos. I then met with Danny and we went over options for some of the videos and training assets that we both have and/or need. Danny and I were talking about things, and he was saying that he knows a company that doesn't even release the next changes until the training is ready, done, and up for viewing. See attached for a screencap of what we were talking about.

Here a couple of the links that I sent to Danny:

- Entries in the developer's notebook talking about YouTube videos - lots of good resources. Once it comes up, do a browser search for the term "YouTube" to help pinpoint some of the options.

- Entry in the developer's notebook talking about a thing called education mode.

As a side note, on 8/14/23, I added this little link to a video on the education mode.

Talking with John about the adilas cafe and doing some mock-ups on that interface. We went over some of the older stuff from Jonathan Wells, see entry from back in 9/5/19 for more info. We went over some new mock-ups from John (see attached). After that, we spent the rest of the time going over the SWOT analysis. Today we were finishing up the threats section. See attached for some progress stuff. It is still rough and unfinished, but we are making great progress.

We also got into talking about budgets, making sure that we go mobile first for fracture (adilas lite), and we setup some other times to meet. We are excited to have the first pass done on the SWOT analysis (see attached).

Looking over some older XD files from Jonathan Wells. I got into a couple of them and created two new small micro videos from the older mock-ups.

First round - Sample of getting into a demo site from the adilas cafe - Length 00:01:13

Second round - Sample navigation on the adilas cafe - Length 00:02:33

Quick meeting with Alan. We touched base on where we are at and how is doing what. I've been looking at Adobe XD documents from Jonathan Wells and doing XD training tutorials. I've also been digitizing notes and linking things together. Alan is working on a small wireframe for the adilas cafe login. He is also doing some research on modern UI/UX requirements and expectations. We talked about some domain names and also looking at billboard type sites for pointers to the main adilas.biz site.

I'm going to be harvesting Adobe XD videos and mock-ups. Alan is going to be working on features and making a nice list of features. I pointed him to a document that Shannon and I did for the presentation gallery and a backend outline of some of the features. This is not meant for the public (yet) but it will be a good resource.

We looked at the calendar and decided that we would shoot for our next group meeting for adilas lite and fracture to be on 8/30/23 (a couple weeks away from today). Good stuff.

After the meeting, I went and purchased a few domain names to claim our spot. Also did some other small to do list items.

Great meeting with Shannon. We were going over ideas for an adilas pitch deck for selling shares (percentages of ownership) for adilas. I was talking and going over some of my notes and ideas and Shannon was taking notes about what I was talking about. See attached. After we got done talking about plans there, we switched gears and did some more planning on the project overviews for the adilas cafe. Once again, see attached for our progress.

Working with Shannon on project overviews. We did some work on the adilas cafe overview and then on to the adilas lite and fracture overviews. We made a few website changes and Shannon attached the documents that we are working on. See attached.

Working with Shannon. We finished up the adilas lite (fracture) project overviews. We then pushed up the overviews to the correct pages. That is awesome, we've been working hard on some of these overviews. Here's a list of projects. They are not done yet (as of right now) but we are making progress and getting things planned out.

Adilas Lite - Main Homepage
# 1 - The company structure - adilas jelly fish model
# 2 - The overall structure of the adilas platform or system - adilas value add-on core
# 3 - The education and training needs - adilas university
# 4 - The marketplace for the adilas community - adilas marketplace
# 5 - The virtual portal or primary landing spot for the community - adilas cafe and community
# 6 - Deeper dive into the adilas platform or system - adilas lite or fracture
# 7 - The budgets, finances, marketing, and sales plans - other business plans
# 8 - Come take a look!!! - adilas lite videos and research