Arena District Firm Continues Growth Amidst National Recession

Columbus, OH, November 9, 2009 — dynamIt, a Columbus-based web engineering and digital strategy agency, is pleased to announce the addition of Kevin Pfefferle as web developer and Jamie Timm as strategist.

Kevin joined dynamIt in September bringing a wide range of experience in web design and development. In his most recent position as web manager at COSI – recognized as the top science museum in the U.S. by Parents Magazine, Kevin managed the daily operations of digital strategy, design, and development for COSI’s web presence. Kevin also collaborated on COSI’s social media strategy, which has been recognized nationally for excellence in the educational science industry. The COSI marketing team was named Outstanding Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association’s Columbus Chapter.

Kevin holds his BA degree music from The Ohio State University.

Jamie Timm joins dynamIt after a career in public relations and marketing at the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, Bob Evans Farms, Inc., and Highlander Logo Products. Jamie most recently was the director of marketing and communication for the Columbus Chamber where she supported the Chamber’s mission to lead and support economic development by developing integrated communications campaigns to attract new business and help existing businesses expand. During her time at Bob Evans, Jamie was one of the first communicators in the country to collaborate with a CEO on an internal blog and has spoken to communicators on the subject of social media in business nationally. Jamie was named the 2007 Rising Star by Central Ohio PRSA.

Jamie has her BA degree in communication arts from Ohio Northern University.

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Based in the Arena District in Columbus, Ohio, dynamIt combines technical, creative, and business perspective to create strategic digital solutions with corporations, non-profits and international organizations. dynamIt’s core services include: digital brand strategy, information and application architecture, database design, graphic and user experience design, content management and application, database, intranet and website development. In addition, dynamIt crafts and executes integrated communication (PR and social web) initiatives and digital campaigns with experiential components. For more information, visit www.dynamit.us or call +1.614.538.0095

Grade inflation (Positive Acquiescence Bias - thanks Bryce ) seems to be prevalent across the web - YouTube and Amazon are both reporting it, and averages are higher in the UK (4.4) than the US.

While I don’t see any critical problems with positive acquiescence bias on the public web (buyer/browser/analyst beware & get smart), it made me think about the manifestation of this behavior on internal social networks - especially as more organizations are exploring and deploying mechanisms and/or re-engineering for some degree of social business design (Alimeter Group , Dachis Group ).

Significant capital outlay for technology, change management, HR moves and more means that social business design is an investment. The investment is worth it, according to McKinsey survey results , but as companies push deeper into the space and begin to rely more heavily on information and insights gleaned from digital environments, I think we need to be aware of patterns and possible skews.

Why?

Because connecting a workforce is proving valuable: real-time feedback and data mean fast learning, course correction and innovation. Reputational systems applied to knowledge, resources, and options can quickly gauge a global and disparate organization’s sentiment and needs, allowing for informed business decisions… ‘informed’ being the operable word here. If feedback is inflated (one way or another), organizations need to be wary of making decisions based on it. The opportunity to gather and act on data is certainly there. It’s the qualification of that data, per the tendencies being reported in similar environments, that must be remembered.

So…

As Brian Link says, “sample sizes and % participation and correlated results from different data sets are key to interpreting these kinds of things” but I’m also wondering - Do we design against/for it? Do we coach against it? I’m not even close to an expert on reputational systems (again, see Bryce )) and haven’t researched inflation results beyond the WSJ article, but it made me think:

1. Are grades inflated?
2. Are there reputational system design considerations which can be made to combat or normalize this behavior or the data?
3. Is there group behavior coaching or leadership that can modify this these patterns?

Thoughts?

Technically speaking, there is a bit more to it than that, but luckily for us web developers it just sort of happens, you pop an <input type=”file” /> tag into your HTML and the file magically appears on your web server in a spot that’s not too difficult to find.

The problem is that the traditional browser upload is very limiting. What if I want to attach 20 pictures to the same e-mail? Or, how about getting a progress bar for those larger uploads? If the upload fails how do I know what went wrong?

Well, recently we’ve been seeing a solution, use Flash. The FileReference object in ActionScript can do all of these things. And, yeah, it’ll work just fine, but wouldn’t it be convenient if browsers could just handle these things naturally?

Short answer: yes. And the W3C thinks so too as they are in the process of compiling a File API. From the looks of things accessing file information before anything has been transferred to the server will become trivial.

However, if you read a bit deeper into things, you’ll see this provides for a much deeper browser integration with your computer’s file system. The ability for the browser to read (and perhaps write) file data directly to/from the end-user’s machine is in the works here.

With such features we will greatly advance the strength and possibilities of web applications. Things like Google Gears, as cool as they are, won’t be necessary because the browser will handle it on its own.

Columbus College of Art & Design

www.ccad.edu
We spent the last several months working with CCAD to completely re-orchestrate their website. Starting with web strategy and new architecture, designing the concept and the user experience, and finishing with web standards programming, we delivered the complete package. Our developers even got their hands dirty with a custom designed, AJAX-driven calendar integrated with the Google Calendar Data API.

CATCO

www.catco.org
CATCO is place to go for live theatre in Columbus. We worked closely with the people at CATCO to provide the online destination for information their organization and shows they put on each season. After many hours executing strategy & IA, concept design, UXD, and web standards programming we launched their new site. We had so much fun working on the project we even volunteered to help them promote the new site at Gallery Hop last weekend.

