busse[blog]

Photo

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:37:06 -0500

Gorgeous status board at Panic.

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:08:55 -0500

Web/Interactive Graphic/UI/UX/game Designer Opening at Fahrenheit Emerging Media

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:00:56 -0500

We are rapidly expanding our team at Fahrenheit Technology in the Emerging Media Group and are looking for a Graphic Designer with demonstrable Interactive/Web/UI/UX experience. This position is located in Richmond, VA.

Things we’re looking for in the ideal candidate:

Understanding and appreciation of Social Media and its influence on business
A strong portfolio showing varied design style and user interaction design experience
Understanding of web/micro game design
Understanding of Facebook game mechanisms that elicit viral spread of games among Facebook Friends (in other words, you understand why Farmville and Mafia Wars are popular even if you don’t play them)
Understanding of cutting edge web presentation methods ex. jQuery, HTML5 vs. Flash … Flash development skills would be a plus
Understanding of the need and methods for user interface design to tie back to user interaction measurement/metrics

What kind of work are we looking for this position to do? Things such as:

High-caliber Facebook Fan Page design
Facebook Application & Game UI/UX design
Web site design & landing page design
Email campaign design
Reporting Dashboard UI/UX design
High-caliber Powerpoint/Keynote presentation template design

Interested candidates can email me at cbusse (at) fahrenheittechnology.com … please send your LinkedIn link or a resume in digital format and a digital portfolio or links to an online portfolio as well as any public social media presence you might have (ex. Twitter of Facebook Fan Pages/Apps you’ve worked on).

Lastly, this recent post I wrote outlines my personal view on Graphic (Web/Interactive) Design vs Front End Developer. At this time, we’re definitely looking for someone who is very strong on the design end of that spectrum.

jonaha: sweet swag from the Canon area of the Olympic Press...

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 07:49:55 -0500

jonaha:

sweet swag from the Canon area of the Olympic Press Center in Vancouver!

a coffee travel mug designed like a 70-200mm Canon L-series “white” lens

via PDNPulse

My mornings would be filled with more light if I had one of these mugs for my coffee. #punintended

An open letter to Web Designers looking for work in 2010

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:54:00 -0500

Dear Web Designer,

To start, let’s reiterate that this is 2010. If I go now and look at your portfolio and most of the example websites I see look like you took the poster, billboard or full page ad from the “print” section of your portfolio and converted them to Flash, I’m going to move along to the next portfolio in my stack. This was tolerable in the year 2000, but not in 2010. Web design and print design are not the same thing. “But that’s how the client wanted it” - okay, but not for your portfolio.

Carrying the elements from said print design in to a beautifully interactive site is what I wanted to see there. If it’s a grid-based layout, I want to see a grid that makes sense for presentation on a screen along with sensible navigation.

Good use of type on the web is hard. Show me you understand this and know how to work within the constraints of type on the web and how to overcome these challenges. Hint: this is not done by setting a lot of blocks of copy in JPEGs.

Show me some work that didn’t make the cut. I’m betting that every good web designer has poured their heart and soul in to some fabulous comps that your client sucked the life out of during the review/refinement phase. Or perhaps the opposite is true. Show me the progressions of a design evolving and highlight the choices you made during your iterations.

Are you a Designer or do you do HTML & CSS (a Front End Developer)? Do you know the difference? Do you think you do both?

Here’s a test: Designers can create original vector art in Illustrator or make beautiful things appear from a blank canvas in Photoshop, and name their layers well while doing it. Front End Developers can apply jQuery functions to things in their Document Object Model.

Unless you can do both very well, this is your year to pick one and focus on it. Take a stand and make it your real strength. With the evolution of HTML5, jQuery, and other non-Flash modes of interaction on the web, spreading yourself too thin between art and code in an attempt to do both well will begin to limit your career choices in the coming years. Or, take the time to truly master both and command a high salary/rate for your time. Maybe 5-10% of the “web designers” I’ve met fall in to that category.

From the web designers, I would still like to see examples of wireframes in your portfolio showing how you’ve planned some amount of user interaction in a design.

Lastly, show me your passion. Show it to me in the work you’ve done for clients (perhaps a particular style or approach you strongly advocate?), but also show me some work you’ve done for yourself or for a cause you believe in. Furthermore, show me that you have a sense of community whether it be user groups you’re active in or charities you volunteer with. This goes a long way to bringing out a human element when sorting through a pile of resumes and online portfolios.

Best of Luck,

Busse

P.S. The opinions expressed here are my own. However, if you are any sort of web professional in Richmond, VA exploring other employment options this year and would like to talk about working on some cutting-edge interactive/social media projects for notable clients in a fun environment that truly respects work/life balance, send me your resume/portfolio links with the assurance of strictest confidentiality to cbusse (at) fahrenheittechnology (dot) com

gary: Just a little….patience Way to many people think business...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:44:26 -0500

gary:

Just a little….patience
Way to many people think business is like lotto, it takes time.

