Cutting Costs and Taking Names

The economical slowdown has negatively impacted my blogging rate - there's almost no interesting news to talk about. There seems to suddenly be a preponderance of Twitter stories that the corporate blogosphere, which I have already discussed at length before everyone else jumped onto it and killed it as a story.

So, in honor of our economy's total collapse, this article is about conducting business in a cheap and unique way.

First of all, open source is your best friend. Open source software is much more organized than most people think, and using open source software almost ensures compatibility with all other systems (while on the other hand, a Windows program is only compatible with Windows, though this is usually fine due to how much of the world uses Windows). In fact, the majority of open source software works with Windows anyways.



Open source does have a few issues; it is often unattractive and difficult to use, especially for people who have grown up using Windows software. Open source designers have a lot of different things they need to do in order to compete, but in some cases, open source software could be more useful and adaptable than commercially available programs (e.g. Drupal is likely more useful for website design than the highly popular Dreamweaver program). People who are turned onto open source also tend to try to contribute to it, a great example of crowdsourcing.


Open source programs that remain online are also effective methods for communication with your client base; blog networks such as Blogger and Wordpress have built in communities, and can host a blog for the company, while forums can be created using programs such as PHPBB. Even places like Wikipedia can positively or negatively impact your company. In fact, some companies have gone this "total community sourced info" route recently.




Interestingly enough, switching to an entire open source system (i.e. Linux) would likely be beneficial to the company from an efficiency standpoint. Everything about Linux is free (including distribution by Bittorrent, and Consumer service handled by discussion forums), and it works better than Windows with many programs, resulting in faster load times, less CPU processor power consumed, etc. etc. Linux programs all do different things (e.g. Fluxbuntu is based on the concept of using as little power as possible, while Ubuntu is built to be an open sourced version of Windows) so it may take a while to find one that works well, but for the most part, less expensive hardware is necessary to do the same things, and many programs that could cost hundreds of dollars have open source equivalents that are provided for free (i.e. GIMP instead of Photoshop)



Communication becomes simpler using online programs as well - online conferences can be held online, with games such as Second Life providing an open forum for such meetings in the past. This greatly saves on travel time and cost (though the energy savings are debatable due to the huge electrical bill it racks up - but hey, the company using the program isn't footing that cost). On a smaller scale, I have heard that Deloitte's IT unit uses MSN Messenger to communicate throughout their office - it's just more convenient.


Finally, for those still looking for work, there are a lot of random jobs that can be done online. The one that interests me the most though would likely be making money by writing online. Beyond the obvious "Writing for marketing" strategies that people have used to game forums and review sites (which seems highly unethical), there's the simple pleasure of being a freelancer, on a contractual basis. For certain companies, harnessing opportunities online like this is more effective than hiring a bunch of people for a single job - it's win/win, in a way (if you have the talent). I'd like to think that a down economy doesn't mean a lack of work or ways to improve - merely that it takes a little more creativity.