As most of you have probably noticed by now, we've changed some things up a bit! A new name, a new site, and a new upcoming service.. it seems we're starting to grow. At this point, most people are probably thinking, "Why change?" In this, my first director's log post with DynaDim, I will attempt to tell you all why we have done what we've done.
The first change I'll discuss here is the name change. A few weeks ago, we discovered that there are two separate, unaffiliated companies under the name of "Dynamic Dimensions". In a similar attempt to the name change from Dimension Softworks to Dynamic Dimensions Software, we decided we needed to change our name again to avoid potential copyright issues in the future. We started brainstorming, and we found that this was an excellent opportunity to create a name that is marketable, catchy, and completely ours.
Back when DynaDim was changed from Dimension Softworks to Dynamic Dimensions Software, we registered a new domain name by taking the first four letters of "Dynamic", and the first three of "Dimensions", which ended up becoming "DynaDim.tk". When we started coming up with ideas for a new name for the organisation, the first idea that came to me was to use this domain name as our new name. It was catchy, it was marketable, and it's completely original, but it doesn't abandon our past. When DynaDim was reborn at the beginning of the year, our focus was still primarily on dynamic free software applications, with a bit of other media involved. However, we've been slowly transforming into a media organisation with a bit of software involved, so we were sure that with this new name, we'd see a new future for the organisation. Software applications are used in almost everything these days, and we do have plans for software development in the future, but with the massive surge of social media and online media, we feel that this new direction will help broaden the horizon for us. So join us, as we press on to the future together, as DynaDim Media.
Accompanying this new name and direction, we have redone our website. Why? Quite frankly, the old site looked very drab and amateur. It had a dark, boring, and technical feel behind it instead of a clean, vibrant, and more professional-looking feel. With our new site, we have included an improved structure, a cleaner look, and more information than ever about us and what we do. We hope this new site will encourage more people to read more about us, and hopefully encourage people to consider joining our team. We actually have added several new positions that we're looking to fill, so if you are interested, please do check out the improved "Join Us" page. There may be future improvements to the site, though.
Finally, I'll talk about a new service we're going to attempt to develop: a unique, free-to-use, online authoring platform! It would create a new hub for authors (both professional and amateur) and readers both. It would allow authors to publish their works (books, stories, poems, even lyrics) online, chat with other authors, share ideas, offer advice, and even possibly collaborate. For the reader, it would allow them to connect with the authors, offer feedback, ask questions, discuss works with others, and review works on the site.
The idea came to me when I began writing a Christmas-themed story (available online now - see the link at the top of the info page for this new service), and thought, "You know, there's not really a good, free service for e-publishing, that includes plenty of features to make it both easy and enjoyable to write and publish your works. Maybe we could be the first."
Most likely, while the project will use SMF for the forum part of the site, we're still debating on whether or not we'll use it fully as the platform for the service. I'm not entirely sure I want to use SMF for all of it, as I want this service to be both original, and high quality. While SMF is great software, it isn't entirely capable of what I'd like to do without making significant changes to the core features. It can be done, it would be free, and perhaps it may be easier, but I'm not 100% sure that's the best choice for our service. If we do end up using SMF as the platform, inevitably we're going to have to edit the core code or make modifications and use a high-quality hosting service (we'll likely use SMFNew Pro once the network is back up and stable).
We're definitely certain of one thing. While we can potentially do all of this as our team stands, we really would like to improve our team size, preferably in the web aspect (we're looking for PHP developers, preferably with knowledge of SMF), to help us develop this network. Otherwise, creating this service could take years upon years to finish, and we really don't want to wait that long to provide this service for all of you.
In addition to the development aspect, we're certainly going to need community managers to act as moderators and engage with the community once this site is finished, especially if it grows as we hope it will. There's absolutely no way that I'm going to be able to manage this community (among the many others I manage), if it turns out growing to the size we hope it will.
If it came down to it, we might have to consider a premium service along with the free service to help fund it (as a project this large will require funding if things don't work out as we think and hope they will), but we are going to do as much as we can to keep it alive, completely and forever free. As always, there's no guarantees, and I don't mean to get any hopes up just in case this goes bad. I can say this much, however: we are going to try as hard as we can to create this, as we really believe this is something that could help us put ourselves on the grid. I also have some author friends that hopefully would enjoy this service and hopefully promote it to their readers and friends, so getting the word out is possibly going to be less of a blind walk this time around.
