ITster!

It started with a simple (but great) idea and a single tweet from Ian Gifford:

And in no time at all it grew into a competition between 5 Ontario cities to have a Canadian media icon visit one of our cities.

A number of folks that we have a lot of love for were involved in the initial hours and we wanted to lend them whatever help we could offer. Now we can’t come right out and bribe the man so instead we made an offer to allocate a big chunk of our CSR time to a charity of Jian’s choosing.

We were very pleasantly surprised when Jian took notice later that day.

Now there’s a great Facebook page and a number of other businesses have come to the table (Jody Bailey has provided a great summary here along with all the Twitter traffic).

I’m sure a few folks will be saying “There IS a string attached to your offer, Jian has to come to London. That’s a string.” Well let’s remove that now. This offer is an act of goodwill and whether or not Jian comes to London this offer will remain on the table.

Jian, we would love you to visit our city. We’re not perfect but the place is teeming with great people who want to make things better. So, on behalf of all those people, please feel free to donate this offering to any charity you choose. A new website probably won’t change anyone’s world but we know there are a lot of incredibly worthy organizations out there and we want to give them the very best of what we do best.

My name is Shawn Adamsson and I’m a partner at a small digital media agency here in London.

Normally I wouldn’t mention where I work, but the green bin issue has a larger impact on this community beyond just London taking responsibility for its waste.

Our company, and other digital media companies like it, require progressive minded Gen Y and Millenials in order to be successul. These generations tend to look beyond their pocketbook and see the impact that they are having on the world. As a 42 year old Gen X, this is something that I have to keep in mind on a daily basis if rtraction wants to attract and retain the kind of talent that we need.

The decisions that have been made at City Hall over the last 10 months are being received with derision by the progressive, creative, and idealistic among these generations – those who want to make London, and the world, a better place. They see decisions being made to meet short term targets or for short term revenue that either halt progress in our city or seek to undo progressive directions set by previous Councils. The re-tabling of the water bottle ban, forced resignation of an LTC board member, continued focus on sprawling the city, neglect of public transit, dismissal of nominees to committees and dismissal of staff recommendation in the pursuit of more jobs, sure, but of the low-skill, low-paying variety. This is far from a comprehensive list.

The latest issue is, of course, the green bin pilot. Again, many members of these generations (and I’m with them on this) want to take responsibility for the waste they produce. They know that the system that we have in place today is not sustainable and they see other communities that have had better systems in place for years. They know that this has been on hold for years here as well. This isn’t cutting edge stuff, we’re playing catch-up.

We have lost 2 employees in the last 3 years to other communities with more progressive visions of the future. Other cities are moving forward and the perception is that London is standing still at best or taking steps backward at worst. Perception is enough to lose the people that we need.

Of the 5 industry sectors listed on the LEDCs website, 3 of them require the kind of technically savvy people that I’m talking about.

We need City Council to start looking at the big picture when making decisions. We know that your hands are tied in the things that you can do to pull business to London, but retention of these key sectors is within your control.

Twenty members of our team will be watching and I would prefer to tell them that we moved forward on Monday night. I don’t want to have to explain to them again the single reason that this was delayed again.

My company loves London and we hope to be here in 10 years to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We’re on Team London. Please leave us a city that we can continue to take pride in.

Sincerely,

Shawn Adamsson
Vice President of Operations

Our team works hard all through the year – sure we have fun throughout the day but a few times a year we put down our pencils and goof around playing video games for an afternoon.

Our next game day will be March 17th, 2011 – St.Patrick’s Day from 1:00pm to whenever we decide to find a bar for some green beer.

While this is normally just a company event this time we’re opening it up a little bit.

Back in December a number of generous individuals brought in 20lbs of food each towards our overall donation of 1000lbs for the London Food Bank and we’re excited to welcome them into the office (we’d be lying if we said we weren’t looking forward to pwning them in Halo all afternoon).

We’ll also be extending an invitation for a number of Fanshawe CPA students to join us for the afternoon (we’d be lying if we said we weren’t expecting them to pwn us in Halo all afternoon). If you’re in a Fanshawe CPA co-op student be sure to follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/rtraction) or keep your eyes open for an invite to be posted at the school.

All paid members of the unLondon’s unlab are also welcome to join us.

We haven’t figured out the list of games yet but we’ll have lots of console options and a few games loaded up on our machines.

Looking forward to a great afternoon!

