Starting to March Forward - Installment 11

   Ok, It's been awhile. Hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
    This blog has been overtaken by other events and will only be updated every 3-4 weeks as a result. Next installment will cover the events that occurred during the October-November 2009 timeframe.

    The main reason this blog has been somewhat neglected is that another blog we do has become very time consuming.  Visit it and see why at http://pollingpoints.blogspot.com/ .

   Until next time. May God Bless.

Rebwithacause

Still Regrouping - Installment 10

 
 OK, It's been quite a while since I have added material to this blog. Without further delay, its time to fill in the blanks for September 2009. By the end of September, We had conducted an estimated 80+ surveys to gauge the interest level in our concept. Although, our concept was not met with exorbitant enthusiasm, some surprising discoveries presented themselves to us. To our utter amazement, 3 people wanted to invest in our enterprise. This was not planned for, and we didn't want to have partners or investors, so we did not pursue the conversations further with these people, but, it was refreshing to see that level of interest in our product. Additionally, 4 people voiced interest in becoming moderators for our Professional Skill sections. All in all, we were becoming amped.
  Near the last week of September,  we checked with the web design company and received a mixed bag status report. They had assigned a new manager to our account and would need us to give this individual an overview of our concept. A logo had been designed and was available to us. We were told if we could meet with their new account manager we would have our site up and running with 14 days.
 No biggie just a slight delay.... or was it?

Rebwithacause

Regrouping - - - Installment 9

http://pollingpoints.blogspot.com/ .

  Ok, July 9^th 2009, and we are almost back to square one. The search for a another website design company was the first order of the day. In short order we identified and met with a new web design company and scheduled a meeting to plan the design with the people they had assigned to our project.

  On July 14^th 2009, we contracted with the new web design company and set the proverbial clock to ticking. The design company would have our web site up and running and provide 4 four hour blocks of instruction to whoever we designated to represent us. Tentative completion date was to be September 1, 2010.

  We had that warm and fuzzy feeling. You know the one that you get when everything looks like it is going according to a plan. We checked with the company after a few weeks for a progress report and were assured that everything was coming along fine. We were also told that they had assigned a new project manager to our account. Cause for concern… Nah., well ,maybe.

  Our initial concept was to have a main domain, with several sub-domains that would be used to support the professional categories we were going to develop. It was our intention that each of the categories would have a moderator that was an expert in their field or at least worked in that field at a bare minimum. While the web design company was busy for the planned 4-6 week period , we decided this would be the perfect time to start identifying moderators, and get some of our internal operational procedures worked out. It was time to get out and start pitching the concept and see what happened.
It was during this period , my prior U.S. Army training had prepared me for well. Hurry up and Wait. Talking about waiting, there will be a 4-5 week haitus for this blog. Many other projects are requiring an enormous amount of time. Must concentrate efforts to where they matter the most, or in laymen’s terms, do work my wife wants done. Next post will be tentatively around the middle of November. Want to see some of the work that is occupying so much time…. Go to:　


Rebwithacause

Regroup - Installment 8

  Ok, this installment will detail the events that occurred between the last part of June 2009 and the end of July 2009.

  During this period of time, the concept and operational concerns had been pitched to the family and with some reservations everyone was “ onboard “ as long as it didn’t conflict with the bread and butter business of the family (commercial cleaning company). Two family members would volunteer a few hours a week in supporting me with predominately graphic design and IT work, in return for future considerations. Future considerations - think mega bucks if successful; a firm handshake and a pat on the back if not.

  On 26 June 2009, we tentatively contracted with a local web design firm and we successfully registered the domain names we wanted . The official start of www.thepollitbureau.com and www.thepollitbureau.net had been launched. Sidebar- The dot. Net domain is not currently considered to be necessary by us and we have let it lapse, although , when we started , we thought we needed it for some reason. The old adage live and learn applies here. We laid out what we thought was our concept for the website to this web design company and scheduled the 1^st follow-up meeting for a couple of days latter, which they had to reschedule to the 8^th of July 2009. July 8^th arrived with a high level of excitement and anticipation by the family. We had been hoping to see the beginnings of a workable plan and a schedule as to when we would be trained and the website would be designed and finished. We arrived at the Web design company upbeat and energized. We would not leave in the same spirits.


