Employees are enthused about the new space, with its soaring 14’ ceilings and a contemporary, lofty feel that showcases the 100-year-old building's heavy timbers and post and beam construction. The new office space is supportive of the company's open collaborative style of working. And the building itself exudes an energy and creativity derived from adaptive reuse and respect for the old and the new.

That building, along with two other century-old mill buildings, are part of the larger strategy of Pilot Mill, an urban redevelopment project. A primary objective for the office buildings was historic preservation, and the community, which abuts the nearby Historic Oakwood and Mordecai communities, is an interesting blend of old and new construction. Much as they did nearly a century ago, these three key buildings helped fuel the birth of surrounding residential and retail properties, creating today's thriving urban community which is a stone's throw for Glenwood South and downtown proper. The space that hesketh.com will occupy is in the 1894 building, the oldest of only three surviving buildings among the score that once made up Pilot Mill's textile operations.

Nearby greenways, sidewalks, eateries, shops, museums, and bike racks will provide a marked change of pace for many employees who have been largely constrained to cars for lunchtime outings. Several employees will now be able to bike or walk to work, while others enjoy easy access via I-40/Wade Avenue, Wake Forest Road, or Capital Boulevard. Account Manager Barb Baranski says, "I can't wait for the chance to bike during lunch or to the dojo after work." She and others who commute to work plan on walking or bringing bikes for use during the day or before heading home in the evening. On rainy days, you'll likely find team members congregating in the new space's greatly enhanced communal areas.

"Supporting growth was one aim, but my main goal was to find a location that was as inspiring as our team. When I walked into the space at Pilot Mill, I felt energized with possibilities. That’s when I knew we’d found our new corporate home. Not only is the space beautiful, but it blends old and new in an incredibly respectful way. That it is within walking and biking distance of downtown was the icing on the cake”," says Hesketh.

For more information on current career opportunities available at hesketh.com, see http://hesketh.com/about/careers.

About Pilot Mill

More than a century ago, Pilot Mill was one of two textile mills in Raleigh that produced unfinished cotton, sometimes called gray goods. James and William Williamson purchased the site in 1892, built the first mill building in 1894, the second in 1903, and a third in 1910, as Pilot Mill's production expanded from 1.3 million yards of plaid fabric in 1904 to more than 8 million yards of a variety of fabrics in 1910 when the last of the three preserved buildings was built. More than twenty buildings existed as part of the mill at one point in the 1960's.

The mill's ownership passed through the hands of many investors both before and after it ceased its textile operations. The 1980's saw a failed attempt at redeveloping the property and a foreclosure. In 1997, Hedgehog Holdings joined in the purchase of the seven acres of land where the three original buildings existed. While encountering many obstacles, the developers and local artisans worked to preserve the unique elements of each building, salvaging any materials that could be reused. When salvage was not an option, custom-made matching materials or old material from a South Carolina mill undergoing demolition were used. Bricked in windows were reopened and replaced with custom-made ones mimicking every detail of the originals.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Pilot Mill's achievements in preservation and urban redevelopment have resulted in its receiving the Capital Area Preservation's prestigious Anthemion Award as well as The Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Community Appearance for enhancing the beauty of the City of Raleigh.

Rails is an open-source Web application framework that's notable for its highly structured approach to building Web applications — not only does it include a lot of the functionality that programmers usually have to build themselves when writing Web applications, but it also provides a structure for everything from how files are organized to how database tables are named. Rails rewards programmers for utilizing this structure by enabling them to get things done without writing much code.

A developer who knows Ruby on Rails will understand how just about any Rails application is structured right from the outset. When you outsource development of a Rails application, moving the application in house for ongoing maintenance is straightforward, as is adding a new developer to your team. At a source code level, Rails applications are all quite similar, even if the functionality is completely different. The structured approach taken by Rails greatly reduces the risk that a developer will wander off and build something that can't be understood, much less maintained.