Here are the entrants in our Geeky T-Shirt Contest – we’ve included a few honourable mentions as well.

You can vote once a day – voting closes at noon EST April 30th, 2010.

Honourable Mentions (didn’t come to the office)

Left to right: Mike Batista, Jason Clarke and Jodi Simpson

One of the fun things about with working with a team of really great people is finding new ways to keep them challenged.

We tinker with new things all the time but we were looking to do something different this week. After a bit of discussion and brainstorming we decided to do a code blitz. The idea is to take the whole development team and throw them into something for a single day with a single purpose. Ideally we would come up with a project that would strengthen their teamwork, develop their skills, give something back to the community and deliver a working product at the end of a single working day.

We discussed a number of cool projects (some of which we’ll come back to at a later date) and in the end all agreed on a cool little app that we’d all like to have available for London. When we’re out with our friends and family and want to know what’s going on right now what would come in handy?

We’ve worked with Thomas Czermak over at LondonFuse on a couple of small changes to the site in the past so we called him up and pitched development of an iPhone application for the site.

After a quick meeting to discuss the possibilities (and there are a lot of very cool ones) we narrowed things down to a narrow v1.0 feature set. The next morning we jumped in. We’ve done a few little things on the iPhone (including developing an interface for our open source Compost package) but this was going to be new for a couple of our guys.

The day was very productive and we learned a lot of great things but more importantly we came together as a team like never before.

We’re still polishing but we have a functional v1.0 app. We’ll be tacking on a few new features before it hits the App Store but we’ll have something ready to go in the next few weeks.

We’ll have an announcement on this blog and on Twitter (http://twitter.com/rtraction) when it hits the store.

Here’s a little eye candy for you in the meantime:

We first got involved with Kiva in 2006. The agency runs a person-to-person micro-lending website that lets visitors help alleviate poverty by lending directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe. The fantastic thing is, any investment that goes through Kiva is re-invested over and over. We initially invested over $1000, and those funds are still being reinvested to help more and more people become self-sufficient through small businesses. It’s a great model.

We have three $25 investment gift certificates, and we want your help choosing how to use them. To take part:

1. Reply to our tweet about Kiva (www.twitter.com/rtraction) saying that you want to take part.
2. We’ll send a $25 Kiva gift certificate to the first three respondents.
3. Visit www.kiva.org (withing 72 hours) and choose an entrepreneur or activity you want to support.
4. Tweet about your investment.
5. Monitor your investment over time and re-invest or withdraw your money.

** If you don’t use your gift certificate within 72 hours, it will be passed on to the next eligible contestant.

“Why do you need a website?”

In this second blog based on our Techalliance workshop on (re)designing corporate websites, we explore the first question we always ask our clients. It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many companies don’t have a clear answer prepared – which is interesting because the answer to this question is the foundation that informs every design, implementation and technology decision in the website creation process. Your website exists to help you achieve your goals, and defining what you want to accomplish is the first step in creating a site that works for you.

There are a lot of competing technologies and approaches in web design, and having a clear goal for your website is the best way to narrow the choices you’ll be making. Designing a website is a lot like reaching for a tool from a giant toolbox – you have to pick the right tool for the job. If you are trying to screw two pieces of wood together a hammer is a poor choice compared to a screwdriver. The requirements for a website that sells products are vastly different from an informational brochure site that simply serves to introduce the world to your company and brand.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently we were invited by Techalliance to facilitate a public workshop on (re)designing corporate websites. Our approach was to provide business owners with practical advice on managing the process. A common theme throughout the presentation was the idea that clients can prepare themselves with a set of criteria for evaluating vendors, and the designs they provide, to ensure that they are selecting the best solution for their website.

For many clients one of the toughest parts of the web design process is evaluating and choosing the visual design, and discussing their response with their vendor in a clear and concise manner.

Luckily, the essence of good visual design can be understood using only three core concepts:
unity, consistency and hierarchy.

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When creating a new website for a client a lot of effort goes into creating the visual look. Elements such as colour choice, photography and illustration, intuitive navigation and your company’s brand all play important roles in shaping your customers’ perception of your company. When it comes to your website’s search engine performance, however, none of these things really matter. To the search engines’ computers content is king.
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Developing a good backup strategy requires thoughtful planning, from the selection of devices to the determination of backup schema and other logistical issues. Each step must be carefully analyzed in light of such factors as staffing, technical expertise, and budget. We’ll take a look at these factors and break down the requirements of a successful backup strategy.

read more …