  Within the period of 25 minutes we found out we were back at square one, as far as the website was concerned. It so happened that many internal changes had happened at the web design company and after a cordial explanation of what had happened ( several of their employees had quit) they notified us that they would not be able to satisfy our needs and returned our down payment. Great, another 2 weeks shot and the only thing to show for it was a registered domain name.

  Time to regroup. Regroup would become a word soon to have many meanings within the family. Many times regroup would become very similar to punting in football. Now its time for me to regroup and end this installment..

Rebwithacause
　

Ready to Launch - Installment 7

  Ok, this blog is moving along at a snails pace. That’s about to change. Look for shorter and more frequent installments

  Time to pick up the timeline and get on with the progression of events that will eventually bring us up to the present day. Installment 5 of this blog, finished without answering the efficacy of profitability question, and the funding of a website question. The answer to both questions was and is -- YES and Kind of.

  Numerous people were consulted in the last 2 week period of June 2009. Friends, family, and acquaintances. As for the possibility and probability of an endeavor having the ability to be profitable was a relatively easy question to answer. As always the “Devil is in the Details”, the marketing/research industry is attributed to be a 40 - 80 Billion USD industry depending on what sources you want to use. Our idea could tap into a niche that I thought was not being served. After giving my inner circle a vague synopsis of my business plan, enough positive feedback was obtained to consider the plan viable and that it would eventually be profitable.

  As for answering the affordability of the website to run the endeavor, the answer was - - kind of. We could have designed our own for relative peanuts, or we could acquire outside help and pay for design and website training. We choose outside help and are glad we did, as we needed the exposure that people trained in IT/web matters can bring to an endeavor. Although we didn’t have the resources to fund everything we wanted a website to do, we did conclude that we could get started and build along the way.

 Time to finish this installment, before I use the word endeavor again. Until next time, best wishes to everyone.
　
Rebwithacause

The Blogosphere - Installment 6

  Ok, its still a work in progress, but it is ready for viewing. In the last blog installment, I laid out the groundwork for another blog , one that would key on terminology and best practices of the polling/marketing research industries.

  As I wanted to be able to detail the considerations and the nuances that are used within the polling and marketing industry, I realized, after a friend advised me, that not everyone had a statistical background or would be familiar with the terms I was using. Rather than take time to explain, I decided to publish a glossary/dictionary/gist of commonly used terms and their uncommon meanings when applied to statistics. That blog is now live and called Pollogistics and can be located at : http://pollogistics.blogspot.com

   P O L L O G I S T I C S - not a real word yet. So far its only the name of a Blog. What is it? A combination of three words that I thought expressed what I wanted to define, and redefine. 3 words = Polls, Gists, and Statistics; slice and dice them a little, and viola --- POLLOGISTICS.
  Pollogistics is a blog that has definitions of terms, concepts, and organizations as they relate to the study of polls and marketing.
      http://pollogistics.blogspot.com is the place to go to have a pollogistic experience. As it is a work in progress , please go easy on critiquing it. We eventually will have somewhere between 300-500 terms. Any suggestions or comments can be directed to wade@thepollitbureau.com

Thanks, and enjoy.