Well, that's about it for this first director's log. To kick off the theme of this upcoming service, I've written a Christmas-themed short story for all of you to read. I wrote it to be a Christmas story that tried to avoid cliches (and I hope I succeeded in doing so) but still have a strong message behind it, so I combined a similar base concept to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "The Ghosts of Christmas Eve" DVD, added my love for post-apocalyptic fiction, and combined them together with a Christian message (as I'm mostly a Christian writer in my spare time outside of tech-related things) to get the result. It's available on a special page for all of you to read - a sub-menu under the tab for the author platform information page. I hope you all enjoy it; from all of us here at DynaDim, have a happy holiday season, and God bless!
Back when DynaDim was changed from Dimension Softworks to Dynamic Dimensions Software, we registered a new domain name by taking the first four letters of "Dynamic", and the first three of "Dimensions", which ended up becoming "DynaDim.tk". When we started coming up with ideas for a new name for the organisation, the first idea that came to me was to use this domain name as our new name. It was catchy, it was marketable, and it's completely original, but it doesn't abandon our past. When DynaDim was reborn at the beginning of the year, our focus was still primarily on dynamic free software applications, with a bit of other media involved. However, we've been slowly transforming into a media organisation with a bit of software involved, so we were sure that with this new name, we'd see a new future for the organisation. Software applications are used in almost everything these days, and we do have plans for software development in the future, but with the massive surge of social media and online media, we feel that this new direction will help broaden the horizon for us. So join us, as we press on to the future together, as DynaDim Media.
Accompanying this new name and direction, we have redone our website. Why? Quite frankly, the old site looked very drab and amateur. It had a dark, boring, and technical feel behind it instead of a clean, vibrant, and more professional-looking feel. With our new site, we have included an improved structure, a cleaner look, and more information than ever about us and what we do. We hope this new site will encourage more people to read more about us, and hopefully encourage people to consider joining our team. We actually have added several new positions that we're looking to fill, so if you are interested, please do check out the improved "Join Us" page. There may be future improvements to the site, though.
Finally, I'll talk about a new service we're going to attempt to develop: a unique, free-to-use, online authoring platform! It would create a new hub for authors (both professional and amateur) and readers both. It would allow authors to publish their works (books, stories, poems, even lyrics) online, chat with other authors, share ideas, offer advice, and even possibly collaborate. For the reader, it would allow them to connect with the authors, offer feedback, ask questions, discuss works with others, and review works on the site.
The idea came to me when I began writing a Christmas-themed story (available online now - see the link at the top of the info page for this new service), and thought, "You know, there's not really a good, free service for e-publishing, that includes plenty of features to make it both easy and enjoyable to write and publish your works. Maybe we could be the first."
Most likely, while the project will use SMF for the forum part of the site, we're still debating on whether or not we'll use it fully as the platform for the service. I'm not entirely sure I want to use SMF for all of it, as I want this service to be both original, and high quality. While SMF is great software, it isn't entirely capable of what I'd like to do without making significant changes to the core features. It can be done, it would be free, and perhaps it may be easier, but I'm not 100% sure that's the best choice for our service. If we do end up using SMF as the platform, inevitably we're going to have to edit the core code or make modifications and use a high-quality hosting service (we'll likely use SMFNew Pro once the network is back up and stable).
We're definitely certain of one thing. While we can potentially do all of this as our team stands, we really would like to improve our team size, preferably in the web aspect (we're looking for PHP developers, preferably with knowledge of SMF), to help us develop this network. Otherwise, creating this service could take years upon years to finish, and we really don't want to wait that long to provide this service for all of you.
In addition to the development aspect, we're certainly going to need community managers to act as moderators and engage with the community once this site is finished, especially if it grows as we hope it will. There's absolutely no way that I'm going to be able to manage this community (among the many others I manage), if it turns out growing to the size we hope it will.
If it came down to it, we might have to consider a premium service along with the free service to help fund it (as a project this large will require funding if things don't work out as we think and hope they will), but we are going to do as much as we can to keep it alive, completely and forever free. As always, there's no guarantees, and I don't mean to get any hopes up just in case this goes bad. I can say this much, however: we are going to try as hard as we can to create this, as we really believe this is something that could help us put ourselves on the grid. I also have some author friends that hopefully would enjoy this service and hopefully promote it to their readers and friends, so getting the word out is possibly going to be less of a blind walk this time around.
Well, that's about it for this first director's log. To kick off the theme of this upcoming service, I've written a Christmas-themed short story for all of you to read. I wrote it to be a Christmas story that tried to avoid cliches (and I hope I succeeded in doing so) but still have a strong message behind it, so I combined a similar base concept to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "The Ghosts of Christmas Eve" DVD, added my love for post-apocalyptic fiction, and combined them together with a Christian message (as I'm mostly a Christian writer in my spare time outside of tech-related things) to get the result. It's available on a special page for all of you to read - a sub-menu under the tab for the author platform information page. I hope you all enjoy it; from all of us here at DynaDim, have a happy holiday season, and God bless!
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