Fangamer

A quick summary of what’s been going on:

• Got a new computer (I can Photoshop again!)
• Got a loan for Fangamer
• Got a handful of investors/owners

There’s a lot more, but this is already a huge post, so I’m actually going to split it up into two updates and post the second half tomorrow. Before I jump into the details: the Banner Contest strikes back with another big update! Here are three of the 12 new entries:

• 
  mistycat85
• 
  Mr. Spoon
• 
  notalentjew

I’ve still got Banner Contest submissions coming in from time to time, so if you’ve got an idea (or a finished entry), feel free to send it my way. I’m running out of ‘firsts’, meaning that if you submitted multiple banners, I’ll probably start posting your second/third entries soon.

Busyness

Since it’s been a long time since my last update, I’ll quickly explain why things might seem to be moving slow. I’m a freelancer, and if you know anyone who works for themselves in the creative field, I guarantee they’ll tell you that its a “feast or famine” deal. That’s definitely true, and when I started working on Fangamer in November I was headed into a famine.

After I got back from Christmas in January, however, the feast began whether I wanted it or not. I began spending a few hours a week helping out with ADMAX Digital, a local “digital signage” company. I’ve been working with sarencele and Plo to rebuild the company’s digital signage network from scratch on an open source platform. It’s sucked up a lot more of my time than I expected (especially in the last week), but we relaunched a portion of the network yesterday and it’s all gone smoothly, so I’m slowly turning my focus back to Fangamer.

In addition to the part-time work I was doing on ADMAX, I’ve been getting lots of requests for website design work. I’ve found that roughly 1 in 6 website requests turns into an actual contract, so I’ve been pursuing all of them under the assumption that one or two will hit. Unfortunately, even just pursuing these things sucks up a lot of time, so I’ve resolved to stop accepting requests and start kicking them to some of my other design buddies.

The final time-sucker for me has been the process of finishing up all of my obligations to my clients from last year. With the completion of Will Lavender’s site (and a pseudo-launch of Mercury Radio Theater), I’m caught up!

Enough excuses about time — here’s what we have gotten done in the past two months:

Money

February has, without a doubt, been the month of money:

• Paid Ryan for his first month of work
• Paid the lawyer to get started on Fangamer’s Operating Agreement
• Got a large enough loan to finance Fangamer through the end of spring
• Got a handful of investors whose investments should keep us running through late summer.

It feels incredibly wonderfully fantastically good to have that loan (and a lot of the investor stuff) taken care of. By the way, I want to mention that I got the loan through Prosper, and aside from their really horrendous user interaction design, it was pretty freaking cool. It feels good to be subverting the bank who, when I inquired about a loan, suggested that I put it all on credit cards.

There’s a lot more non-business-related progress we’ve made in the past month, but I’ll save that for next update.