Group items tagged

a prudent client—the kind you really want—will choose a web partner on the strength of the entire package. Doing otherwise, selecting on a matrix of numbers, dates, and line items, is an exercise in foolishness, akin to buying a car without knowing the make and model. Relationships, even in business, are founded on and strengthened by mutual compatibility. Proposing to work together on a project is remarkably similar to proposing marriage (despite the obvious and important differences): it ought to be a decision based on both emotion and reason, supported by a high degree of trust. In writing a proposal, you are making the case for the appropriateness of your new life together. These early, hesitant steps toward knowing one another better are crucial.

At some point later in the document, include the contact information for a few of your best clients. References reassure the reader that you are who you claim to be. You might also wish to provide a brief overview of some previous projects similar to the project on which you are bidding. Business is as much (if not more) about people as it is about dollars and cents, deliverables and timelines. If your company is difficult to relate to because your proposal is generic, it shouldn’t surprise you when you are inevitably forgotten.

Meticulously evaluate every client before issuing a proposal. Once you do, don’t panic if they walk because you stuck to your philosophical guns. You just saved yourself bucket-loads of stress and misery.

Some cultures are High Context. This means most communication is simply understood rather than explicitly stated. These cultures have a much higher tolerance for ambiguity and understatement. You could say that, in a High Context culture, the responsibility for understanding rests with the listener and it’s left to them to divine deeper meaning from the conversation or statements coming at them.

Low Context cultures, on the other hand, are much more explicit and often rely on directness and true feelings to communicate.

In these types of cultures, the responsibility for understanding is on the speaker to convey their ideas clearly and without ambiguity.

Several emerging countries are rallying behind a campaign to have the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N.'s global standards body for telecommunications, declare the Internet a global telecommunications system, U.S. officials testified on Thursday before the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Led by China, Russia, India and now Egypt, which recently launched its own proposal, such a move would allow state-owned telephone networks to expand into VoIP. It would also give them the opportunity to charge fees for Internet service - and put the Internet at the mercy of international politics.

"[Russia and China] have a concept that they call 'information security,' the ambassador told Rep. Ed Markey (D - Mass.). "Their concept of information security is both what we would call 'cybersecurity' - the physical protection of their networks - but it goes beyond that to address content that they regard as unwanted. I think as much as anything else, the base motivations that Russia and China have involve regime stability, regime preservation, which for them involves preventing unwanted content from being made widely available in their countries."

ICANN Vice President and Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf told Congress he's concerned about any number of efforts by international bodies - the ITU being just one of several - to seize control of the world's Internet policy agenda.