This is the third in a multi-part Lighting the Lantern series about the origin of Lantern Three.

If Lantern Three is a company about problem solvers bringing their expertise to the table, then dogfooding is appropriate, if not essential. We can’t be about solving problems the right way, once by outsourcing our company setup to someone who doesn’t share our values.

As tech folks, we had opinions about every aspect of our setup; as we’d advise others, we chose solutions that best-fit our needs.

Groupware: Google Apps

The first order of business was setting up our @lanternthree.com email addresses. Barry, George, and I cover the spectrum on email servers (installation and administration of MS Exchange, Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise, Sendmail, and Sun One) and clients. George and I also have email history that goes back many, many years and incorporates mail from lots of clients. I consider myself a long-term beta tester of Google Apps since I migrated all of my personal email there in October of 2007.

With only a handful of brief outages since I migrated, and given the few resources we have dedicated to administer our infrastructure, this was the easiest decision we made. It was effortless to setup our account skin it appropriately, and we were using Google Docs to collaborate within a week.

Web hosting: Amazon EC2

Barry, George, and I all host physical servers that are directly Internet accessible in our homes. We could have easily hosted any required services on any of those machines (or even bought new ones).

Then why did we choose the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud? It wasn’t because cloud computing is a buzzword, but because of all the benefits that cloud computing offers: the ability to inexpensively host highly available virtual machines with minimal worry about hardware failure, power, cooling, rackspace, bandwidth, and a slew of other obligations. While there are specific security considerations when utilizing clouds, industry best practices from other arenas certainly help. Proper storage and utilization of off-line private keys and certificate authorities permit the use of encrypted volumes, files, and transfers. This dramatically reduces the risk of data loss through drive attrition, loss of control, etc.

We chose Amazon based on the maturity of EC2 and our specific needs. We may not suggest the same for every company, but it was the right decision for us when we made it.

Media Design

It was very important for us to find a design team who shared our values. Using the logo Stokefire procured for us as input, Will Rees and Bo Ramos were given total creativity to design our site, which freed me to focus on site structure and content. Once the design was locked down in early July, we were able to code the site and draft the content concurrently.  Will and Bo were also responsible for our WordPress theme, Twitter skin, and PowerPoint template.

When we had a solid first draft of the entire site, we brought Stephanie Hay from Tellenger in to review and edit the site content, our bios, and our resumes to ensure everything was consistent.

Nic Tan is the photographer who shot most of our bio pictures; we expect to include more of his work in future versions of the site.

By hiring a team of professionals who shared our values, we became a fully branded new media company in about 90 days, and we’re thrilled with the results.