Skip navigation
Table XI Talks

Happy March!

Happy March!

By Josh Golden on Thursday, March 6, 2008

Happy March!  We're just as amazed as you are that it's already the 3rd month of 2008.  We've been meaning to send out this newsletter since January.  It was originally supposed to be our take on "New Year's Resolutions," but we're a bit late.  Despite our tardiness, we have collected a bunch of relevant thoughts and we're happy to share them now.  As always, we look to inform, educate and amuse.

Welcome John Gore

We're growing and its your fault

Those of you who work with us have probably realized that our developers have been very busy.  We guess that people like what we're doing. New customers seem to be finding us, and old ones keep coming back.  This is a wonderful "problem" to have, and we can't thank our customers enough.

In order to expand our ability to serve our customers, our team will be joined by John Gore on Monday, March 10.  A recent graduate of Auburn University with a Master's in Software Engineering, John is ready to hit the ground running to help us keep up with all the things we have going on.  John will divide his time between managing our growing server environment and developing software and solutions for our customers.  We are extremely excited to have found John and feel fortunate that he chose to move north to join us, instead of taking one of the many other offers he had in hand.

Please note that we are still looking for the best and brightest engineers.  If you know of someone who fits the bill, please send them to our job posting.

Mozy your way out of trouble

Thoughts on Data Backup and Trips To the Dentist

Backing up your data is a lot like flossing; everybody knows you're supposed to do it. In spite of all the warnings, few of us actually listen.   It's not until something particularly nasty happens - like a month's work lost by a hard drive meltdown or a cavity leading to a root canal - that we realize the importance of these good habits, and by that point it's too late.

While we still try and floss, Mozy has eliminated all the excuses for avoiding data backup.

Mozy is a brilliantly simple idea that makes you wonder why you didn't invent it. You download the client software (PC or Mac), select which files or folders you want to backup, and while you are not using your computer, Mozy automatically encrypts and backs up your files to its servers via the Internet. It even archives deleted files for 30 days just in case you killed something important.

Mozy has received rave reviews from The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Small Business, USA Today and PC World for good reason. It offers an elegant solution to one of the great computing risks and inconveniences.   Many Table XI staffers use Mozy as their personal backup solution, and we find ourselves recommending it to clients constantly.

According to the Mozy homepage, "one in every ten hard drives fails each year. The cost of recovering a failed hard drive can exceed $7,500, and success is never guaranteed"... which makes the $4.95 per month Mozy charges seem like a no-brainer.

Then again, dental floss only costs $.99.

That's a spicy site

Our long time clients and friends had a huge holiday

The Spice House was even busier than usual this past November and December, and it was partly our fault...

In 2003, we built their old web site.  While it served its purposes then, by 2006 we realized that there were huge opportunities to simplify the web site's navigation, reorganize the structure of key pages, and improve its ranking in Google (and other search engines).  Around the same time, the Spice House asked us to add tightly-integrated gift card functionality.

Adding gift cards to a 3-year old web site with a custom check-out process is major technological surgery.  We saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and overhauled the web site. Working with Steve Krull, our search engine guru, we built pages that would be clear to users and search engines. We increased "content density" by maintaining existing content but spreading it across fewer total pages.  Across the site, we added descriptive page titles, names and headings and added relevant content wherever appropriate.

While there was meaningful sales growth from the 2005 to 2006, growth exploded from 2006 to 2007.  How did this happen?

Part of the increase was attributable to paid Google advertising.  However, the largest increase was from free traffic ("organic traffic") coming from search engines, and the results have been astounding.  Comparing the six-week holiday rush in 2007 against the same period in 2006, the Spice House web site saw the following:     

We expected improvements from obvious keywords; traffic from the keyword "spices" increased 500%. More surprisingly, several esoteric terms started to perform well and drive immense value.  For example:

The site was performing so well that we ran a small intra-office over-under pool about how many orders would be placed on the Spice House web site on the top day of the 2007 holiday.  While Josh, the only person taking the under, ultimately won, we were all astounded at how high the point was set.  Who knows what the 2008 season will bring?

Speaking of food

Table XI hires ultra-gourmet chef

You might be surprised to learn that the "XI" in Table XI refers to the number of pounds each employee gains within a few months of working here.   We certainly were.

Since we buy lunch for our employees, we made a corporate New Year's resolution to "eat healthier" and hired a chef.  This may sound indulgent, but it costs about the same as ordering from restaurants.  Our resident gourmands (read "everybody") weren't going to be satisfied by just any chef, so we snagged a cook from Alinea, the restaurant Gourmet Magazine named "The Best Restaurant in America".

We are incredibly happy to welcome Rene Deleon to the Table XI team.

Rene studied at the New England Culinary Institute and has worked at some of the best restaurants in Vermont, Las Vegas, Texas, Cincinnati and Boston.  Three years ago he heard that Grant Achatz (protégé of the French Laundry's Thomas Keller) would be opening a new restaurant in Chicago, so he packed up two suitcases and moved here, "biding" his time at Moto (with Iron Chef winner Homaro Cantu) until he got his shot to work at Alinea.

In between the seventy-hour Alinea work weeks, he finds time to come over to our office and cook us four meals for the week.  Some of the menus we have enjoyed the most so far include:

We're not sure if we're trimming our waistlines, but if you'd like to find out, stop by our office around the lunch hour; we'd be happy to share.

Special thanks to the folks at the Spice House for decking out our kitchen with a wonderful selection of herbs and spices.

Monthly Archive

Quarterly Archive

(312) 563-1830
info@tablexi.com
123 N. Jefferson St., Suite 4F, Chicago, IL 60661