CentreSource Interactive Agency was honored with four total nominations, including Technology Organization of the Year, Innovator of the Year for our Founder/CEO Nicholas Holland, who also earned a nomination for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Our hats are off to all of the nominees and winners for the work they do to make this an incredible city with a thriving technology community.

Look how shiny it is!

You already knew that CentreSource is an award-winning Web firm, but we are really excited to announce that the Two Futures Project has been selected as a W3 Awards “Best in Show” winner as presented by the International Academy of the Visual Arts. The academy says that projects winning “Best in Show” represents only the top one percent of the more than 3,000 entries received.

Naturally, we did not just bask in the glow of this well-deserved award for our team. Okay, so maybe just a little. We also checked out some of the other entries, and there are a few projects with names you might have heard of: Nissan, Gillette/EA Sports, UFC 100 (our CEO really thought that was cool), Pepsi, About.com and Ford. What is even better is the list of judges that included Alloy,
 Disney,
 Estee 
Lauder,
 
HBO,
 Monster.com, MTV, Wired and Yahoo.

“We were incredibly impressed by the quality and creativity of this year’s entries. W3 winners continue to set the bar in Web development and design, push the limits of web advertising creativity and advance the use of web video. We are thrilled to have reviewed such a diverse and respected pool of work” said Linda Day, the executive director of the IAVA. “On behalf of the entire Academy, we congratulate this year’s W3 Award winners as they continue to advance Internet creativity and greatly contribute to the robust and ever-changing online community.”

Well said.

It will be LEGENDARY!

CentreSource is once again sponsoring the midstate’s leading tech-driven “unconference,” BarCamp Nashville. This free event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, October 17 at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway in downtown Nashville (map). At last glance, there were more than 60 presenters that had created sessions on topics on everything from Web development to entrepreneurship. We are also very proud that several of our team members will be presenting at this year’s event:

• Nicholas Holland – From Cave Walls to Facebook Walls
• Chip Hayner – Choosing the Right Tool for the Job
• Brent Shaffer & Travis Roberts – Test Your Might: Symfony vs Rails – Framework Combat
• Nicholas Holland (again!) – iPhone Development … or “Welcome to Crazyville, Population YOU”
• Jared Scheel – Whoa! Creating Engaging User Experiences
• Aaron Briggs – Getting a Pants-Free Education: E-Learning and Instructional Design

Visit the BarCamp Nashville Web site to register today!

It comes as no surprise to us that the American Chamber of Commerce Executives named the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce 2009 Chamber of the Year. We have witnessed first hand how vital the chamber has been in shaping the Nashville business community and representing our interests to the region at large.

The BELONG Campaign is the annual membership drive for the chamber. They have contacted many of their members, like CentreSource, to take part in recruiting new members to join the chamber and take part in all it has to offer. As an incentive, they are offering 14 months of membership for the price of 12 so that your membership will renew on January 1, 2011. For as little as $350, your company can raise its profile in the business community. Best of all, 95 percent of the cost of dues is tax deductible because the chamber is a 501(c)(6) non-profit.

Join the chamber today.

Screenshot from gpsAssassin's attack screen.

It probably comes as little surprise that our team members are very attached to our mobile devices. A quick look around the office turns up at least a dozen iPhones and Blackberries. Yes, we are very up on the latest trends in mobile computing. But what you do not know is that many of our employees lead a double life as an elite group of assassins for hire!

Enter Side Hobby LLC’s new game for the iPhone, gpsAssassin. It is a game that allows players to send text-based “Attacks” to other players within a fixed radius of where they are standing. This innovative use of GPS technology had reviewers at TechCrunch calling it “the next killer game for the iPhone.” Our team just calls it “addictive.”

While we undoubtedly would be playing this game on its merits alone, we all take a bit of pride in how CentreSource contributed to its development. Team members contributed to the in-game graphics, client/server architecture, social media marketing efforts, game mechanics and even creating some of those zany weapons — Have you ever been hit with a “Robotic Kitty” or a “Nagging Wife?” We have sent out hundreds of tweets and recruited our family and friends to spread gpsAssassin to every continent except Antarctica. We’re still working on that one.

Developed by CentreSource CEO Nicholas Holland and his business partner Jackson Miller, gpsAssassin registered more than 20,000 new players in the 20 days since leaving its beta period on September 11, 2009. And here is something you will not see many iPhone developers tell you: the game that is available for free in the App Store has made more than $5,000 in net profits from partner offers and the purchase of additional “Blood Money” in its first month. Because it uses the Google App Engine for all of the back-end server and Web hosting, the platform can scale to support thousands more users at a relatively low cost.

Now that is out of the box thinking. If you ever come through Nashville, Tennessee, be careful: there may be a Dirty Water Balloon lobbed in your direction!

Check out gpsAssassin on the Web at these favorite hide-outs:

• iTunes App Store
• KillYourNeighbor.com
• Side Hobby LLC
• Facebook Group
• Twitter

Doctrine 2.0 was also discussed.  We are hoping for a more complete presentation from Jon Wage next month.  Keep your fingers crossed!

CentreSource is proud to announce that two of our own have been nominated for awards! CEO, Nicholas Holland, has been nominated as a candidate for the Lifetime Achievement Award (sponsored by ComFrame Software Corporation). And Director of Technology, Chip Hayner, has been nominated for Software Programmer / Engineer of the year.

The winners for the awards will be announced at the “Feel the Beat” Technology Awards Gala on October 27th from 5:30pm – 8:00pm at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

Click here for registration information.

Go Nick and Chip!!

Kanye has already chimed in to share his thoughts.

Hehe.

By: Unknown
January 10, 2002

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.

Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

Now that we’ve completed the project/journey, I’m humbled and reminded of how difficult it is to actually develop and launch a ‘finished’ product that others will use on a daily basis. We do this for clients every day, but its easy to forget just how much goes into a project beyond the raw idea and development.

With gpsAssassin, I was amazed at the difficulty of small things like:

1. Setting up the LLC
2. Creating a basic infrastructure for Email, Documentation, etc.
3. Establishing an email marketing process

Notice how I didn’t say anything about ‘developing the game’… While that was amazingly difficult in itself, it was something that you EXPECTED to take time. On the other hand, I never expected customer support to take up 4+ hours per week. I never expected basic information management to take hours upon hours. It all takes soooooo much time.

So, what can I tell those that want to start a business (or even a second one). Nothing of revelation, but I can say it with more conviction:

1. Your new endeavor will take 4x as long as you initially think (and even longer if you’re not a conservative planner)
2. Double your expected budget. Then make sure you can find double that should the need arise. Expenses are everywhere…
3. Tenacity will set you free. There will be MANY dark days when you think you’ll never finish or that all the cards are stacked against you. The good news: You CAN finish! The bad news: Yes, all the cards are stacked against you – deal with it.
4. Accept the things you cannot control and work around them. This is particularly relevant if you’re building iPhone apps!

Last: Side projects have a strange tendency to become primary projects. When this happens, something else in your life will require sacrifice. In my case, the first sacrifice was my sleep, followed by family time, and capped off with a reduction in my work focus. It happens, so be ready to deal with it or you’ll need to keep your side project in its place.

PS: To all the entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with in the past 6 years… I’m sorry :) The further I got away from my ’start up’ days, the more I forgot about all the struggles of entrepreneurship. gpsAssassin gave me a chance to reconnect with my roots and it was a heaping dose of humility :)