Interdependent Web

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Why are our prices so low?  Why do we freely provide information about how we do things we charge to do?  Why do we refer to ourselves as plural?  What is the significance of the name "Interdependent Web"?  What is the significance of the funny colors in our logo?

First, the plural thing.  Currently there is just one person doing business under the name Interdependent Web, Ben Stallings, but that may change, so I (we) figured it was best to plan ahead.  I also work with other freelancers, subcontracting for each other, and gratis with other open-source developers, so if you hire Interdependent Web, the chances are you may get two or more people working on your project even if you only work directly with one.

The name Interdependent Web refers to the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."  Not only am I (Ben) a lifelong UU, but the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is also a UU.  He has written that he created the Web partly as an expression of his religious principles.  We strive to create Web sites as an expression of our principles.  A Web site should not stand alone; it should be interdependent, reaching out to contribute to other sites and to take in their contributions.  It should actively encourage participation from readers whenever possible.  And it should contribute to the open-source ecosystem from which it draws -- any custom modules developed for one site should be contributed back to the community for use in other sites.

That brings me to why we blog here about what we're learning... the way we see it, anything we learn about open-source software should also be open-source.  Information about how to build Drupal or PmWiki or PHP/MySQL sites is hard enough to find without keeping it a trade secret.  What we are selling is not the software itself (which is free), nor our knowledge about it (which should also be free), but merely our time and attention.  It is not our goal to make clients dependent upon us.  It is our goal to get you to a point where you can sustain yourseves.  (see below, re: Permaculture)

Which brings us to our fees.  They are much lower than average for developer fees.  But they meet our costs, which are modest.  Our favorite clients are small businesses and nonprofits that frequently only have a few hundred dollars to spend on a new site.  We like being able to work for our favorite clients. It gives us satisfaction, which is why we are in this business. Therefore we don't price ourselves out of their range.

The colors in our logo come from Ken Wilber's labels for the stages of human psychological development as set out in The Integral Vision: Infrared, Magenta, Red, Amber, Orange, Green, Teal, Turquiose.  (Stages beyond Turquoise on the development spectrum are hypothetical.) For more information about what the colors represent, click the image at left.

Coming from a background in psychology and technology studies, I (Ben) appreciated the analogy of a spectrum to developmental stages (since it implies not only continuous variation but also that there are more stages that are beyond our perception), and saw an analogous evolution in the history of Web sites.  The Infrared (survival) and Magenta (magic-animistic) stages are not likely motives for a Web site, so I omit them... that leaves

• Red: personal Web sites, like FranStallings.com or Angela Davis, the Yarnspinner (or this site, for that matter), which provide one-way communication from individual people
• Amber: institutional, informational sites such as Prairie Star District UUA or Prairie Folklore Theatre, which provide one-way communication from a specific group of people
  
• Orange: interactive scientific or commercial sites, like the SecureProductsWiki or iPhone Life, which encourage participation within a specific discipline or industry
  
• Green: interactive interpersonal, "Web 2.0" sites, like Wikipedia, the popular social networks, and media-sharing sites (we have no projects of this type in good working order, but have experimented with them in the past, and two are currently in the works), which encourage participation from anyone, regardless of background
• Teal and Turquoise: sites that actively interact with other sites and with other programs and devices besides Web browsers, through new semantic protocols such as RDF.  We expect to start working on this type of site in the years to come, with Drupal 7 and beyond.  The distinction between the Teal and Turquoise stages is subtle, and will become clearer as we start to see them more often.

By placing these types of sites on a spectrum we do not in any way mean to call one type better than another.  There will always be a need for personal and institutional, informational sites precisely because they are more fundamental than the more recent types.  We are just asserting that the Web itself is developing, like society, in the footsteps of our collective psychological development.

Another source of our philosophy comes from Permaculture design.  It is our belief that like ecosystems, Web sites should be sustainable, or better yet, self-sustaining.  We strive to apply the design principles of Permaculture to Web development, and we have had more success with some than others.  It's a goal, and a work in progress.  We'll have more to say about this later!

One concrete success we can claim along Permaculture lines is that all our hosting accounts are carbon-neutral, thanks to carbon-offset initiatives by HostGator and DreamHost.  Our office in Kansas and all business trips are also carbon-offset by TerraPass.

We hope that this page has helped shed some light on our philosophy of Web development, and of doing business.  We encourage your comments below.