IDEAS

Week 1  2010

Let me start by saying Happy New Year.  Hope this 2010 brings continuous happiness, more episodes of the Jersey Shore, a Jets Super Bowl, even faster internet speeds, teleportation (maybe that’s asking for too much) and more cool, creative and awesome projects for LW. So with that said, this past week’s themes included “busy is an understatement”, “the science of Account Management”, and “10+ years of a united front”.

At the end of each year, our shop is launched into the thralls of projects, projects and yes more projects. Our customers have allotted their 4th quarter budgets for new websites, web apps, and/or have updates that they need to their current sites. Their timelines are always ASAP or yesterday. Last week was a beautifully executed balancing act performed by our project managers, designers and developers. While working on 4 major projects and preparing for a large pitch, busy was an understatement.  It’s weeks like that which fuel my passion for this business and adds to the adventure that is Local Wisdom.

Busy weeks bring their own trials and tribulations and why would the first week of the “new decade” be any different. Our customers have needs and wants.  They need to have their initiatives complete but want to have it delivered (at times) at the flip of a switch. Insert fantastic Account Management & Project Management here.  The end of the year always seems to be a negotiation on timelines with our customers.  With the 87.5 holidays and everyone taking vacation time, it makes for an interesting scheduling feat but we manage. Customers sometimes have issues. We listen and understand as the process is a give and take….and most importantly Local Wisdom always delivers.

We celebrated our 10th year in 2009 so this year would make it 10+ years of making Smart, Happy, and Healthy Websites.  I have to say that our core team, which has not changed, is as united about the direction and future of LW as we were in the basement plotting and planning about this years back.  Hiring talented, passionate, reliable, self motivated people can be a challenge for any company, but we have certainly succeeded in doing so. It’s great coming to work each day knowing that every employee shares a common goal in the success of our family…I mean company.

With that, till next time. Another busy week = more juicy themes.  This weekly review was brought to you by Derrick Larane, Sales Director here at Local Wisdom.

How do you get a project to run smoothly? It all starts with the Project Manager. Our lead project manager Christine Robinson explains the process of whipping the team into shape and keeping us on time as well as the documents and process used to do it! Send requests for screencasts to share@localwisdom.com and follow us at twitter.com/localwisdom and visit us at http://blog.localwisdom.com

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Anita Zinsmeister of the South Jersey Dale Carnegie Training left me a voicemail last week to attend a free intro class for Leadership Training for Managers (LTM). The 7 week (1 day a week) program covers: planning, decision making, time management, motivation, conflict resolution, and fostering innovation.

The group has an excellent ability to teach through games, simulations, and discussions. Derrick and I have taken the High Impact Presentation training. Well worth it.

If you want to check it out visit: http://southjersey.dalecarnegie.com

I’ve always wanted to attend, but wanted to get the other partners involved. It’s best we are on the same page. Needless to say we went yesterday and had a great time.

If you’ve taken the LTM class, I’d like to hear from you. We’re definately takeing the course, but probably not until next year first quarter. This time of the year is our most busiest.

Here are some notable quoatables from the intro class

You can only coast when your going downhill.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Imperfect action always beats perfect inaction.

Only knowledge that gets used sticcks in the mind.

Bonus! Here’s DC’s 7 management diseases:

1. “We’ve never done it that way.”
2. “We’ve always done it this way.”
3. “If it’s not broken, why fix it?”
4. “We’ve tried that back in 1988 and it didn’t work.”
5. “it costs too much.”
6. “That’s not my job.”
7. “We’re just not ready for that just yet.”

Working with people is like a drop of milk in black coffee. There’s essentially no real telling where and how the milk will spread. This is chaos theory.

At the same time, our approach in the work we do is based on getting brilliant minds together to focus on an outcome and make it happen. Yes, we work in groups quite a bit. It can be difficult at times to keep things moving towards a creative end, but when done properly it saves a lot of time, money, and you get a great product that everyone loves.

The PsycBlog has a great post entitled How Groups Form, Conform, Then Warp Our Decision-Making, Productivity and Creativity and goes over some very good points on working in and facilitating groups over several subject areas:

• Formation, influence and leadership
• Productivity
• Decision-making
• Creativity
• The power of groups

Also, here is some supplemental reading: 10 Rules That Govern Groups

Designing information can help us see data in ways that help us achieve specific goals. Well designed data ends up having little text yet the information is delivered through a variety of visual means. That’s how we learned in kindergarten, using pictures and picture books. We process images way faster than we process words.