CallCopy

www.callcopy.com
Call recoding software specialist CallCopy came to us looking for a sleek redesign of their website as well as some guidance on navigation and architecture. After the first week of having the new site live we’ve heard reports that the new site has already yielded an increased conversion rate.

The Ohio State University Medical Center: CITIH

citih.osumc.edu
The Ohio State University Medical Center came to us looking for design and development of a microsite for its Center for IT Innovations in Healthcare (CITIH). This one had a tight timeline but we rolled it out in time for them to start accepting registrants for their summit Leveraging Federal Stimulus Funding for Healthcare IT Innovation.

Oh yeah, these are also the first four clients running the new version of the dynamIt Content Management System (dCMS). We launched that in July too.

1. We complete the last list of tweaks and changes from the client.

2. The site is tested across various platforms and browsers with different browser and system settings. Any issues that arise there get fixed. We also ensure that all XHTML, CSS, and RSS meet W3C standards.

3. Code is cleaned up, documented and minified if necessary, then frozen. This means for the next two days or so we continue to use/test the site but code is NOT to be touched.

4. If all is clear we push the site to the live server, but hidden under a subdomain. Run through all functions in its live environment. If there are problems, they are fixed and we start over again at the code freeze step.

5. If we no issues are found, a simple DNS change and the new site is live (instantly and without downtime).

Unfortunately, it does not seem to happen that way. As much as we insist that this is the way to go, clients demand otherwise. There is always a rush at the end to get more and more client changes complete and still launch on an arbitrary date that the client chooses.

But, this is bad for everyone. This single most important thing for a web site or web application is that it is error free. And, the more we rush at the end, the more problems we have. New issues quickly arise because a rushed programmer does not consider every consequence of their changes. This means introducing bugs at an increased rate, many of which go undetected until after launch.

Two things that I would like clients to understand:

1) You can control launch date OR state of site at launch, not both.
We’ve had clients insist that we launch on Friday, then deliver a list of revisions Thursday evening at 8:00pm. This doesn’t work. If you insist that we launch on a certain day, then we drive what items get implemented prior to launch.

2) Remember, launch is not the end.
Give us a list of changes you’d like, but trust us to prioritize them. If we’re nearing launch, we’ve probably spent several months understanding your organization and your goals for the website. Let us decide what you really need now and what can wait. Launch is not the end, we look forward to a long term relationship helping you progress your web presence, there is plenty of time to make changes once we get the new site out there.

Internet from Jordan Clarke on Vimeo.

Columbus is a leader in the Midwest. The city can boast a culture of growth and business know-how where people, ideas and capital are coming together. The Chamber is and should be the expression of Columbus’ economic hub. dynamIt is a member, first and foremost, because of the opportunities afforded to participate in the local economy and thinking. In a business era of interdependencies and quickly-dying vertical solutions (regardless of industry), businesses should commit to creating an environment of opportunities for all economic players. dynamIt truly believes that if this city and economy succeed, we will too. Through membership, we also benefit from the programming, events, and connections which the Chamber facilitates.

In case you missed it, dynamIt was also featured recently in two university publications - Xavier Magazine, and the Miami University Farmer School of Business.

I represented dynamIt at the event by giving a talk titled, “WordPress in the Corporate World.” My talk was the presentation of a case study in which we implemented WordPress for Fortune 500 company McGraw-Hill who has a large presence here in Columbus.

Back in January 2009, we, along with partner Sync Creative, launched a microsite for the Glencoe division of McGraw-Hill. Sync brought us to the table to provide web strategy and web development of the site. We recommended and implemented WordPress in order to meet their project goals. The project has had overwhelmingly positive results meeting all success criteria. This same site also earned recognition from the New York Times in March.

Click here to download the complete case study and read more (pdf).

All-in-all, really happy with what I got out of WordCamp and excited by how we can continue to leverage WordPress in the future.

If you look closely around the web you will rarely see tabs that overlap each other. Usually, each tab is in its own self-contained box. The reason for this is that if two tabs overlap then turning one of those to its activate state requires the swapping of multiple graphics. This makes using sprites much more difficult and less effective (and if you’re still using JavaScript for image rollovers, well, that gets even messier).

So, I am working on the UI for the tabs seen to the right. You’ll notice that not only do they overlap, but each has a drop shadow that covers all the tabs and only those tabs that are “underneath” it. It is literally like we have four tabbed sheets of paper here that we want to be able to stack in any order. In my opinion, this is a pretty silky graphic effect, check it out, the PG. 2 tabs is all the way on the bottom, followed by PG. 1, then PG. 3, with PG. 4 on top.

My solution is to use absolute positioning along with transparent PNGs. Yes, transparent PNGs mean bad news for IE 6, but the solution is otherwise super-easy to work.

Simply cut out each individual tab and keep its alpha-channel transparency by saving as a PNG. Then, absolutely position each tab in its correct place on the page

Now here is the trick. If the server generates the active tab, whichever tab appears last in the HTML code will be on top based on the natural stacking order (i.e. no need to fool with z-index).

If the client-side can alter the active tab, messing with z-index is really not that difficult. I haven’t tried it, but something like the following should work thanks to jQuery.

$(’.tab’).click( function() { $(this).siblings().css(’z-index’, 1).end().css(’z-index’, 2); } );

Oh yeah, if you do need rollovers this method is totally compatible with your traditional CSS sprite.