The Importance of Context

Putting Alcove Consulting into Context ...

Please allow me to share a few thoughts on the importance of "context". On a first visit to a website I usually like to get a sense of who's responsible for its content. I suppose what I'm really trying to do is understand their motives. When I feel I have that understanding I am better prepared to evaluate their message - it gives it context. It's kind of hard to put it into words but without that context I find a site's content somewhat less credible. Many sites provide no such context. I believe those sites fail to understand that a website communicates on a one-to-one basis. I'm writing this - you're reading it. I create content but concede that you have the power in our relationship. I realize that if you aren't interested in my message, other sites - millions of them, are no more than a few mouse clicks away.

I'd like you to trust that the motives behind this site are honorable. I believe that if I earn that trust you will get more out of the site. I hope that by providing information on who we are and why we do the things we do you'll be able to put our content into a meaningful context.

We are Alcove Consulting - a husband and wife team consisting of Heather Mader and yours truly, Ross Macintosh. Alcove Consulting is based in beautiful Nova Scotia, Canada. Heather and I met at architectural school back in the mid 80's. After graduation we were full of fresh young optimism. We got married although we didn't have jobs or any money. Fortunately things worked out for us. We moved to Bermuda where we worked together at a small architectural firm designing expensive houses. After two-and-a-half years of sun, fun and hard work, I guess we had island fever because we were anxious to get back to Canada. Returning was a sort of settling down. Its now ten years later and there's a couple of kids, a house, and a station wagon. There's no dog yet. I've been working for the same firm of architects since our coming home. Heather took a break from her career to have our children - beautiful boys now aged five and 20 months. To be able to work more flexible hours, Heather started Alcove Consulting through which she provides freelance architectural design services.

I found that I could participate in Alcove in addition to my job. I was able to contribute by getting involved in a few web-related projects, illustration jobs, and some graphic design work. It was the web stuff that really was fun to me. Over the past few years in what spare time I have I've become a student of the web. I don't sleep much any more. Into the wee hours of the night I study what I feel works on the web and what doesn't. The potential of the internet continues to amaze me. I've spent alot of time thinking about websites I could develop. Some as business ventures but others just for fun. ( I've put many of those ideas in the Ideas section of this site ). I finally chose to develop this site. It changes the way I study the web. It has changed me from being an observer to more of a participant. While it allows me to share things I've learned, its hands-on creation pushes me to learn new things. Alcove Consulting will eventually use this research in some sort of fabulously profitable web venture. This site is one step for us towards reaching that goal.

Alcove Consulting present this site with the hope it might help others to learn things about their own capacity to create. We've so far managed to avoid using banner or sponsor advertising to offset the costs associated with the site's development. The site's focus is not "commercial" and we want to keep it that way. In the spirit of full disclosure we want you to know that the site does earn a modest income from commissions received for referrals. We are an amazon.com associate giving you an easy way to buy books we recommend and giving us some commission income. We also get modest commissions on some of the software/services we recommend. We use the same products to create this site so we know them well and feel very comfortable recommending them to others. We have made a conscious effort to provide you with alot of useful information and examples so that prior to any downloading you can evaluate if the products will suit your needs. We don't want you to feel that anything we recommend was a waste of your time or money. If you do decide to follow up on any of our quality recommendations, we ask that you follow the links on this site so we will be identified as the referrer. The commissions we receive support us in developing quality content for this site. We feel this approach is alot better than plastering the site with banner ads. We hope you agree.

We hope you'll make DesignStop.Com a regular stop on your travels around the net. We have many ideas for this site and intend to enhance it by adding to it on a ongoing basis. Last but not least, we invite your ideas, concerns, or comments -

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