Ruby on Rails is new — version 1.0 was released in December, 2005, 15 months after the first public release. Ruby, the scripting language used to build Rails, was originally released in 1995, around the same time as Java. The biggest reason that Rails has seen such rapid success is that it builds on the best parts of the Web application frameworks that preceded it. The creators of Ruby on Rails adopted the best practices of the Java and PHP communities and baked them into a new framework.

The Rails Philosophy

In building Web applications, two important factors are speed of development and maintainability after release. Ruby on Rails is strong in these areas because of its philosophical approach, which is based based on two principles: "Don't repeat yourself" and "Convention over configuration."

"Don't repeat yourself" is straightforward. Code in a Rails application is organized to make it easy for developers to build their application so that each piece of functionality only exists in one place, where it can be reused throughout the application. In an application that adheres to the Rails philosophy, you never need to trawl through dozens of pages changing the footer on every one, nor do you need to check in multiple places that you've made the zip code required when a user enters an address.

The idea behind "Convention over configuration" is that Rails makes many assumptions about how an application should be organized, what things should be named, and how databases should be laid out. Not coincidentally, coming up with these kinds of conventions is generally one of the toughest problems in application development. Most organizations have their own set of conventions, but Rails goes a step further and suggests a single convention that applies to all Rails applications. The primary advantage here is that developers are liberated from the configuration files that most frameworks require. As long as you adhere to the Rails conventions, many things that you would ordinarily have to write code for just work. Convention over configuration is responsible for most of the efficiency advantages Rails provides over other platforms.

The Components of Rails

The creators of Rails chose the Ruby programming language because it offered the very strong object-oriented capabilities of languages like Java with the flexibility of scripting languages like Perl and PHP. Developers have tried to emulate some of the best features of Rails in other languages, but many of the best features of Rails depend strongly on the capabilities that Ruby offers.

Ruby on Rails is a collection of libraries, including a templating library which enables you to mix code that will be executed on the server with regular HTML markup to make it easy to build dynamic Web applications. In the world of Ruby on Rails, the intent is that these templates will only be used to present dynamic data. The business logic resides elsewhere. For example, there's a layout feature that enables programmers to wrap the content on their pages in a header and footer (and possibly other common elements as well) without including any code at all in the individual views, thus eliminating even the common header and footer include statements that are repeated on every page in most applications.

Ruby on Rails provides a Model-View-Controller framework that splits up an application to provide structure, flexibility, and reuse. The controller accepts incoming requests from the browser and then routes them to the proper part of the application. After processing, the controller passes the results to the view layer for presentation. Business logic resides in the Model layer, which takes care of database interaction as well as processes like calculating shipping costs and sales tax, or finding search results, or validating user input. The View layer is used to present the results. Use of MVC frameworks in Web applications has been popular with Java developers since 1999.

The last component of Rails is a database persistence framework that provides a bridge between a relational database like MySQL, MS SQL, or Oracle and an application. It enables you to treat data stored in a relational database like regular objects within your application.

The Other Side of the Hype

Ruby on Rails has a lot going for it, but there are some things to look out for as well before taking the leap. First, because Rails is still new, the pool of Ruby on Rails experts is not very large, even though Ruby on Rails is not difficult to learn, Before making a big commitment to Ruby on Rails, make sure that you can find the experts you need, whether through staffing or outsourcing.

Deployment challenges are another mark of the relative immaturity of Ruby on Rails. Figuring out how and where to deploy your applications is not as easy as it is for other platforms. Finding a Web host where you can deploy your Rails application and getting everything up and running can be painful, especially when compared to platforms like PHP and ASP.NET. If you're deploying the application internally, chances are your systems administrator is going to have to do some research to get your Ruby on Rails application running on your own server. The deployment picture for Ruby on Rails continues to improve, but right now dealing with deployment can be a complex issue.

Because Ruby on Rails is still changing rapidly, it may be best for some organizations to delay adoption. The core Rails libraries are still being updated frequently, as are many of the supplemental libraries that many developers use. Keeping up with the state of the art in the Rails world is a big job, and not all development teams are suited to take on that job.