Having trouble viewing this video? Try the Quicktime version.

So true.

Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous’s ass « PEG on Tech

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:30:03 -0500

Why Tumblr is kicking Posterous’s ass « PEG on Tech:

mirza:

The Short answer: Design.

I also think Tumblr is a more fluid experience — not sure I can describe it beyond that, but it just feels so easy. That might relate back to “Design” though.

jonaha: choucroute: octopus kites These kites kind of freak...

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:24:44 -0500

jonaha:

choucroute:

octopus kites

These kites kind of freak me out. I think there’s some obligatory Cthulu reference I should be making…

Congrats to my brother Matt for getting Slashdotted!

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:37:23 -0500

I’m especially proud of him that it was in the Your Rights Online section. A post of his (linked as “Many people…”) about Tynt was linked to from a post that made it to their home page. His site stayed up under increased traffic load. I’m looking forward to digging in to his web stats to see what kind of effect that had.

Furniture Shopping in the Alley (2005)

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:38:21 -0500

Furniture Shopping in the Alley (2005)

"I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime."

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 10:00:57 -0500

“I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.”

- While being cross-examined during a trial in which he accused a critic of libel, James McNeill Whistler was questioned as to why he charged two hundred guineas for what amounted to two days of work. That was his response.

This quote reminds me alot of a parable in Gordon Macenzie’s Orbiting the Giant Hairball where an oil baron buys a dairy farm and berates the cows for not working hard, where in reality they are producing milk but the action is unseen.

Nature reclaiming a building at Pear & Cary Streets,...

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:10:04 -0500

Nature reclaiming a building at Pear & Cary Streets, Richmond, VA. 2003. (since demolished)

Google indexing Twitter feeds on your site can increase traffic, but... (my "vtsf syke" story)

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:54:41 -0500

[originally published 3/6/2009 on my old DotNetNuke blog, moved now to Tumblr & republished]

When this website ran on DotNetNuke, I had a module I created called TwitterDNN that loaded a real-time view of the five most recents posts (“tweets”) I’ve made on Twitter. It did this via a call directly to Twitter’s API at the server level, and rendered the results out as the page loaded, as opposed to using the JSON callback that many other Twitter badges/modules use, which execute client-side Javascript to render out the results.

As a result of doing it through the Twitter API, the contents of my tweets appeared within the HTML of my pages when Google and other search engines index the site.

Case in point: several weeks ago I was having a conversation on Twitter with @StyleWeekly about the fake (IMHO, disingenuous) ads for Syke Energy Drink. They are actually an anti-smoking campaign that is attempting to market to emo kids or something like that in an attempt to be hip and cool (reminds me of the L. Ron Bumquist character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but I digress). There is no actual product called Syke Energy Drink. Style published a great article summarizing what was actually going on with the Syke campaign.

During the course of our conversation they asked how I’d come to figure it out. I replied that on the TV ads, in tiny letters you can see “VTSF” so I had Googled “vtsf syke” and came across some articles with more information about the campaign.

Ironically, that tweet, which was rendered on this site via the TwitterDNN module, got indexed by Google, and as of this writing [and still true 9 months later!] it appears on the first page of results when you search for “vtsf syke” and thusly has been sending visitors my way which caused me to notice it in my Google Analytics Keyword Referrer report, which prompted this post, which will probably get indexed by Google…

So anyway, I think my point here is that if you have a website, and use Twitter, then there is some value to rendering your tweets onto your site, and probably more so if the site content and what you’re tweeting are related so that resulting traffic is relevant. Since my module only shows the five most recent tweets, the “vtsf syke” one has long since scrolled off, and this article is now the only content I have here about it.

However, if you’re going to render out your tweets and you want them indexed on your site by Google, look for a module that does it through the API on the server-side, as opposed to the JSON/Javascript methods that seem to be more popular (and admittedly more accessible) because those methods don’t get indexed by Google the way they’re rendered out.

myparentswereawesome: Paul Submitted by Chris Now that...

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:18:06 -0500

myparentswereawesome:

Paul

Submitted by Chris

Now that I’m on tumblr I can reblog this pic of my dad.

Social Media and its Value

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:19:50 -0500

sdk7327:

I have been doing a lot of research on social media and its value, and I think it is interesting how many businesses want to leverage it to make money. The problem they come across when doing this is that they don’t know about the commitment social media requires to make it effective. It is not just about slapping up a blog or facebook fan page, its about building relationships with people.

Very true. Helping them with the proper use of measurement tools like Google Analytics and its Goal Tracking can help prove the ROI on these efforts. For example of 50% of inbound traffic from Facebook leads to purchases (or whatever the goal), yet 1% of inbound traffic from Twitter accomplishes the same goal, then the commitment to Facebook is showing a much greater payoff.