The Vignet Labs blog posted a great article that show some great examples of information design.

For more information on the subject here are some of my fav books:

Anything by Edward Tufte (The top four results)

The Best Information Diagrams 2 (steep price, still trying to get my hands on #3)

The above image comes from: http://www.sistemadesignitalia.it/drm/

RNIB (supporting blind and partially sighted people) has a great culmination of Excel (and other program) keyboard shortcuts.

Excel Keyboard Shortcuts on RNIB

ConsultingMag.com just did an interview with Allen Adamson, managing director of Landor Associates and author of Brand Aid.

His main theme focuses around uniting brand experts and technology experts. I whole heartedly agree and I’m looking forward to reading the book.

In his interview with consultingmag.com, he praises Johnson & Johnson and their baby care division:

Most marketers are finally getting up to speed. I think Johnson & Johnson is doing some of it very well, particularly for their baby division. They have known for years that moms talking to each other are a key vehicle to getting their brand message into that marketplace. They have the [YouTube] baby channel, and they really created a whole platform for new moms to talk to each other.

Two great essays by Scott Berkun listing the attributes of great managers vs. those that suck.

Click here to read the Good.

Click here to read the Bad and the Ugly.

You know when you go to conferences there are many references to websites and books. Here is a list of websites and books from the Future of Web Apps that occured last week in Miami.

Websites

AListApart
“For people who make websites” – A List Apart Magazine (ISSN: 1534-0295) explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.

Atlas
Yea, you just gotta check this out, trust me you won’t regret it.

BriteKite
Brightkite is a location-based social network. In real time you can see where your friends are and what they’re up to. Depending on your privacy settings you can also meet others nearby.

CMSReview.com/Stages
Content Management is a complex business and is best understood by breaking it down into the major stages or phases involved in managing the content lifecycle.

Delivr
Interesting ways to share URLs

Domainr
Domainr helps you explore hundreds of domain names.

FaceBook Connect
Facebook Connect is the next evolution of Facebook Platform – enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site.

Jott
Capture thoughts, create to-dos and set reminders with a simple phone call

Kallow
Kallow is a product recommendation site built specifically to give you the nerd-

Mashville
Maybe sometimes you took turns drawing something together with another person. This is the best way to explain how the work displayed here was made.

MindMeister
Free web-based collaborative mind mapping tool for brainstorming and project-managment.

Ning
Create your own social network for anything

OpenTable
Make restaurant reservations the easy way. Find a restaurant » Choose a table » Book online. Trusted by 10,000 restaurants & 90 million diners

PatternTap
A collection of interface design solutions from all over the web, where users can mark patterns they like, and learn from other’s design solutions.

Picnik
Photo editing made fun

PipelineDeals
Simple CRM for big business: Organize your deals and prospects, Track the entire sales process, Report on your sales pipeline, and Close more deals, more efficiently. $15/ month.

Sifter
Sifter is designed to be a bug and issue tracker for non-technical people. We’re passionate about making bug and issue tracking simple enough to get everyone involved and working together.

Truvay
I dunno yet. Sign up and find out with the rest of us.

TweetDeck
An application that aims to evolve existing functionality of Twitter by breaking down Twitter feeds into more manageable bite sized pieces.

Ubiquity
Ubiquity is a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.

Books

Crossing the Chasm
Author Geoffrey Moore makes the case that high-tech products require marketing strategies that differ from those in other industries. His chasm theory describes how high-tech products initially sell well, mainly to a technically literate customer base, but then hit a lull as marketing professionals try to cross the chasm to mainstream buyers. This pattern, says Moore, is unique to the high-tech industry.

Getting Real
Getting Real is the business, design, programming, and marketing philosophies of 37signals — a developer of web-based software used by over 1 million people and businesses in 70 countries.

Letting Go of the Words
“Redish has done her homework and created a thorough overview of the issues in writing for the Web. Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won’t read very many words on your website — and what to do about it.” — Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group

I know there were more so if I missed anything shoot me an email at pkathiari@localwisdom.com or add a comment.

Quality, fast, and cheap: 2 yes, but not all three.

FreelanceFolder has a good article on pricing models around these attributes.

If you allow your clients to have fast, good, cheap work designed by yourself then most likely you are working your butt off for very little return