The Bottom Line

Should you consider adopting Ruby on Rails for your next Web application project? The ideal trial project for Ruby on Rails is a new application that won't be accessing a legacy database, hosted on a server running Linux or some other Unix variation. Ruby on Rails works fine on Windows, but is still better suited to Unix-based environments. Ideally the application will stand on its own rather than being a piece of a larger application. Ruby on Rails is most powerful in terms of streamlining database interactions, so an application where you are manipulating information in a database will enable you to reap the greatest rewards from Rails.

Rails enables developers to get more done in less time, but for each project you have to assess whether that argument is applicable. A lot depends on the project requirements, and the expertise and enthusiasm of the development team. If your developers are clamoring to try out Ruby on Rails, then it's probably worth a shot. Very few new platforms will be adopted successfully if they are imposed from the top down.

Even if Rails isn't the right fit for you right now, it very well may be in the next year or two, as the platform continues to mature.

According to Frank Smith, Marketing and Communications, First Citizens, this award goes to a business that shares the bank's own focus on exceptional customer service. The award "is given to companies that go above and beyond customer expectations in delivering service," said Smith. The Raleigh Chamber of Commerce promotes the award and provides the panel of business professionals who judge the nominees.

Businesses can nominate themselves for the prestigious award, or be nominated by one of their customers. In this case, hesketh.com was nominated by the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED). This award "describes exactly the kind of support we have always received from hesketh.com. Their attention to and awareness of our business needs is extraordinary. They always have our best interests at heart and we can trust that their recommendations have put CED’s needs before their own," said CED president Monica Doss in her nominating letter.

"I like to say that each day brings an opportunity to serve our customers better. We know we set our bar high for customer service. This award is validation of both how high we set it and how well our team has adopted it as our standard procedure. And I thank our employees for that," said Hesketh after the event.

As RTPnet looks to reformulate its own Web site and strategic vision, Heather Hesketh was seen as a vital influencer and advisor in the Web committee's decision-making process. The committee is intent on adopting practices that make maintaining and changing its site and delivery of member services easier, as well as expanding services to better meet the needs of non-profits. Because hesketh.com has pioneered Web industry concepts such as Progressive Enhancement and Progressive Development, this board appointment was a natural fit. "Given that our company has evolved to focus primarily on non-profits and higher education, it makes it easy for me to advise on issues and opportunities that RTPnet, as well as the non-profits it serves, will have to confront," said Hesketh.

This 2007 Raleigh marathon and half marathon event marks the return of the marathon to the City of Oaks after a five year absence. The name honors the abundance of oak trees and natural areas found in North Carolina's capital city. As an event sponsor, hesketh.com encourages you to celebrate the diversity of Raleigh's landscape, from modern city to forest trails and open farmland by participating in or volunteering for this Raleigh marathon and related events.

Heather Hesketh, CEO of hesketh.com, says, "Sponsoring this event allows us not only to support athletes, other marathon participants, and our city, but also to help raise money for two very worthy causes." Beneficiaries of the event are the American Cancer Society and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Captured in conversation with Paul Jones, Hesketh was chosen to bring an awareness of North Carolina's technology sector to the forefront in the taping for the North Carolina feature segment that the History Channel plans to air in June 2007. Those directing the segment's production felt it important to include the late 20th century emergence of the technology sector in North Carolina, representing a departure from the traditional agrarian and textile industries that earlier shaped the state's economy.

"I'm proud to be recognized, along with Paul, as a mover and shaker in the emergence of the tech sector in North Carolina," says Hesketh. "It's important for us to increase the visibility of our community. And, it's the reason our company continually contributes to the Council for Entrepreneurial Development's efforts to heighten awareness of North Carolina's tech sector."

Progressive Development – sounds like a building strategy to breathe life into a stagnant community, doesn't it? Only the neighborhood – the Web – differs from what you might have first imagined. Progressive Development is the deliberate and ongoing process of breathing new life into web sites to better serve the changing needs of site visitors. Buildings actually provide a good metaphor for understanding the concept of Progressive Development. To quote the unsuspecting hero of many user experience designers:

Age plus adaptivity is what makes a building come to be loved. The building learns from its occupants, and they learn from it…The house and its occupants mold to each other twenty-four hours a day, and the building accumulates the record of that intimacy.
— Stewart Brand, in How Buildings Learn

You've probably admired certain buildings that evolve gracefully – that gas station that is now an architect's office or that corner store that is now a modern home. Somehow, it simply keeps pace with trends without major reconstruction. Its inhabitants aren't inconvenienced by the changes; the space merely adapts to its inhabitants' needs and expectations.

