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eHub Interviews The Form Assembly

Thanks to Cedric Savarese, creator of The Form Assembly for this email interview posted November 26, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

The Form Assembly: The Form Assembly is all about Web Forms. It provides resources and services to easily create and process any kind of web form: contact forms, registration forms, surveys, questionnaires, data-entry screens, etc…

eHub: Why did you start this project?

The Form Assembly: Web forms are at the center of any web application and it’s amazing how many bad forms we still see on the web today. I built my first web-based form builder 5 years ago, and after a very bad experience trying to pay my state taxes online earlier this year, I decided to take another shot at building a tool that would help make state-of-the-art and standard compliant web forms in less time.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth?  Do you have a day job?

The Form Assembly: I do have a day job and a growing family, so it’s quite a challenge but it’s manageable so far.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

The Form Assembly: I’m the sole person working on the project, and that will continue at least until the launch of the Form Assembly 2.0. At that point, I’ll likely need to bring in more people. But I receive a lot of feedback and help from the community. It’s like having another full member in the team. It’s a crucial motivating force.

I have a degree in Computer Science with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. I’ve been working in the IT industry for about 10 years. Since I moved to the US 3 years ago I’ve been doing almost exclusively Web Design and Web Development.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

The Form Assembly: Oh, I don’t have enough time for introspective thinking.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

The Form Assembly: Ajax, XML, XSLT, PHP and MySQL. Mix and stir to obtain a loose Fat Client/REST architecture.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

The Form Assembly: Processing. It’s not enough to build the form, you have to gather responses and store them. This is the main objective of version 2.0.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

The Form Assembly: Distributed. The wForms extension - the javascript library at the heart of the web forms created on the Form Assembly - has been translated in 11 languages.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months?  The next 2 years?

The Form Assembly: The next big step is the version 2.0, which will continue to offer the current level of free service (form creation, templates, and stylesheets) and will provide new products (form hosting and processing) for a small fee.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

The Form Assembly: An 8 month old little boy. He’s so damn cute it’s distracting..

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

The Form Assembly: The next phase is on track. It could certainly help if I had more time to dedicate to the project, but the time I would spend trying to raise money or hire people is better spent now on development.

eHub: Do you have a business model?  If so, what is it?

The Form Assembly: Version 2.0 will introduce paying services. If you don’t have the skills
or the time necessary to write the back-end part of a web form, the Form Assembly will take care of this for you. Create the form online, publish its URL, and responses will be forwarded to your email, but also available via RSS and online.

There’s also another web application currently in beta (the Time Tracker - http://www.formassembly.com/time-tracker ) that will be improved later this year.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

The Form Assembly: The current traffic is over a thousand visitors a day. Since the creation of the site 6 months ago, nearly 9000 web forms have been created with the Form Builder and 2700 users have registered (registration number includes Time Tracker users).

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

The Form Assembly: It’s too early to be proud of anything… ask again in 6 months.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

The Form Assembly: I’ll point them to the relevant article on wikipedia…

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

The Form Assembly: Delicious and Technorati, Johnatan Boutelle’s blog, 37 signals, 9rules‘ blogs.. and many more.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

The Form Assembly: When baby ain’t sleeping, ain’t nobody sleeping.

Thanks to Cedric Savarese, creator of The Form Assembly for this email interview posted November 26, 2005.

Visit Form Assembly
Originally added to eHub on Oct 06, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

Also see eHub Interviews in Japanese at CNET Japan