A List Apart

Issue № 330

A Modest Proposal

by Nathan Peretic ∙ 9 Comments

Comedy is easy, proposals are hard. Even the toughest creative pros cringe when it’s time to put one together. Yet doing so is essential if you want to keep your doors open. A compelling proposal requires more than a jumble of clichés and a nervous estimate of costs. It needs structure, organization, and joie de vivre. Fortunately, you can provide that structure, no matter how complicated the final proposal needs to be. Learn the key questions every client needs answered, and how to use them as the basis of a proposal that convinces your client you’re the right team for the job.

RFPs: The Least Creative Way to Hire People

by Greg Hoy ∙ 33 Comments

If you work in any kind of service industry you've undoubtedly come across the Request For Proposal, or “RFP.” The RFP process has become a standard by which organizations solicit competitive bids. It attempts to level the playing field and minimize bias by holding everyone to the same requirements, no special treatment, no rule bending. In return, the organization issuing the RFP is able to select a vendor by comparing apples to apples. Alas, in practice, RFPs are the least creative way to hire creative people. The rigidity of the process, and the lack of meaningful dialogue makes this little more than a game of roulette. How can we successfully navigate the heartburn-inducing RFP process? And what can we as an industry do to turn RFPs into the exception rather than the default means of hiring an agency?

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In any given day I can find myself reading up on a new W3C proposal, fixing an issue with our tax return, coding an add-on for our product, writing a conference presentation, building a server, creating a video tutorial, and doing front end development for one of our sites. Without clients dictating my workload I’m in the enviable position of being able to choose where to focus my efforts. However, I can’t physically do everything.

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Matt Mullenweg on Yahoo-Tumblr

“We’re at the cusp of understanding the ultimate value of web publishing platforms, particularly ones that work cross-domain.”–Matt Mullenweg of WordPress.

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