Just what you'd like your web site to do, right? Before we talk too much about adapting web sites, though, we must first consider how they are built.

Progressive Enhancement — an important foundation

Initial construction techniques make a big difference in the adaptability of buildings and web sites. One technique, Progressive Enhancement¹, bears striking similarities to classic post and beam, as well as modern commercial steel frame, construction. This technique, first formally defined in the web community in 2003, is rapidly gaining momentum. AOL, Yahoo!, and Microsoft are recent and notable advocates. The larger and more competitive the site, the more critical adaptability becomes due to economies of scale. However, you don't have to be one of the “big guys” to benefit. In fact, you receive payback for your online investment every time you adapt the site to meet the needs of your organization or site visitors.

Like post and beam construction, Progressive Enhancement centers on two basic elements. Post and beam uses horizontal supports resting on vertical timbers. Progressive Enhancement also uses two key concepts – content contained within independent structural definitions². Most importantly, though, both construction methods are incredibly durable. And neither method is bound to any particular presentation style. A post and beam house lends itself either initially or through transformation to everything from rustic to traditional to sleek contemporary. With Progressive Enhancement, web sites demonstrate similarly amazing flexibility in presentation style, while also accommodating an enormous variety of browsers.

Must form and function follow major funding?

What does this approach really mean to the Web, though? Over the last decade, increasingly sophisticated web coding techniques, languages, and browsers emerged. Today, underneath the covers of most web pages, you find content interspersed with table-based layouts, embedded graphics, and a mix of languages. In fact, these routine and seemingly "standard" construction methods bear striking similarities to stick-built home construction. You simply fold in the latest stylistic trend wherever you need it. The possibilities are endless – until you want to make changes. Suddenly, the existing implementation is revealed to be incredibly complex, stifling, and difficult to change.

Overhauling a "stick-built" web site is labor-intensive and costly. No wonder budgets only allow major redesigns every 2-3 years. Unless planned for during the initial site design, those 2-3 years often mark a period of abstinence from really improving the site. Sure you write and edit copy. You add new pages. But substantive changes in architecture, look, or function mean completely rethinking the fundamental site and page design. The result? The "dynamic Web medium" is largely not living up to that claim. Sites are literally being resuscitated every few years, rather than evolving or breathing naturally like the communities they support. Not to mention that each major overhaul means a major budget and major timeline – and presents a major risk.

Progressive Enhancement — empowering Progressive Development

Having explored the advantages of the Progressive Enhancement construction technique, let's plunge into this new mindset called Progressive Development. Progressive Development is all about instant gratification. It's not that this ongoing evolution doesn't take effort, of course. Progressive Development requires a change in thought and action. Web sites, like those amazing buildings we've admired, can't simply be “maintained” until the next overhaul.

Progressive Development advocates smaller, iterative changes to the site. If you regularly use a particular web site, you know firsthand that small improvements are appreciated. On the other hand, massive ones can upset the apple cart and can waste your precious time in relearning, even if the changes are good. Your mindset must shift toward providing little puffs of fresh air that provide instant gratification for your site's users. With this approach, you give users no cause to roam to other competing sites. And you don't overwhelm your customer support staff with the high volume of questions and complaints that often result from major changes.

Even CFOs find the Progressive Development approach highly desirable. Studies demonstrating the savings associated with Progressive Enhancement and Progressive Development are just beginning to emerge, showing truly astounding results. The savings over the major overhaul approach are on the order of 30 percent. CFOs receive instant gratification, too, when they see incremental ongoing investments in the site, rather than huge ones that carry a much higher risk of failure – and the potential for unplanned additional expenditures. Given this, there's no need to postpone the joy of better serving your web community's needs and interests.