Abandoned Brewery (2003) #RVA

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:23:46 -0500

Abandoned Brewery (2003) #RVA

sdk7327: thatssodigital: Interesting, candid interviews from...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:34:27 -0500

sdk7327:

thatssodigital:

Interesting, candid interviews from some folks at Google, IDEO and more on what it takes to get a creative job.

(via core77)

(p.s., IDEO hires about 9% of those that apply, so if you land a gig there you’re something special)

Beware the entrepreneur who is too focused on the meta of their business

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:06:23 -0500

In the past 14 years I’ve been involved in about a half-dozen start-up companies of one sort or another, and given advice to quite a few others. One thing I’ve noticed during this time is that entrepreneurs who focus too much on the meta of the business, or the things not directly related to getting new business and generating revenue, are the least likely to succeed.

I was guilty of this myself when I was 18 and wanted to start doing freelance computer consulting right out of high school. I spent an inordinate amount of time designing and redesigning business cards, brochures, descriptions of services, creating detailed pro-forma cash flow statements, and other things that weren’t essential to the work I was trying to do — go to people’s houses and help them with their computers.

I’m not suggesting that anyone doesn’t need business cards, but the clients I got back then were all through word of mouth. My pager number (this was 1996 after all) was passed around more often on scraps of paper than the business cards I made.

In another venture I was involved with that never took off, the founder (a smart and inspiring person) was very focused on creating binders full of technical specifications for what could have been a relatively simple database program. Quite a bit of time was spent on developing and refining business plan documents, creating pro-forma financials, and exploring, in detail, all sorts of variations on the direction of the business. Equipment was purchased before office space was acquired. All the while burning through quite a bit of investment capital without even starting the activities that would actually generate revenue. At any given time that was always just two or three steps away.

In my mind this is “playing business” just like kids “play house” with their parent’s pots and pans in the kitchen. These days the conventional wisdom seems to be to bootstrap your business, get to a point where you’re generating revenue as soon as possible, and fail fast if you’re going to fail.

Being distracted by peripheral tasks that aren’t critical to getting to that revenue generating point will prevent you from failing fast. It will just drag out the inevitable failure of a venture that isn’t going to succeed anyway.

Focus and move quickly on just the things you truly need to do to start pulling in money, and don’t sweat the things that aren’t absolutely essential to building real momentum toward your most important goals.

BOOM! Brown’s Island, June 1, 2003, 7am. #RVA

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:12:16 -0500

BOOM! Brown’s Island, June 1, 2003, 7am. #RVA

What if a bunch of small local web design, development, and creative shops merged their businesses together?

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:04:00 -0500

This town¹ has an amazing creative class of young professionals, many of whom have setup shop as independant consultants, freelancers, and small businesses providing their services for hire.

Unfortunately I believe this means that alot of this creative talent is also spread thin across the aspects of running a small business that aren’t directly production oriented: marketing, business development, accounting, project management, and other administrative tasks.

These things are no doubt important, but which is better: five designers who have to enter time, invoice clients, collect bills, and balance Quickbooks, or five designers who only have to enter time to be tracked?

There are certainly some companies of this size and scale around locally, but I suspect many of them got to their size through the use of serious investment capital. What I’m describing is more of a bootstrapped merger of many equals. Also, most of these other companies have a very top-down management and ownership structure.

It seems to me that if several of the small creative firms in town were to combine their businesses into one larger shop that they could realize some serious economies of scale. They would be able to reduce what is, between the lot of them, quite a bit of overlapping administrative management and physical space/equipment requirements. Each person would have more time to focus on their true passion, the direct production of creative work.

On the surface though, it seems like there would be some problems getting something like this to happen — things like trust, ego, work habits and technology/tool preferences, parity of finances and economic worth, and individual goals would all have to fall exactly in to place. It’s a classic prisoner’s dilema.

If this venture were approached like a traditional business acquisition or roll-up, no doubt a few people “at the top” would be looking to take unfair advantage of the talents of others. If it were approached as a “co op”, then there might not be enough cohesiveness to make the economies of scale pay off (and hold together) in the long run. A middle ground would need to be found — a relatively flat management/partnership structure aligned toward common goals and fair pay-for-performance income distribution.

The goal here would not be to create a monolithic all-encompassing organization. Something between 20 and 40 people would probably be about the right size. During the dot-com boom I worked for a company where I was about the 35th employee, and watched it grow to over 200 just in the local office. All other things excluded, once we passed 50 people and kept growing things really changed. Never should this be something where everyone doesn’t know everyone else’s name and who they are personally.

An argument can be made that an arrangement like this would make the organization more competitive as well. The people who are most skilled at business development would, if that is where their passion lies, focus on just that. People who are the best designers would have more time to design, the best programmers more time to code. In theory this would lead to a more productive, more focused, more successful company.

¹ I’m writing about Richmond, VA but also in an Onion-esque “area man” context.