Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there.
My name is Keyboard Man. For the past two years, I’ve been honored and delighted to host Happy Cog’s Cog’aoke Karaoke Competition at the SXSW Interactive conference. Maybe you’ve attended Cog’aoke. Maybe you’ve even performed. If you’re on either of those lists, you have my eternal gratitude and sincere admiration. You are also probably the object of more than a few secret crushes of these people.
Perhaps you’ve stood in line at Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream and said,
“What flavor of ice cream do I want today?”
You’ve probably all wished, as I have, that you could have a dozen flavors at once. Thankfully, someone, possibly Messrs. Ben & Jerry, invented that tiny ice cream spoon. Sample just a taste to see if that flavor suits your mood.
Any mint can mask lunch breath, but only Certs has a golden drop of Retsyn. That drop and its golden hue, which no one but a copywriter has ever seen (the actual visual end-product is a trail of green flecks), may have made a powerful differentiator back when Tang was a breakfast drink, but it’s not enough to sway a modern consumer.
The year 2010 was a wild one for the web. It saw the release of the iPad and all of the subsequent great ideas and discussion about flexible design approaches. HTML was cool again (the cinco!). Twitter got a major overhaul and Facebook got between 35 and 268 small facelifts. It was as if millions of bookmarks cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced when rumor had it delicio.us was disappeari.ng. In fact, someone apparently took the web’s pulse and pronounced it DOA!
No matter what field we specialize in, each of us faces common day-to-day responsibilities, tasks, and expectations of awesomeness at our jobs. Sometimes we might assume that people in different roles don’t face the same challenges; however, when we break it down to the basics, it might surprise us how much we all have in common. See for yourself!
At Happy Cog, I am responsible for the bulk of our sales efforts along with ensuring that our ongoing client relationships are positive. The early days of the professional relationship are not unlike the very early stages of courtship and dating. If there’s a connection to be made, its foundation is built on listening and sharing, which are sincere efforts for us to understand and help each other.
Two years ago, my wife and I stopped throwing all of our organic food waste into the trash. Instead, we purchased a composter and started tossing our food scraps into it. The intent behind this change was mostly selfish: we wanted a way to create nutrient rich soil to mix into the planting areas in our backyard. However, a week or two into using it, while pushing our trash can out to the street curb, I noticed another positive side-effect: the trash can was lighter and emptier. We were sending less to the landfill!
When Happy Cog undertakes a development job, one of our goals is to empower our clients with the necessary knowledge for them to help themselves. We’re not passing the buck — we’re planning for the future. No one likes writing or receiving panicked emails about urgent updates to the legal speak of the footer, or that so and so’s aunt just looked at the website and couldn’t find the button that adds an item to the cart. We work with our clients every step of the way to ensure that, even in those panicked moments, they are able to help themselves.
The summer of 1991 was fast approaching. I needed a source of income to pay my rent over the summer or I’d have to live at home with my parents and little brother. No self respecting college sophomore would willingly choose to do this. I had worked in a chain record store in high school, so I figured I’d go down to my favorite independent record store and see if I could get a job. As “luck” would have it, they needed a janitor-slash-lackey. Thus began my romance with the nearly extinct species of business known as the independent music retailer.
The success of any project hinges upon your ability to extract information from people. I’m not talking about summary-level information, I’m talking about the microscopic stuff. It’s harder than you might think.
The reason for this may be best identified by a Hungarian–British polymath named Michael Polanyi who wrote a book called “The Tacit Dimension” in 1967. It is an overview of something he called “tacit knowledge,” which is the belief that creative acts (especially acts of discovery) are charged with strong personal feelings and commitments.
At the age of three I decided that three was the best number. This was based on sound science: my toddler-brain resolved that being 3 was the best age. This infatuation has stuck around for years, and now taken root in my design methodology. Ever since my first creative director demanded three different concepts, I’ve always subscribed to the Rule of Three (3): it’s my de facto way to structure process and unveil work to clients. Want Happy Cog to design your website? You’ll probably get three different solutions to choose from.
re: Not Red Dawn but Almost
All: It’s 4:00 AM and I am both wide awake and completely exhausted at the same time.
First, I want to say that last week’s Halo game was inspiring, informative, and productive.