We started our company in July of 2001, precisely one day after our previous employer, TDG Interactive, went bankrupt. It was not a great time to try to find a job in the IT Sector.
Our small team believed that we were better to stick together as a group than to try to find individual jobs. It turns out we were right; that one decision to forge our own path would become a decade of running a business before we knew it.
The online world was a lot different in 2001. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry and iPhones (and, technically, even the iPod) didn’t exist. Self-published online content was limited to those individuals and businesses that were either able to learn HTML, or willing to brave the wilderness that was Geocities.
Our team was also a lot different in 2001. We started the company with two software developers and one IT administrator. Before WordPress, Blogger, Blogspot and Tumblr, producing and publishing content online was a highly technical art. As a result, our clients required our technical skill set to put out their messaging.
We tried this last year and ended up with a pretty incredible addition to our team (Chantelle Diachina) so we figured we’d try it again and see what happens.
One important addition to the list of qualifications below: special consideration will be given to those with 3 or more years of client management experience.
Rather than an iron-clad job description and title, here is a list of the skills we’ve determined are ideal for this position: Read the rest of this entry »
Recently rtraction had the pleasure of being one of four finalists for the Medium Business category of the Business Achievement Awards, a ceremony hosted by the London Chamber of Commerce. The event hosted in London, Ontario is the largest of it’s kind in Canada with at least 1,200 business leaders gathering to recognize the achievements of a sample of the great businesses in our local community. We shared the finalist category with a local family attraction – Eastpark, an airport – London Airport Authority, and a leader in London’s legal community - Legate and Associates.
We were also thrilled to see two other companies from the digital media sector, Echidna Solutions and Digital Extremes nominated in the small and large business categories; their nominations bear testimony of the growing importance of digital media to the economic landscape of London. We were also happy to see one of rtraction’s clients, Kingsmills, nominated in the large business category. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year we held a fundraiser/food drive for the London and area food bank. We committed to match every pound of food donated with $1, up to $1,000. The result was over 1,000 pounds of food and $1,000 donated to the London and area food bank. We also had the advantage of getting to see Shawn pranked pretty hard.
This year we’re again aiming for 1000 pounds of food and rtraction will once again match $1 per pound donated up to $1,000. If we hit our goal we will host an rtraction Game Day Friday, January 21st, 2011.
An rtraction Game Day means we shut down the office at noon and play games until… whenever. We usually have at least 2 xbox 360′s, a Wii, and a PS3 going with games ranging from COD, Halo, Left 4 Dead, Rock Band, so there’s something for everyone’s taste. Typically these are held at our office, but this year we’re going to do something a little different:
We’re inviting you to join us for the rtraction game day! All you have to do is bring 20 pounds of food as a donation and drop it off at our office by December 17th. The first 20 people to do so will get an invite.
For information on how your business can help, please see the Business Cares website.
Our company has a quarterly* team building excercise – the goal is to improve communication, trust and the overall effectiveness of the team. We also tend to have fun.
* Any planning or regularity in these events is not expressed nor implied
For the fall activity we decided to try Paintball. Why? I’m not entirely sure, as using high-powered air rifles to shoot paint-filled gel-cap balls at each other doesn’t seem to be a good “team building” thing. However, through the day I did learn some valuable tips.
Trust
I didn’t shoot Shawn despite him being on the same team as me – largely because the Blue team was beating us handily and we couldn’t afford to be a team member down, but he doesn’t know that, so we’ll say that we built trust that day.
Communications
When your team mate says “WATCH YOUR RIGHT!” and you think to yourself “I know there’s someone on my right, that’s what I am shooting at” – it behests you to clarify “Do you mean the person I’m shooting at? Or the two people I don’t know about sneaking up on you?” Simple communication like this can save you getting hit by a lot of paintballs.
Overall Effectiveness
When we worked as a team and had a game plan, our team did much better. If we started a round saying “Uh, let’s just go!” we died/lost in spectacular fashion. Just like in web work, a little bit of planning goes a long way!
The team gets ready to battle
We decided on one round – everyone vs. Shawn – it was pretty short.
