Interview: Lesli Schauf, Chief Operations Officer
Lesli Schauf, Chief Operations Officer / Owner
Please Give Us a Brief History Of Your Company
I was initially working with some friends who had sponsored me in a charity event, helping them to evaluate web hosts and CMS tools. They needed a reasonably-priced plan with a variety of tools and features, but also needed a genuinely helpful support staff. I first steered them toward one particular host that looked and sounded as if it would work for them, only to find that the folks who used this host were a bit more technically savvy than was implied...so the support, while friendly, was scanty outside of a very narrow framework. Once a good upstream provider was found, I did the quick paperwork necessary to add Scribehost to the TLM Association — and a seven-year internet design, evaluation, and consultancy service now offered web hosting. Two days later the second support tech was officially brought on board. Now we have our own server team and a broader support staff, including 24/7 support queue and forum monitoring, and we’re shortly going to be adding telephone support and adding to our client career resource center.
What Are Your Target Markets?
Our target market is authors and artists: bloggers, fanfic writers, poets, fiction authors, essayists, journalists, painters, photographers, muralists, you name it. Web sites for people in these careers need to be structured a bit differently than other community or business web sites, and their owners may need a little specialized assistance in using their sites to publicize their works and enhance their careers. Their medium — their strength — is words and pictures, yet they may not have the time to learn HTML or scripting languages or internet marketing — let alone read up on various new scripts (or new uses for old tools) that seem to hit the Internet every week. Of those that have learned some web design or development, many may feel that their time is really best spent focusing on their works and their careers.
What Are Your Strengths?
Our communication style is our differentiating strength. Many of us on staff are authors or artists (our staff has columnists, painters, and a sculptor) as well as web technicians, so we know how artists think, what they’ll want to use the tools for, and what information they?ll need to feel comfortable using the tools. We are able to see the possible advantages for authors and artists in nearly any script we install, and we?re able to tell our clients exactly how they can use those tools to their own maximum benefit. This centralizes some of the web design and development resources for these artists, letting them concentrate on their bliss.
What Makes You Different To Other Hosting Companies?
While we offer hosting, we also teach our clients how to use a web site to benefit their writing career: networking, publishing, advertising, search engine enhancement, copyright protection and combating infringement (a key worry for writers and artists, especially those whose work is displayed on the web), fan / community communication, you name it. Desktop publishing gave writers and artists an additional tool for communication — a very powerful tool whose proper use is its own delicate art. The same can be said for authors’ and artists’ web sites. The sites can be incredibly flexible, creative, and engaging spaces for displaying and discussing their works — if the site owners know what they can do with their site and how to do it. We don’t just lease server space. We teach our clients what they can do with their hosting resources.
How Do You See The Web Hosting Market Changing In The Upcoming Few Years?
I think that as web use becomes more prevalent and pervasive, hosting customers will continue to fall into two groups: hobbyists, and professionals. There will, however, be more shading within each group: the hobbyist who actually runs a small side business, so demands a bit more power and options from their web host; the professional who concentrates on offline business opportunities but wants to provide an easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain alternative to their physical business; writers and artists who want to take advantage of Internet distribution models, Creative Commons licensing schemas, and so forth. With an already-saturated market, web hosts will need to focus more on offering holistic education to all of their clients, not just to the few who are already comfortable looking up things on the web or surfing through a FAQ. I see more demand for readily-available tools to learn about using the space and capabilities that they’re leasing. I see less patience with hosts who are unable to provide consistent, continuous service, even if there are explanations for any outages. I see an increasing need for hosts who offer minimal site management services, for those clients who don’t need a full-fledged webmaster yet don’t want to learn how to make the smaller changes themselves (even with a feature-rich control panel). Just as hosts have started offering domain registration, secure certificate purchases, and so on, they’ll need to branch out to services which may be only tangentially related to web hosting itself. There will still be a market for stripped-down hosts, but there will be more demand for hosts that offer additional services. The market will know more, will want more, will demand more — but it won’t all be in neat, predictable packages.
Where Will Your Company Be In 5 Years ?
We’re going to continue to leverage our communication abilities to reach audiences who have traditionally been wary of web hosting, and provide additional services targeted to their specific needs. We’ll gradually add other niches and other approaches, along with adding the staffers to focus on those client groups, so that we don’t dilute our services to our current client base. We’ll continue to look for ways to make site maintenance and management easier, more intuitive, more valuable those individuals and groups.
Why Should Somebody Choose Your Company Over Another Host?
Even if they aren’t a professional writer, someone might want the convenience of having various learning resources easily to hand: web design; legal issues like DMCA compliance; how to easily offer their mature content without making it readily accessible to children. Sure, information about these and other topics is available on the web: but is it easy to find? Intuitive to apply to their particular situation? Does the available reference material take authors? and artists? particular concerns into account? Is the communication style geared toward logical, left-brain thinkers or toward creative, right-brain thinkers? Our communication style and our combination of technical knowledge and right-brain thinking lets us talk with our clients, not just at them...and not just with the technically-inclined folks, but all of our clients.
Would You Like To Add Any Other Comments?
When you’re looking at our web hosting services and trying to decide if they’re right for you, don’t be afraid to ask questions — any questions! We opened our doors as a web host with the desire to educate people about their hosting options. Feel free to post a question in our support forums, send us an email, or even talk with some of our current clients about their experiences.