dim valley

Multidisciplinary team of two

We are Milly Schmidt and Dave Meister.

We have worked together for nearly a decade across many businesses, roles, jobs and projects.

Our skills and experience have grown symbiotically together; between us we offer end-to-end web and product services, from ideation and research through to delivery and optimisation.

We aim to keep Dim Valley small and focussed to suit our lifestyle and personal goals.

We do just three things under the Dim Valley banner:

1. build sustainable and mutually beneficial relationships with our clients
2. facilitate our own personal growth
3. dedicate our time and code to better the industry.

Modern business services

We have embraced a business-first approach to technology and a human-first approach to product development.

We work with our clients in an honest and bespoke manner, leveraging our unique expertise to tackle their unique problems.

Specific commercial services that we offer (in no particular order) include:

• Copywriting and editing
• Full stack web development
• User experience (UX) research, consolidation, interpretation, advocacy and advice
• Private/corporate/community workshops and training
• Technical planning and documentation
• Product development strategy

Some light wordplay

Dim Valley is a tongue-in-cheek anagram of our names.

Other potentially great options include evilly mad, all my dive, and lively dam but we've made our choice and are sticking with it! 😉

Dim Valley Pty. Ltd.

Est. 2017-03-20

A.B.N. 38 617 641 595

Contracts

We are generally pretty flexible and happy to negotiate contracts to meet real and reasonable needs but there are a few items that we take a firm stance on. The below is not a contract nor comprehensive, only an example of the most obvious considerations.

Ability to negotiate

We expect to read and negotiate any new contract before starting work.

We can provide a standard contract upon request.

Intellectual property (IP)

Please do not expect us to transfer any IP before full payment of invoices has been made.

Don't expect us to review or warrant the legality of licenses in open source code we recommend or use. We prefer standard open source licenses such as LGPL/MIT/Eclipse where available but we are not lawyers and do not extensively review transitive dependencies.

We will only transfer IP for code/documents delivered directly to your organisation's standard code/document repositories.

Payment

We work and charge for time and materials de facto. Time includes any and all time tracked, materials includes reasonable travel expenses (among other things).

Other payment schedules, such as fixed fee, must be explicitly discussed and agreed to.

Payment must be made in full and on time.

Not your employees

We maintain honest, above board and sustainable business relationships. We are not your employees and will avoid anything that reads like employment.

We have multiple clients, some of them may be directly or indirectly in competition with you now or in the future. We can agree to confidentiality but not exclusivity.

We can say "no" to you if you ask us to do something we consider unreasonable or outside the scope of our engagement.

Responsibility and liability

We will only take responsibility for things that we have direct and obvious control over.

We will not accept any liabilities that contradict clauses in our insurance policies.

We will not accept liability significantly above and beyond the value of the contract.

Kill fees

If you expect us to set aside many specific dates and times for your use we might request a "kill fee" clause.

This clause entitles us to a guaranteed minimum percentage (e.g. 60%) of the total expected value of the contract in the unlikely case that the project is cancelled outright by you after signing with us.

Insurances

Professional Indemnity, Public & Products Liability

Insurer: Dual Australia Pty. Ltd.

Professional Indemnity limit: A$2,000,000

Public & Products Liability limit: A$20,000,000

Certificate of Currency (valid until 2020-08-08): Dim Valley Pty. Ltd. & Nice Feature Pty. Ltd.

WorkCover

Insurer: Allianz

Certificate of Currency (valid until 30/06/2019): Dim Valley Pty. Ltd.

Dim Valley's Privacy Policy

What is our commitment to the protection of your personal information?

Dim Valley is a modern business service consultancy owned and operated by David Meister and Amelia Schmidt.

By accessing our web application, engaging our services, or providing any personal information to us, you agree to be bound by this privacy policy and consent to our use and disclosure of your personal information as explained within this policy.

We are committed to protecting your privacy.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and disclose personal information. It also explains your rights and our processes to request access, updates and corrections to your details.

It is important to us that you are confident that any personal and sensitive information we hold about you will be treated in a way which ensures protection of your personal information.

