Gavin’s Blog

In 2005 Stolen Notebook went to E3 and being the business guy I of course made the arrangements. Some things went very right with our trip’s planning and execution while other things went horribly wrong. Today I’ll focus on one area of our trip that could have gone better: the accommodations.

We stayed at the Ramada Plaza West Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd which was listed as being 6.5 miles from the convention center and was $190/night for a quad. Not bad I thought, slightly under $50 a night per person and reasonably close. Wrong. If you are planning on going to E3 the first piece of advice I would give is get a hotel whose distance to the convention center is measured in blocks not miles. The first mistake I made in selecting our hotel was that 6.5 miles in downtown LA is not the same as 6.5 miles in Madison, WI. Taking the E3 shuttle took about 45 min to an hour not counting having to get to the first come first serve shuttle stop 15 to 30 min early to ensure a seat. Getting back the shuttle wait is even worse and the traffic is awful as it is usually rush hour. Additionally, if you are an unscrupulous bunch and plan to sleep more than the allotted number in your room you will be short shuttle bracelets. This for us along with not wanting to have to wait for the shuttle led to a lot of cab rides. A 6.5 mile cab ride should cost around $30. I say should because in our experience the ability and honesty of cab drivers varied greatly. We had one driver who knew all the shortcuts and got us there fast and for under $25. But we also had to get out of a cab a few miles down Santa Monica Blvd from our hotel as our cab fare approached $70 and it became clear our driver was intentionally taking a longer route back to our hotel and his meter was counting much quicker than most. Thus began the always exciting footrace against dusk through an unfamiliar area of an unfamiliar city.

Bottom line: if you’re going to E3 get a hotel close to the convention center. There are several available that are reasonably priced. Book as early as possible, but if your choice is not available don’t despair check E3’s accommodations site everyday and you will notice rooms open up as people’s plans change and reservations are cancelled. A close hotel will save you the headache of travel to and from the convention center. If you do chose a hotel further away in spite of our experience I still recommend taking a cab if you are four our more people. It will be quicker and not all that expensive when split up. Just remember to use the same caution you would use in any large city and don’t let someone take you for $70 before realizing what is going on.

Thought I’d make a quick post about how I’m going about the bookkeeping for Stolen Notebook.

Initially I bought Microsoft Money 2005 for Small Business after debating between it and a very similar program offered by Quicken. Even though Money is a fairly basic program, after using it I ended up deciding that it’s still a little too thorough of a program for Stolen Notebook’s current needs. Most, if not all of the following are common to the majority of businesses, holding inventory, having an office, having accounts receivable, buying supplies, and paying salaries. From what I’ve seen a program such as Money would be ideal if Stolen Notebook was a small office supply company. However, Stolen Notebook is a company that pays no salaries, has no inventory, owns no equipment (members provide their own), and has few expenses other than web hosting and I therefore find that Microsoft Excel is perfectly well suited for our current bookkeeping needs. I setup one worksheet where I enter any money that goes in or out of Stolen Notebook’s checking account and one worksheet for each member’s capital account. The main worksheet tells me how much money Stolen Notebook has and that figure is used in the other worksheets to determine the value of each member’s capital account. This system keeps everything very simple and allows me to track both the company’s finances and the capital accounts of each member in one document.

That being said, I do of course look forward to the day when Stolen Notebook’s success leads to both the need for a more advanced accounting program and the long term financial security that insures I never have to live in my mother’s basement.

So this is my Stolen Notebook business blog. Here I’ll try and keep everyone posted on my work for Stolen Notebook.

Currently not much is happening on the business front, but I expect that to change as we get closer to releasing our game.

My work in the past has included drawing up the Operating Agreement for Stolen Notebook and setting up Stolen Notebook’s bank account. By the way if you have little to no legal background and need to draw up legal documents Nolo publishes an excellent series of books. I used their “Buy-Sell Agreement Handbook”, “Form Your Own Limited Liability Company”, and “Web & Software Development A Legal Guide”. These books all come with a CD that has the full example documents used in the text and by combining them and editing them I was able to create a pretty solid operating agreement. Tony’s father did show it to a lawyer at his office and they both made some very helpful suggestions, but the books provided for a pretty usable document. As far as our banking is concerned I selected US bank. They are excellent for a small business such as ours. Through US Bank we have a checking account with a Visa check card. The account has no minimum balance and no maintenance fee as long as we do 150 transactions or less per month.

Finally, a little about myself. I received a BBA Cum Laude from the University of Miami in December of 2003 and moved to Madison in August of the following year with the goal of helping to create Stolen Notebook and not live in my mother’s basement. I am currently working as a full time temp and waiting for the day when Stolen Notebook can be my full time job.