Rebwithacause

The Domain - Installment 5

The Domain ---- Installment 5
Ok, its time to self-evaluate this blog and get to the retelling of the development of The Pollit Bureau. As for grading the blog I would give the performance so far a C+, as for The Pollit Bureau a solid D would be in order. The first 2 installments of this blog were better thought out and hopefully entertaining, while the last 2 have been arguably dry and lacked direction. In the last blog installment, I laid out the groundwork for another blog , one that would key on terminology and best practices of the polling/marketing research industries. That is starting to come along well and the 1^st post should be done by the 24^th of September 2010.
Time now for the documenting of the initial thought processes and developments that transpired that steered the beginning phases of The Pollit Bureau (TPB).
Looking back, with 20/20 hindsight , I should have tested the waters a little more before thinking I knew how to swim. I had decided that a polling company would satisfy my requirements of being gainfully employed in some line of work I considered intriguing, fulfilling, and might have a impact on America. I had already formed some opinions of polling companies and had the vague idea of a plan that would be somewhat unique. At this point in time it was early June 2009. I decided it was time to spend the next few weeks doing research. What I needed to know was the answer to the following 3 questions before I continued with the endeavor :
Question 1 - Is Anybody doing what we wanted to do already?
Question 2 - Would enough people be interested to make the endeavor profitable ?
Question 3 - Could an affordable web site that could handle the initial volume be developed within our budget constraints.
　
Answers to Question 1 - As I started my research, it also became apparent that I would have to finalize my vision for what the endeavor known as The Pollit Bureau would become. By finalize, I mean to detail the overall operation and work out the major areas of concern. Although, I didn’t know it at the time, It was soon apparent that not to many entities would be similar to our endeavor. We wanted to be a company that was transparent, relied on no funding that could possibly be seen as a conflict of interest, wanted to have the research we conducted be applicable to current issues and events . We also wanted our data to be used by decision makers without any charge. We wanted a way that people of a unique profession could congregate and give their views on issues within their community.
Visits to several nearby libraries soon confirmed my suspicions that although there were ample books on statistics and marketing, there were in fact very, very, few on polls/surveys. As we had decided that we would run an online company, what better way to research whether anybody was doing a similar project or what the competition is or was, then to ask the internet. Ask the Internet I did. Started with some simple searches, or so I thought, which yielded some mind-boggling numbers. I did some key word Google searches that I thought would be appropriate and ended up with the following:
(Note- # of results were obtained from search on 9/23/2010 but are very reflective of similar searches in June 2009)
Searched Word or Phrase and the Number of results follow:
Polls 110+ million results
Surveys 256+ million results
Online Polls 160+ million
Political Polls 65+ million
Opinion Polls 58+ million
Issues and polls 95+ million
Scientific Polls 7+ million
CNN Polls 4.6 + million
I had expected some large numbers but was not ready for numbers this big. One number that didn’t logically make sense is that there was more results for the search “online polls” than there was for “ polls”.
I hope I haven’t stumbled on an anomaly within Google’s algorithm. The searches were interesting and educational, and after reviewing what seems to have been thousands and thousands of results, we were able to form a few conclusions. We had decided on what our domain name and the name of our enterprise would be (The Pollit Bureau) , and additionally we concluded that we could be in a niche that was being neglected. Although some companies were doing some of the things we wanted to do, nobody seemed to be offering a place to put everything together. We also were amazed to see the number of survey for pay sites. Seemed like a million.
Also, many of the companies were focused on predicting elections. Most of the established “name brand polling companies” seemed to slam online polling or surveys as being unscientific. The majority of these firms do the majority of their research/data gathering over the phone. We see this as an opening for our type of raw data gathering online polling endeavor. Much like signal flags were eventually replaced by radio, we believe that most of telephone like communications are going to be replaced by the internet. We see our company as a way for analysts from anywhere to come and use our data. It is our contention that the next generation pollsters will rely heavily on the internet and mobile communications. Currently it is unlawful to attempt to call individuals on their cell phones as a marketing or polling endeavor without that individuals prior consent. This makes it unacceptable for “scientific” polls and a legal dilemna. We believe that in the future the polling industry will more and more have to rely on the internet. We want to be one of the first to totally embrace it in an unscientific/scientific way.
The other 2 aforementioned questions will be discussed in the next installment. Thanks for reading.

Rebwithacause