Feb. 15, 2010 at 3:56pmWe All Win
No, this is not a spineless diatribe on why we are all winners. Even though I received a trophy when my 1987 youth soccer team came in last place, I don't share that sentiment. No ... this is about win-win situations. One in particular in fact.
I wrote a while ago about seeing a
"To Write Love On Her Arms" t-shirt while at Disneyland while my family was there celebrating my wife's birthday. We love that place. So when we heard about their program this year about getting a day pass for giving a day of service (
Give a Day, Get a Disney Day), we jumped at the opportunity.
Read more →
On December 22nd, over half the SiteCrafting crew headed down to the Pierce County YWCA to help out in their Christmas gift center. Every December, the YWCA's gym is transformed into a "store" where residents can pick out gifts for their parents/children/siblings.
13 of us volunteered to wrap and label presents during two different shifts. While the first few presents seemed to take an eternity to wrap, we soon got into the swing of things and were cranking them out like nobody's business. Good thing too, as there were lots of presents to go around. Donations come from several sources: individual donations, Girl Scout troops, churches, even Hell's Angels contribute everything from toys and clothes for the kids to housewares and perfume for mom.
Read more →
Last night, myself, Brian, Julie, Mandi, Michael, Nick, and Kirk attended the Business Examiner's Fastest Growing Companies event at the Tacoma Glass Museum. Last year, we were honored to receive the #6 spot out of 10 finalists, but this year we received third place.
Finalists were selected from companies headquartered in the South Sound. The winner of the #1 spot this year was Wichert Electric Inc from Chehalis.
BCRA also won the Longevity Award for the second year running.
Congrats to Wichert Electric, BCRA and all the other finalists.
Thoughts on South Sound Technology Conference
I had the privilege of being on a panel discussion this morning at the
South Sound Technology Conference. Our panel consisted of Derek Young from
Seasonal View, John Dimmer from FIRS Management and
Tacoma Angel Network, Mark Briggs of
SerraMedia, Graham Evans of the
WTC, and myself. Our topic was on Entrepreneurship in the South Sound.
The panel had input on a variety of topics including mentorship, building connections and the importance of community for companies and start-ups here in the South Sound. After the discussion I enjoyed a bit of networking before heading out for what turned into a very long conference call, but that's how it goes.
Read more →
Last week Michael and I had the opportunity to spend some time with the staff of Spokane's Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery. As a Gear Grant recipient, we'll be working closely with the crisis nursery on giving their website an overhaul, updating it to better serve their current needs.
Amy Swanson, the nursery's Executive Director, gave us a tour of the location and let us in on both the sad and really positive things that come with running a crisis nursery. Some of the stories make you really feel for the children that can't do anything about the situations that they are in, but the amazing success stories shore up the positive work that they are doing.
Read more →
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure to attend and volunteer for the StackOverflow DevDays conference in Seattle.
StackOverflow is a programming Q&A site, much like Expert's Exchange except without the nagging to register. It boasts over 1 million page views per day and something like 20 thousand
active users.
There were many interesting topics covered, from ASP.NET to Qt, and there's a few new ideas that I want to try out now.
Read more →
Forget Kansas, It's All About Spokane
During my freshman year at PLU, I woke up to two friends throwing my coat and shoes at me and telling me to get dressed and come outside to see all the snow. I jumped right up and did what they said because I heard it rarely snowed in my new town so there was no time to waste. We ran outside and I couldn't believe my eyes. People were making snowmen, snow angels and dragging sleds in a whopping inch of snow. Talk about disappointment. I mean I realize you've got to work with what you've got (so more power to you west side residents) but this just wasn't doing it for me. In Spokane an inch is no blizzard and it better get 24 inches bad to even think about canceling school.
Read more →
Show off your work that's not for work
Thursday, October 22 from 6-8pm, SiteCrafting will host a Side Project Demo Night in our conference room.
Read more →
I recently had the pleasure of visiting Disneyland for my wife's birthday. While it is (by my opinion, and many others') the "happiest place on earth," there are certain things that made this trip even more enjoyable. Not only did my wife receive hundreds of "Happy Birthdays" from the cast workers (due to the birthday button you get on your birthday), but I got to see some of our clients' represented as well.
Read more →
SiteCrafting attended the 32nd Annual LeMay Car Show & Auction at Marymount Academy in Tacoma, WA on Saturday, August 29th. As the Official Website Provider for LeMay- AMERICA'S CAR MUSEUMŽ, SiteCrafting set up an informational booth at the event where we showcased sites we developed and made ourselves available to talk about our partnership with LeMay and other community initiatives we take part in.
Read more →
It's About Time
Today, SiteCrafting teammates were given a tour of
YWCA facilities in downtown Tacoma. We had the pleasure of having our tour led by Executive Director Miriam Barnett and Marketing Manager Kelly McDonald.
Miriam provided some great education on history, purpose and even shared stories of current and past clients. This organization has an amazing history. YWCA of Pierce County was started in 1905 and in 1976 opened the state's first shelter for battered women. It was the largest shelter in western states at the time.
We toured this shelter and learned a lot about the building utilization, client services and the organization's plans for the future. The YWCA of Pierce County is in desperate need of additional shelter space and recently purchased a nearby building that we also toured. This new building provides a lot of potential for the organization as, in the least, it will provide more apartment style shelter space for women and children.
They are currently in the midst of a campaign to raise the funds to fully convert this new building into shelter space, and SiteCrafting is a proud partner in this campaign.