Spread the joy proactively!

By now, you're probably wondering what those regular little puffs of fresh air should be. The best approach is to evolve the site based on deliberate activities that identify the appropriate adaptations. Think about performing these activities regularly – perhaps quarterly or semi-annually. Consider placing a rotation of these activities into your plan, rather than performing all of them at once, so that changes to the site stay incremental. Good activities include:

• Usability testing
  No matter how good your initial usability test results might have been, user expectations usually change over time. This is particularly true of sites that manage to inspire people to frequently visit and participate. Usability testing can help ensure that you are meeting expectations of repeat users without compromising the needs of new visitors.
• Audience assessments
  New types of users, with different requirements, may emerge as your site becomes more visible and popular. Existing users' expectations often change, too. Some, but not all, of these expectations are prompted by evolution of the web medium itself.
• Evaluation of site statistics
  Site visitors leave little footprints that many organizations routinely collect and ignore. Ongoing analysis can help you understand cyclical or seasonal patterns, the burn-in rate for new functionality, the ease or difficulty of finding resources on your site, and most importantly, what portions of your site are most appreciated by the community you serve.
• Product, service, and process assessments
  What your organization offers its community, as well as your delivery process, will change over time. If you change either one, evaluate how to reflect that change in your online community. Even if your community isn't predominantly online, you may be able to streamline the process for both audiences using Internet technologies.

Progressive Development is the revolution of evolution. Instead of shocking changes, it provides constant, gradual changes that are better for users and for business. It builds on sound, standards-based construction techniques. And it saves money. Isn't it time you started thinking progressively?

¹ Steven Champeon, Progressive Enhancement and the Future of Web Design at www.webmonkey.com

² In Progressive Enhancement, document structure is styled by cascading style sheets (CSS) and in some cases, through the use of external scripts. Content is kept separate, with style-related markup intentionally kept to a bare minimum. Presentation characteristics, typically also specified by CSS, are generally isolated from both the semantically meaningful document structure and its contents.

The Women in Business event honored 25 businesswomen, and lifetime achievement award winner Elaine Marshall, for their excellence and accomplishments.  The 40 Under 40 Leadership Awards annually recognize the Triangle’s most influential and highly accomplished young leaders. Hesketh received the special distinction of being the only person named to both lists in 2006.

“I’m especially happy about being named a member of both groups, simply because it will further strengthen my ties to other community leaders so that we can work together to give back to others,” says Hesketh. Over the past decade, Hesketh has ensured that communities, both on the web and the Triangle area, are nurtured by hesketh.com and its services. The company’s recent emphasis on enabling non-profits and higher education to cultivate and sustain their own communities is a natural outgrowth of that thinking. “In one sense, it allows us to exponentially grow our contribution to community,” she said.

It all started with the chicken and the egg, and when that could not be easily resolved, we moved onto is it butter or is it margarine?  And of course, let’s not forget the classic case of trying to decipher who put what into the chocolate and/or peanut butter? Let’s face it – we thrive on a good argument. And today, it’s about Linux and Windows.

As we all know, no matter how thin you make a pancake, it will always have two sides. And from the breakfast table to the data center, the statement still applies.  There are two [very passionate] schools of thought regarding Linux and Windows.  In one camp, the mantra is “To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up a Windows box, you just need to work on it.”  In the other, it is “Don’t let the penguin fool you, Windows is better.” So what’s the skinny? While comparing Microsoft to Linux might seem like comparing a cannon to a water pistol, it is clearly a case of David versus Goliath with Linux emerging as the poster child for the open-source movement.

Microsoft has frequently decried Linux as a threat to commercial software companies, but open source isn’t about destroying the rights of established companies to sell their intellectual property on the open market – it is about giving developers and enterprises the freedom to develop solutions that meet their business needs. 

