Website Development

Greetings friends, family and distinguished colleagues,
As most all of you know, I stand gainfully employed as the VP/Development with The Karcher Group, Inc. in the Canton area. You may also know that I have grown with “my” company nearly a decade and we’ve been through many ups and downs along the way. Regardless of the times, The Karcher Group has flourished and is now celebrating a 10 year anniversary. And it is at this time, with a heavy heart, that I must disclose to you that The Karcher Group is about to go and do something completely irrational to all of it’s faithful employees?

No, it is not what you’re thinking - “I’m being fired” or “We’re closing our doors” - it’s even worse! The Karcher Group, Inc. will be changing it’s web address to a 3-letter domain!

We’ve been working for 10 d$%n years to gain the best SEO ranking, client and industry credibility building the best standards-based, accessible websites possible and then we have to go and be “fortunate” enough to obtain a 3-letter domain (tkg.com). I guess you can consider it our birthday present to ourselves. This, no doubt, is a major undertaking that will put TKG’s skills to the test to maintain all we have established in the last decade. So, in traditional TKG style, we plan on making this experience a comprehensive social case-study that we hope to share with the industry (being that this may the first instance of it’s kind). We hope that all of you will watch and become an active part of this venture.

Should you choose to accept, this is a start to where your efforts would be most beneficial?

On any media outlet you can get your hands on, promote either this message or a simple mention of the event taking place along with a link back to tkg.com. Please let us know you are becoming involved so we can personally thank you, give you a mention in the case-study and keep you in the loop as to what and when things are happening. Oh, if you have other ideas, by all means, pass them along too! If we choose to implement them, we’ll reward you handsomely for it.

So long thekarchergroup.com and hello tkg!

Thanks in advance for any and all efforts from myself and the rest of your friends here at TKG.

In anything, it is of course easier to learn good habits early on than to unlearn a bunch of bad habits later - though it was still funny when I was two and Dad spent weeks teaching me that the word for absolutely everything was “helicopter” (pronounced “he’we-copper” in the vernacular of the age deficient) in preparation for Christmas dinner and the rest of my family’s amusement. For those of you who wish to learn good habits in Web development from the beginning without all the nifty soul-crushing humiliation, the Cleveland Web Standards Association is starting a regular study group for people with zero to intermediate developer knowledge (see what I did there, ending the opening paragraph with the actual topic sentence? Inverted pyramid be damned).

Once again, the CWSA has done a better job of describing their event than I can so please check here for details. I will say that the initial meeting is a two-parter, the first part of which was actually last Sunday, but you can still make it to the concluding meeting this Sunday, February 24^th at 5:00pm at Caribou Coffee in Rocky River.Why would I fail to post this before the initial meeting? Because I can’t just sit here being focused and vigilant all day on the off-chance that someone somewhere decides to schedule something. I have things to do, people. Important things. Like partaking in intense psychotherapy over the whole helicopter incident.

Beginner developers should also check out the TKG Institute, our ongoing evening program here at The Karcher Group for teaching developer basics tothe youth of Northeast Ohio that are in to that kind of thing.