Thanks very much to Miriam and Kelly for this thoughtful and thorough tour of YWCA facilities. You both make it very easy to be inspired and excited to support YWCA initiatives.
Additional pictures of the tour are available at SiteCrafting's Flickr photostream.
It's always fun to visit the places we do business with. It's even more fun when you go as a team and you go as an actual visitor and not as a vendor to a meeting. Such was the case Friday afternoon, when we decided to caravan out to Marymount to visit the LeMay Museum.
The museum offers guided tours and our group was led by the personable Pierce. He escorted us around the grounds through several buildings and answered our questions in a way that made even the least car-knowledgeable person feel at ease.
Read more →
I may never eat carrots again.
There's something extremely satisfying about doing for others. It's not very hard, doesn't take very long, yet makes a huge difference for those in need. Saturday, November 15, some co-workers and I headed over to the Emergency Food Network's Distribution Center for their monthly Repack Project. Giant bins of frozen vegetables are repacked into 1-2 pound bags for distribution to over 70 food banks, hot meal sites, and shelters throughout Pierce County.
Read more →
A Place to Think - For Health Care
I was honored to be asked to present at Jay Ray's Think Lab earlier this month. The day long event was focused on marketing / technology solutions for regional health care providers and was held at
The Inn at Gig Harbor.
The program included practical tips and discussion on a variety of topics, including my presentation, How to Wow! Website Innovation. Other presenters included
Andrew Fry and
JayRay staff.
My presentation, of course begged the question...How does one wow with the web?
Read more →
To nerdly go...
That's what we did a couple Fridays ago here in the office. Brian's wife Julie is an avid Trekker and was excited to plan a Next Generation marathon with us. And we definitely put her complete series DVD collection to good use. From about 5:30pm on we watched episode after favorite episode. After a pile of snacks, some great pizza, sharing Star Trek memories, 7 episodes, it was half past midnight and time to wrap it up.
Thanks to Julie for making the trek (ha!) up and for those killer communicator cookies. We'll definitely have to do it again sometime.
Pics after the break.
Read more →
Fully one-third of the staff at SiteCrafting participated in our office Halloween contest today. Though we dressed up to win today's prize a few of us even wandered about the streets of Tacoma on our way to and from a party at local design and architectural firm BCRA. A software pirate, blogging ninja, head-crab zombie, and "J" blockhead walking down Pacific Ave. certainly drew a bit of attention.
Read more →
No One's Missing the Trust Falls & Human Pyramids
The SiteCrafting team spent the first weekend in October enjoying the Hood Canal area as part of this year's company retreat. Being as we suffer from a distinct lack of petty office politics and other Dilbert-esque characteristics, "company retreat" is not synonymous with "endless torture" for us here.
The getaway was designed to allow the team to take a break from the office routine and gain capacity to review and offer input on company strategy, successes and our roadmap for sustaining growth. As usual, our collective wit, insight and sarcastic humor made these discussions interesting, informative, motivating and memorable.
Read more →
Sep. 20, 2007 at 9:32pmInteract
What's the big deal?
We want to stay connected with our customers. We want customers to meet other customers. We want our potential customers to see just how easy it is to take control of their website and make it more successful. We want to give you the chance to meet others that are using our tools, that is why we have created "Interact".
We realize that people are busy. In fact, most people, when they get to the office, don't have time to even think about much of anything other than the hottest potato that has been thrown in their lap on that particular day. Rarely do they have time to get a few minutes to update their websites, even more rare, the time to strategize ways to make their website make their lives easier. That is why we believe Interact is so important.
Read more →
Maybe next we'll break into song
Who knew a seemingly innocuous internal email would make for some good laughs and groans? I sure didn't when I invited folks from the office to join in a Friday after work pseudo-tradition.
Read more →
With all the different
companies and organizations we work with, I'm bound to run into them in the "real world". Seeing people around is one thing. Seeing ads is another pretty common one. Lately, however, the signs of our clients I've been seeing are mobile ones.
Read more →
SiteCrafting'er Joe and his band This Shirt Is Pants had a gig last Friday here in Tacoma at Hell's Kitchen. A gaggle of co-workers and friends showed up and had a great time playing some pool and listening to the band.
Read more →
Do you know why you have a website?
Got up at 3:11 to drive through the ice to Sea-Tac for an early flight to Boise, Idaho. I was asked to present to the Idaho Pest Control Environmental Care Association at their annual conference on the need or non-need of a website for their businesses. The group was welcoming, the bagels fresh and the coffee warm. I think the presentation a success.
Now I'm off to the Boise Airport for my return trip to Seattle. As promised to the group...the
pdf of the presentation and a copy of the
handout.
Hey bowler, bowler!
So last Friday was a great afternoon. After visiting our customer
Primo Grill for a celebration lunch, we proceeded to Chalet Bowl for a couple games of bowling.
It was good to get out of the office for a bit to celebrate the upcoming birth of Hiromi's baby (no, we don't know if it is a boy or a girl yet, but will soon). We all pitched in and purchased a
Baby Bjorn and a baby wipe warmer. Kevin claims that a happy baby is a baby with warm wipes. Speaking from experience, I'm not so sure. Sometimes nothing, not even promises of hundred dollar bills will silence a crying newborn.
We had a fantastic time, complete with an out of body bowling experience by SiteCrafting's own David Poole. Dave's penchant for turkeys (three strikes in a row) allowed our team to coast to victory in both games.
To view more pics,
have a look at Kevin's blog
