Living in America

By Michael Cole On June 13, 2008 · Leave a Comment

After seventeen years away from home, what’s weird about America is how normal it all seems. If you find the right radio station, and drive down the proper highway, it can seem like you’re cruising the same streets you left behind in 1991.

I’m in the US this week for a quick visit — will be attending my brother’s wedding, and had to stock up on shoes, socks and the other usual stuff. And what always strikes me is how different things don’t feel. After living in seven different cities around Asia for nearly two decades it’s easy to think that being back home in Minnesota would seem quite strange. But it doesn’t.

And work doesn’t seem that much different either. Although I’m theoretically on vacation, people running start-up companies only get vacations in theory. In practice, we are still having conference calls with the web developers over in India, reviewing our team’s progress at gathering industrial property information, and taking care of administrative tasks like rewriting our employee handbook.

Perhaps the biggest task this week is designing the member website for RightSite. Since our site will be membership-based and the members will be receiving their own mini-sites as part of their membership, these member sites are integral to the member’s sense of value in RightSite.

If you look at this gallery of designs

You can see the progress we’ve made from first draft to the third version.

Version One: I favour having a contrasting colour for the member site, to keep it distinct from the parts of the site more directly owned and controlled by RightSite. However, saag gosht green was not really the contrasting hue that would be my first choice. So that green version had to die.

Version Two: The second version shows some big improvements. It’s more clearly aligned with RightSite in terms of design elements, while the blue top banner gives the member site a distinct identity.

Version Three: The third version provides even more progress. The grey colour has a corporate feel that should appeal to our audience, and the addition of some sample listings should enable our members to show more of what they have to offer on their member site home page.

If any of you have input or ideas about the member site, please feel free to comment right here. In the coming days we will be looking at the design of other pages in the member site, as well as finalising the site information pages.

Tomorrow it’s another conference call, then lunch with the whole family up in St Paul (I’m at mom’s house in Northfield, MN now). The wedding rehearsal is tomorrow afternoon at Como Park in St Paul, followed by the wedding rehearsal dinner at Cook’s of Crocus Hill (Mike has to make his own *&^%$#@! dinner as part of some crazy family team-building deal).

The wedding is on Saturday pm at Como Park, then it’s post-wedding brunch on Sunday with the whole gang, before Mike gets on the plane for Shanghai on Sunday.

So if I don’t get a chance to write more before then, enjoy our week and see you next time here on Mingtiandi.