The blog has been dark for about a month. but the office has been anything but.

We've been working a lot - way more than we expected - to get our projects done. We've done great at delivery. with upgrades to our faculty evaluation system pushed out the door on time (followed by a trouble-free reporting cycle). a brand-new award nomination system launched last night (basically a build-your-own form generator) and a soon-to-launch software project documentation/lifecycle tracker for one of our favorite clients (you know who you are!).

We're now in the final 48 hours of work on a slick Flex-based benchmarking survey suite. The final 48 hours of a 7 month project that has cost Matt more than enough sleep and both of us a nice slice of youth. HOWEVER...it's a beautiful thing and will give our client the ability to support and encourage the growth of their clients in a way that hasn't been done on this scale before. I can't wait to post screenshots and show off what we accomplished. This application integrates data from two outside databases. compiling and calculating additional data on top of it. and providing a rich reporting UI that includes Excel export and on-screen chart creation. Flex makes the graphical and user interface elements of the project so much more attractive! We're also expecting a heavy load. which we're feeling more comfortable about supporting through the offloading of a lot of work to the client through the use of Flex and web services. Can't wait to get it pushed live!

Also coming down to the final week is our long-discussed Online Community project. We've been focused on making it a stunning and useful experience and at the same time adapting features to meet last minute shifts in requirements. This isn't another Facebook/MySpace/Ning site - this product is for colleges and universities to use. The OC provides a high-content. simple-to-use and CRM-oriented platform for alumni to reconnect with one another and their alma mater. Lots of time has been spent balancing the integration needs of the institution (always interesting) and ease of use - at this stage I'm convinced that few other online community vendors in this space have considered these issues as thoroughly as we have.

The OC has been previewed to a few people (and they've been impressed). but next Saturday is the "big one" - the feature-complete dog and pony show that will either excite the heck out of them or make us wonder where we went wrong. Early indications are positive. but we've got a ways to go to be ready for it. I'm going to steal as many ideas from Steve Jobs as I can for the Powerpoint portion of the talk - possibly even the attire!

So that's where we've been: working on a ton of Flex. kicking out a little bit of inspired ColdFusion and spending lots of time in meetings. A couple weeks from now we'll post screenshots (and probably put the community up on Labs for folks to play with). Our clients are eager to get these projects wrapped up. so back to work I go. We're doing great and we'll be doing even better after go-live!