Cooperative Partnerships Date: 10/18/2013 Latest: 10/24/2013 Status: Draft 1
Coopetition
Throughout the process of organizing the cooperative, Chris Hofstader has been using phrases like Walter White’s, “It’s never been about the money for me, it’s about empire.” While we believe that we can become a dominant force in the world of accessibility contracting, I think it will also be important for us, at least at the beginning, to have partnerships with other players in this business.
Chris’ instincts are to throw down by having this cooperative jump onto the scene and blow the competition away. Unfortunately, a highly aggressive strategy may result in more hostility than growth for our new thing. Also, as virtually every established player is currently looking both to expand their staff and to subcontract out to other players, this can be a growth center for our group.
Chris would suggest that, before we go public, we reach out to:
Deque Systems – a DC area based organization led by Preety Kumar. Chris Hofstader has already reached out to them and they are very interested in partnering with us.
The Paciello Group (TPG) is the biggest player in the biz. Both Chris and Will Pearson have worked for them in the past and have a poor relationship with Mike Paciello, their CEO. Does any other member have a good relationship with them? Can Mike Calvo or someone other than Chris reach out to them?
SSB/Bart has been around for a long time. Chris has had meetings with them many years ago and doesn’t know them too well. Can Valvo reach out to them?
What Other Partnerships Should We Attempt?
Chris wrote this page so far. He doesn’t know everyone. Please add suggestions in the comments below so we can try to work with your friends as well.
I hate to say it, I really do, but we may want to revisit freedom scientific a some point. Not when we’re first starting, but if we can get big enough that we’re not in the corner. They still hold a lot of stuff. I am speaking only monetarily. Philosophically, well, I disagree with their business practices, authorization scheme, and pricing (especially given the instability of Jaws these days). That said, there’s a lot of organizations that still insist on jaws, and FS might be able to send us work. I don’t exactly like it myself, but FS is still sizable and is the only thing a lot of people are familiar with, even now. I don’t think they should be off the list, but I definitely wouldn’t put them at the front either. Perhaps someone knows more about them and how much a good relationship with them might help?
Some people who would be great or bring something else:
WordPress people: Graham Armfield (Coolfields Consulting), and Rian Rietveld (she’s Dutch and has done some testing/working of WP admin backend with a blind Dutch government employee). Jules Ernst (http://www.200ok.nl/) has been working years in web accessibility and specifically with governments (municipalities).
Svetlana (Sveta) Kouznetsova (careful, there’s a also a pro tennis player with that name) http://svknyc.com is also doing her own thing. I don’t know how easy she’d be to work with, but she’s passionate about Sh*t Working and PWDs being able to do whatever they want/need to… especially, as a Deaf developer she’s quite aware of how for too many devs accessibility == “screen readers”. She also does WP.
Bram Duvigneau. @bramduvigneau I’m not sure what he’s exactly doing, but it’s a lot of freelance.
You already have Marco and Sina on the list. They would be teh awesome. They’re also both really busy all the time it seems.
I’m on decent terms with Steve Faulkner and he’s at Paciello Group now. I really like how they have blogs about stuff interesting to developers wanting to know more about stuff like ARIA and widgets.