Hi and welcome to the ProposalCafe.com Blog.

I will have to admit, this is my first time to write anything in a blog. Maybe some of you who are experienced bloggers can jump in and help me out. I believe that any registered member can post on the blog ... we'll see.

I guess it would be appropriate for the first blog entry on ProposalCafe.com to describe how this site came to be. I can tell you, its been an interesting couple of months.

Chuck Keller and I have both been independent proposal consultants in the Atlanta area for many years. We met at the local APMP (that's the Association of Proposal Management Professionals) meetings. Chuck has always been a go-getter, teaching college courses in proposal writing, conducting training seminars, co-authoring books, and a bunch of other activities in addition to making a living as a proposal consultant. (Let me pause here to tell you the secret of getting a million dollars as a proposal consultant. First you start with 2 million dollars. You keep working as a proposal consultant and before you know it, you'll have a million ... but I digress.) I haven't been nearly as active in my career as Chuck. I have worked on lots of proposals but I have more of a laid-back approach to life in general. I have also spent quite a bit of time on the "other side of the table", writing Statements of Work and other RFP documents for a local government agency.

About a year ago, Chuck moved to the panhandle of Florida. He still does proposal consulting work and conducts training seminars. He is also currently helping to form a Florida Chapter of the APMP. (Did I mention that Chuck is a HUGE University of Florida Gator fan?)

Chuck called me a couple of months ago and told me he had an idea for a website that would provide a portal for everything we could think of that had to do with proposals and grants. Let me reveal another secret ... neither one of us are web designers. I have been the webmaster on a few sites, including the Georgia Chapter of the APMP, but there is a big difference between a professional web designer and a volunteer webmaster. ... a BIG difference. But I didn't tell Chuck that because I liked his idea and wanted to be a part of bringing it into reality.

After countless emails and phone calls discussing things like business names, the formation of a business, domain names, content, navigation systems, meta tags, sponsorships, publicity, affiliate programs, logos, etc. etc. etc. and so on, we are almost ready to launch the site. We REALLY hope you will find it useful.

I have rambled enough for one night but I do want to mention one other thing. Putting this website together has given new meaning to the old saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." My prior experience with developing websites involved FrontPage or Dreamweaver. With all the features that we wanted have on this site it became clear that we were going to have to step up to the next level. The real geeks call that Internet 2.0. The current trend in website development is to use a Content Management System. The mantra is "Content is King." ProposalCafe.com was developed using an Open Source product called Joomla. The learning curve has been pretty steep but the more I use this system, the more I appreciate its balance between creativity and functionality.

Again, we welcome you to ProposalCafe.com. I'll close with Chuck's tagline - he's very proud of it.

Have a winning day at the Proposal Cafe!