Linux is known for its dependability, low cost of ownership, security, and freedom to modify source code.  Because it is based on an open source model, it isn’t crippled by software provider release dates, and can be upgraded at a pace that the development community and users dictate.  For all of these reasons, Linux has established a strong following as a server operating system – accounting for nearly 12 percent of new server operating system shipments.  But that alone does not settle the argument of Linux over Windows.  For that, read on…

• Security:  As an open source product that practices “security by transparency,” Linux tends to be secure by default.  This is because with open source, anyone can inspect and modify the underlying source code.  Therefore, security issues are quickly identified and corrected – often, before hackers have an opportunity to exploit them. On the other hand, closed systems that practice “security by obscurity,” such as Windows, cannot compete.
• Scalability:  As a true multi-user, multi-processing operating system, Linux can grow in tandem with an organization and its computing needs – and in some cases, without having to pay additional software licensing fees.  Not so with Windows – where each installation = an additional fee.
• Performance:  The efficient, compact Linux kernel is designed to maximize use of its hardware resources, delivering high performance with very little overhead.  To find proof, just take a look at Amazon.com and Google – both proponents of Linux. 
• Systems Management, Availability, Reliability:  Linux offers high levels of reliability, centralized management, and uptime.  It can run for months without a reboot and almost never needs to be reinstalled.  Its reliability and dependability stem from a solid design, based on the best Unix principles, and an open, community-based development process.
• Openness and Compatibility: Up-to-the-minute…a great way to describe Linux development. As an open source product, Linux  is a modern network operating system that the development community is building and enhancing in line with the latest Internet and international technical standards.  Unlike the proprietary shield enveloping Windows, Linux generally incorporates these standards as they are set out by the industry bodies that write them.  With Linux, there is no lock-in.
  
  In fact, Linux is distributed by several companies, allowing customers to pick and choose the flavor that best suits their needs.  Windows, on the other hand, is a proprietary product – with Microsoft forcing its users to accept what it offers.
• Cost of Ownership:  Linux provides a lower longer term cost of ownership and higher return on investment for the following reasons:
  • Less downtime:  The stability and reliability of Linux reduces business costs associated with downtime (e.g. support and lost  productivity).
  • Lower hardware costs:  Linux makes efficient use of hardware resources and can run on less powerful hardware while still delivering high performance.
  • Lower software upgrade costs:  With closed systems, an initial investment in software usually lasts for three years or less, after which upgrades must be purchased for bug fixes and new features.  With Linux, upgrades can be applied as the community develops them.  Further, Linux is covered by the General Public License, stating that it and all derivative works must be distributed with the source code – making it virtually impossible for anyone to monopolize the Linux sector.
• Rate of Evolution:  Microsoft’s closed development project will find it impossible to advance at the rate of Linux.  Factors that have been named as drivers of this progress are:  the number of active developers; the quantity and the quality of the feedback from the field; the short development cycle from development team to end user; the absence of corporate “meddling” in the design process; and the independently developed open source subsystems frequently incorporated into Linux, giving it quantum advances in a short period of time.
• Support:  Since the source code for open source software is freely available, most of the popular products are supported by thriving communities of developers, commercial-end users, and enthusiasts.  In fact, for those not familiar with the open source community, the quality of free technical support can be shocking.  Having access to the best and the brightest who are ready to assist you at no charge when you encounter problems that can’t be solved by reading your Linux documentation runs circles around Windows support, which is only free for a limited time and often lacks the ability to provide resolution.

While Linux is not the right answer for every user or every data center application, it has become a strong contender – posing a serious threat to Microsoft’s near monopoly.  With strength in numbers, Linux is a movement rather than a company or a technology.  It cannot be bought out; it cannot be crushed by lawsuits or legislations; and it cannot be out-marketed.  With Linux, ownership of key assets is avoided; the community works and shares in the results of its labor; and there is an avid and active dislike for Microsoft’s proprietary, school yard bully approach.  But beyond beliefs, Linux is proving over and over again to be a better value when compared to Windows.  Now, please pass the syrup.

Champeon has been a member of the SxSW Interactive Advisory Board for three years.

Heather Hesketh will also be attending the conference — immersing herself in the creative cacophony that is SxSW — which has been described as an incubator of new, cutting-edge technologies.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SXSW: http://www.sxsw.com