Will Strohl's Blog

I'm excited to share some new services I've introduced to help business owners and digital teams gain clarity, reduce friction, and move forward with confidence. These offerings are designed to meet you where you are—whether you're just starting out, feeling stuck, or ready to scale.

If you’ve ever had a one-on-one with me, whether through a business networking group, DNN project, or just a casual “hey, I’ve got an idea” moment — then you already know this...

Hey friends,

If you’ve been around the DNN world for a while, you know I’ve worn a lot of hats in the community — speaker, module dev, consultant, core team member, and that guy who’s always posting memes during conference breaks. 😉

So it probably won’t surprise you that this announcement is both exciting and, well… a little overdue.

DNN Summit is right around the corner, and this year it's going to be a hybrid event. Those of us who are willing and able, will be meeting up in Las Vegas, but the majority of the event will happen online again. I wanted to let you know what we - Upendo Ventures - are doing for you this time...

Squarespace has been gaining traction ever since it was first released, and for good reason. It's hands-down one of the best options for any new company to launch their first website. You don't need to be technical to create and manage your website. Anyone with any level of proficiency with a web browser can be a web hero.

If you didn’t already know, CMS is an acronym for “content management system.”  A CMS is used by many developers, consultancies, and companies to build their website.  It’s an incredibly common thing to do, as any flavor of CMS you choose will always save you effort and money, compared to building a website from nothing.  This is especially true if you look at the lifetime investment of your website.  Using a CMS framework or solution of some kind just seems to make sense.  After all, this is what I’ve built my own career upon since 2001.  However, then, CMS was known as a portal or portal framework.  That’s a long time ago, so it’s not a bad idea to take stock of things every now and thing to see if what you’re doing is the correct thing.  To this end, I asked myself, “How is CMS doing right now, and does it make sense to still be doing CMS-related work in the future?”

We all have that “thing” that everyone around you knows you for.  For whatever reason, I’ve been the person my entire life that everyone I know goes to for advice.  It’s always flattering to be trusted in that way, but it also means that I continue to do my best to keep myself fed with information.  Probably the most common piece of advice I get asked is, “I have this great job offer. Do you think I should take it?”  That’s never an easy question to answer, but here’s what I tell my friends…

We’ve all been there.  It’s a group setting – most likely a meeting at work.  Several of our colleagues are there, including our boss and maybe even the boss' boss.  The topic.  Anything.  It might be something seemingly trivial, or a new direction for the business to follow. The inevitable question is asked by someone in the room, “What do we think we should do about X?”  The ominous letter X.  It’s used in math and everywhere else as a placeholder.  Similarly, this could be any decision and it’s often made before the group realizes it.

Have you ever boiled water?  Sure you have.  It’s easy.  First, you get a saucepan (preferably a clean one).  Next, you turn on the water and fill the sauce pan about 3/4 of the way.  Now you turn a burner on your stovetop between medium and high heat.  Finally, you wait.  Easy.  But that’s not what this article is about.  It’s about the pouring of hot water, and how it’s related to being a great leader.

I’ve been in the software industry for much longer than I’d care to admit at this point.  That’s another blog post though.  Much of it has been centered around building products.  One of the things that seems to not go away is the expectation that a software trial is infinite, or free.  Regardless to whether you pay a single penny, trials aren’t free.  They cost companies money - even if you’re evaluating it on your own computer.  The moment you move from evaluation to development, you’re hurting the company that builds the software.  Here’s how…