Our commitment in respect of personal information is to abide by the Australian Privacy Principles for the protection of personal information, as set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (C’th) and any other relevant law.

Personal information

When we refer to personal information we mean information from which your identity is reasonably apparent. This information may include information or an opinion about you.

The kinds of personal information we may collect about you include your name, date of birth, place of birth, address and other contact information, account details, occupation, and any other information we may need to identify you or provide our services.

Credit information

In the course of providing our services to you, we may collect and hold credit information about you.

Credit information is information which is usually exchanged between credit and finance providers, credit reporting bodies and other entities that are involved in managing credit.

The type of credit information that we might hold about you may include details of your liabilities in respect of consumer credit, commercial credit, default information, and information about court proceedings.

You may:

• access any credit information that we hold about you;
• seek the update or correction of this information; or
• enquire about how we have used your credit information,

by contacting us regarding the same.

Credit Card Information

We do not receive or store any credit card information. All payments are handled by a secure third party payment gateway.

Stripe payment gateway

We use Stripe for payment, analytics, and other business services. Stripe collects identifying information about the devices that connect to its services. Stripe uses this information to operate and improve the services it provides to us, including for fraud detection.

You can learn more about Stripe and read its privacy policy at https://stripe.com/privacy.

Sensitive information

Sensitive information is any information about a person’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinion, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional, or trade association, membership of a trade union, sexual preferences or practices, criminal record or health information.

We will not ask you to disclose sensitive information about you unless it is reasonably necessary for providing our services to you. However, if you elect to provide unsolicited sensitive information, it may be captured and stored.

Marketing

If you subscribe to our mailing list, or create an account with our application, we may use your contact details to send you marketing materials. You may opt-out at any time by notice by email to meeli.jane@gmail.com, or through the unsubscribe link found in all marketing emails we send.

Anonymity and Pseudonymity

Please note that we collect and use temporary session data (such as cookies), which may include identifiers such as your IP address, for analytics purposes, and to provide the application and related services.

Updating your personal information

It is important to us that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up to date.

Access and correction to your personal information

We will provide you with access to the personal information we hold about you.

How safe and secure is your personal information that we hold?

We will take reasonable steps to protect your personal information by storing it in a secure environment.

What to do if you are not satisfied with the way we handle your personal information?

If you are dissatisfied with how we have dealt with your personal information, or you have a complaint about our compliance with the Privacy Act 1988 (C’th), please contact us.

Let's work together.

If you are interested in working with us, let's talk.

We prefer to meet in person before committing to anything new.

Milly: 0403 858 811 | meeli.jane@gmail.com

Dave: 0434 016 790 | thedavidmeister@gmail.com

We are based at 105/1 Railway Place, Cremorne 3121 VIC, Australia

Work with us

Availability

We are both available for short-medium term contracts up to 3 days per week.

Milly is available for advocacy and community engagements.

Rates

Our hourly rate: $USD 90 inc. GST

Rates are quoted in USD as much of our work is international.

David Meister (Dave)

Owner and consultant at Dim Valley Pty. Ltd. and owner and CTO at Nice Feature Pty. Ltd.

Experience

Commercial

• Started small, making MySpace pages for local indie bands.
• 10+ years total professional web experience.
• Current & recent clients include Holochain and WorkSafe Victoria.

Open source

• Holochain Core (Rust) including Rust code and leading the Continuous Integration, automation and cross platform support efforts.
• 6th in Australia for contributions to Drupal core.

Amelia Schmidt (Milly)

Owner and consultant at Dim Valley Pty. Ltd. and owner and CPO at Nice Feature Pty. Ltd.

What I do

I see design as a mode of communication. My practice is centred around people and my work is collaborative and facilitative. I achieve this through user experience design, user interface design and engineering, modern business education, written communication and community engagement and ambassadorship.

User experience design

User experience design is a series of activities that generate and facilitate ideas from multiple parties, including your end-users, which allows for a strategy and delivery that has a high likelihood of success due to mitigation of personal bias and an openness to solving problems by facing them head-on.