After long last, the plotting, coding geniuses at pLot have finally been able to tear our loyal attention away from our clients endeavors to finish our own site.  The web elves and I still haven't fully made this site what it will be (at this point today) but I can say for sure that this will be our site for a long time.  Reason being is that this new version of the pLot site is unique not only because it is it built better with our proprietary “Bureau.API,” this site is developed to create an organic archive of the company's growth and evolution.  

For the past 3 years pLot has been in real R&D mode, experimenting with Bureau and trying to find new ways to exploit the API.  We took less projects and built the applications that helped us see our programming framework in  action and now, finally we've put our API to work on our own site.  The site is not a “blog” or a content management system per se. pLotMulti.com is an archive of the conglomerated thinking that goes in to our work.  Each “pLotter” has a view point of what we do from their own perspective based on their job. A front-end developer may see an execution in a complete and totally different way from the designer or the server side developer.  Our production staff may have anecdotal thoughts about the development process while a product manager may look at the site from how users respond to the site after its launched.  Our new site is built to curate all of these thoughts to help people really understand what we do and how.  We didn't want to do another site where we pat ourselves on the back for doing what we are supposed to do, which is push the envelope of available technologies for the benefit of our clients.  

The new pLotMulti.com serves as a benefit for our clients, potential clients and partners to understand what we do technologically and strategically. It is also for us to be able to watch how our company evolved with technology and media.  We used to be the guys you went to for the coolest flash site you could imagine, now we develop applications that serve media to over a 100 million eyeballs a day.  

Who knows what our digital shop will evolve to be in future however, we know this time our site will be able to tell the story.    

As production continues on the single most powerful online event ticketing solution known to man that we call the CHARGED.fm , the facial locks are looking as robust as our the systems feature sets.  The beard, although unleashed on the Earth first, reminds me of Charged.fm overall.  It was at first to serve as a reminder to my Dev team as to how long this is taking.  Second is to show clients that I don't have to look like the lost bass player for ZZ-Top.  Most of the time we have used so far has not been used on actual coding of the site.  It's been in planning and agreeing as a team on how we were going to revolutionize and pretty much create what we call “social ticketing.”   Even for veteran group of social media and social commerce experts like us would need more time Social   

If we weren't using the CHARGED.fm system that we furnish for our clients, venues and promoters, this would take a lot longer. The amazing power of Bureau.Transact built into the CHARGED.fm system is a beautiful thing to behold. Some people want to try to go around the world in 90 days we are on the verge of changing the world in 90 days.  The beard is the physical embodiment of the journey.  Stay tuned folks.  

So there has been major progress on the top secret social commerce functionality of CHARGED.fm.  There also has been a lot of progress with the beard as you all can see.  I have to admit that I haven't been this excited since the birth of my second daughter.  This time however I am having all of the prolonged labor pain as clearly illustrated on my furry countenance. and my staff gets to giggle with glee as I writhe in pain.  If it wasn't for the power of the Bureau.Transact system I would look like Chewbacca when it's all done however building the most powerful event ticketing online marketplace is a moving goal post.  We watch our competitors and they are all copying the monolith (who I can't identify) we are actively trying to best the monolith with a wrecking ball of innovation.  I am probably the pLot.Dev team's worst enemy because I keep moving the goal post.  I already know our system dwarfs any other in functionality but I don't even want it to be close.  The Bureau.Transact system in phase 1 already handles seamlessly over a billion dollars in event inventory from several sources.  What we are doing know is where it really gets fun.  Will I look like the new frontman for ZZ Top when it's done..?..  possibly but when the Charged.fm system is launched in beta we will be light years ahead of everyone else. 

Waiting to see a plan come together is agonizing.  You read every update from the development team and hope that the agony will end soon.  Building a new technology and you are itching to launch and see how it goes.  Charged.fm isn't a new technology, it's new digital origami made by artfully folding our Bureau.API into yet another new shape.  So while I let pLot.Dev team fashion our latest endeavor, I will be forsaking the razor, beard trimmer and hair clipper until we have launched the full featured version of Charged.fm. is launched.  Charged.fm is the most powerful online ticketing system that has ever graced the web.  We've merged the powerful live performance ticket sales software we give to Venues now to anyone throwing their own shin dig.  I'm so excited to share these tools with the world that I will not shave my furry face until mission is accomplished.  Here comes Santa Claus!

I hate when ideas we originate become revolutionary 2 years later in the hand of a major corporations PR firm.  Disney is touting selling tickets to their Toy Story 3 movie in an article in the NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/business/media/02disney.html 

This sounds like a great idea and they claim it is a new one because pLot already created a Transactional Widget to sell tickets and have been using it in our pLot.Commerce systems for 2 years.  You see in the Carolines.com system which has been around since 2008. We have been selling tickets by the boat load right on Facebook since we launched in 2008.  The idea and the execution is not (well not to  our Facebook friends) a revolutionary one at all considering that we have been using Facebook to sell out shows for any performer who uses the Carolines.com Transactional widget to share their event and sell tickets virally with their FB fans.  We are expanding the idea of viral ticketing as we speak. Wait till you see it in Charged.fm! 

Did I say the top secret “C” word too early?  (Doh!)

But so is life for a software developer.  It doesn't matter if you were first if the world at mass doesn't know about it.  It's kind of like the whole “crapping in the woods” cliche.  It also kind of outlines a problem in our business.  There really is no way to know who the innovators are when there is no journalistic guideline for innovation.  Technology moves too fast for technologist so the task is thrice daunting for journalist.  The innovators seem to be who the major publications tell you they are and they may rely too much on high powered PR firms.  We all know that monopolistic multinational corporation are not the bastions of innovation.  That isn't, can't and has never been true.  Because of it sometimes I feel like Tesla continuing to lose out to the better financed Edison.  

The Tickets Together App is cool but it's not a first of it's kind.  We pitched this concept to Disney subsidiary's last year which adds to my angst although I don't believe they stole it per se.  I shouldn't be angry.  The pLot.Dev team might be, but I shouldn't and I'm not.  This article and what Disney has done here is validation.  This is proof that we are on to something. On to something two years ahead of the biggest corporations with infinite resources.  We will keep revolutionizing the web with our software and our ability to build anything.  Be on the look out for our next viral ticketing application.  It is irrefutably awesome, if it isn't irrefutably the first of it's kind.