Welcome to Confluence Website

Who knew that websites would have to be redesigned every few years? This is our third Confluence website in 10 years – and each time, it felt long overdue.

Not wanting to be a cobbler’s child with no shoes, we implemented our site in the latest version of Joomla! – the most popular open source Content Management System on the planet – using the ninja talent we provide our clients on ourselves. “So how did that go?” you may be asking.

Every website we design and implement results in new observations and lessons, and this was no exception. For example, our process made clear that websites can either be designed in one person’s image, or be a consensus product – one everyone can live with, but that doesn’t necessarily achieve the disparate visions of each member of the team. What else… well, it took longer than we wanted, because client work comes first. But all our clients experience this issue with prioritization – and more often than not, the new website project gets bumped. Few clients hit the schedule marks they set for themselves. We also (re)learned how much website designs are like any other kind of fashion. They look dated after time. New norms, new color schemes, new font sizes, typical amounts of white space – it all changes with the times. We can look at a website and tell within a year or two when it was designed.

Launching this redesigned site makes me reflect on the unceasing wonder of the world we live in. It’s too easy to lose sight of the impact of technology in transforming our lives because we are living it. I start to be thankful that the Chinese wish / curse “May you live in interesting times” came true for me, and see from Wikipedia that there is no such Chinese saying!  What happens when we can be corrected, learn, look up and discover anything, any time?  We don’t know yet – and I can’t wait to find out. The last time we designed our website, twitter hadn’t been invented. Now the twitter feed is ubiquitous in website designs. The point? None of us can imagine what technologies, standards, and inventions will be de rigueur in the future. Some believe that websites themselves will be obsolete, being replaced by requests for information sent to mobile devices. I find it hard to take my iPhone for granted, given how it continues to transform business as usual every day. How did I live without it? What won’t we be able to live without next? The infrastructure of the internet, GPS, wireless broadband, and mobile devices has only been birthed now – really now -- laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s inconceivable applications. It’s wide open – just waiting for the world’s tremendous innovation and ingenuity to come up with our future. We love being part of it all – sharing the excitement and new ideas with our clients, and helping them create their technology futures.

So welcome to our new site and blog, and thanks for reading – we look forward to sharing whatever is on our minds regularly and hope you stay tuned!

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