The nature of our business at i-Know It is publishing software that helps people memorize God's word. Our software provides a tool that people can use for scripture memory or scripture reading though out their day. Naturally then, most people prefer to memorize or read these scriptures in the translation of the Bible they are most comfortable with; whether that be the King James Version (KJV), New American Standard (NASB) or some other translation. Therefore, we have made it our purpose to work out the details of providing as many of those translations as possible.

I have found it to be a very interesting experience contacting the publishers of the various Bible translations and working out the details of incorporating their translations into our software. For the most part it has been a very pleasant experience. However, I'm sad to say that in a few cases it has been down right frustrating.

To start off with I want to commend The Lockman Foundation. From our first contact with them they were both responsive and easy to work with. In the end, they made it very easy for us to incorporate the New American Standard Bible (NASB) translation into our software and we are very grateful to them for all they have done.

We also found working with NavPress to get rights to "The Message" and Good New Publishing, to get rights to The English Standard Version (ESV) very pleasant. Thank you to both of those companies for working with us to get the Bible into the hands of our users.

There are two other Bible translations that are extremely popular, but we have been unable to get rights to use either of them. One of them stated in their original paperwork that they had an upfront fee of $10,000 just to begin working with them and a $10.00 per copy royalty for each product sold! We applied anyway, asking for $0.00 upfront and a much smaller, but reasonable royalty, but have never heard back from them. The publisher of the other translation was very pleasant to work with. However, in the end, they told us the "anticipated sales levels that you gave us were not what we would wish to see to make it advisable for us to extend a licensing arrangement for the New [other] Version." In other words, it just wasn't worth their time to allow us to use their translation. Keep in mind that we do everything it takes to prepare a Bible to work with our software. All any publisher does is e-mail us the text.

I've lost a tremendous amount of respect for the publishers of these two Bible translations. Their hearts seem more focused on the Business of Bibles rather than the proliferation of God's word.

As a result of our experiences in licensing Bible translations, we've decided to make some changes to our software that will help our users add quotes from any translation they wish without violating the copyright restrictions of those translations. Our plans are to allow users to paste in a verse at a time themselves. Obviously these verses can be from any translation they prefer. I'll keep you posted on how those updates are coming

I just got finished updating my copy of Adobe Reader to version 7.0.5 when I was prompted that there were new updates available. After Reader completed its installation I was told that my machine would need to be rebooted before the updates to my system would take effect. I thought that odd since Adobe Reader is just an application and not a system level service, but didn't think too much about it. However, I did click "Reboot Later" or something to that effect, so that I could finish what I was doing at the time. However, that was not to deter the Adobe Reader install, which proceeded to shut down my current Windows session as I frantically worked to close all of my work in progress.

In the end all was saved and this time I dodged a bullet. Things could have turned out a whole lot uglier however. Be careful. You've been warned.

I've been in the software business professionally since 1988. As a matter of fact it's the only real profession I've ever had. I cut my teeth at a company called Micrografx, Inc. and have gone on to work for many other startups over the years as well as larger organizations like Nortel Networks. Over these past 17 years I've learned many things about what it takes to run a software company. I've learned many lessons by observing others and I've learned many lessons from mistakes I've made on my own. My hope is to use this blog as a forum for passing on those lessons that I've learned.

At this time I own a software company Berkemeyer Concepts, LLC where we do both software consulting and produce retail software. Our premier retail brand is i-Know It. This is an educational product line designed to help users memorize various material while using their computer for other tasks. Our permier contracting engagement is with ClearSpace doing work on proprietary software for Trade Settlement, Inc. Using these current projects as well as 17 years of history in this business, I'll do my best to pass on some lessons I've learned and help you to avoid some of the mistakes I've made or seen others make.