Archive for the ‘Skytemple’ Category
A Social Media Road Trip to Boston
A Web Design Team Outing, a Social Media Conference, and a Few Lessons any Company Can Learn From a Road Trip
A few weeks ago the Skytemple Team was invited to attend a social media marketing class put on by the experts at WebMaxed. Through careful planning, the trip was an enormous success, providing a wealth of information for all of us. From dinner at East by Northeast, an excellent restaurant with roots in modern Chinese cuisine, to our visit to WebMaxed’s informative presentation, we all benefited from and enjoyed the trip.
Below is a short list of things that we took away from the trip and which any business, web or otherwise, might gain from such an experience.
1. Be Prepared
As with any trip, the planning and execution is tantamount. The planning of a trip, out-of-town or out-of-state, will determine whether the trip succeeds or fails. Transportation, accommodations if necessary and coordination between team members over times and meeting places are all details that require the kind of agility required in a fast-paced company. The team’s ability to adapt their skills to surprises is indicative of their ability to handle new projects and respond to a world in constant flux.
2. It’s the Journey, Not the Destination
Simply getting out of the office setting is one of the biggest rewards of a road trip. Learning things about who the people you work with is a real eye-opening experience, and being in a car with anyone for a few hours, one can learn a lot.
Long conversations about everything from existentialism, robot-armed projectors, to the future of computers and social media, lead to almost five hours of intense brainstorming and team-building.
Watching billboards and signs in cities along the trip also gave us a better understanding how regional real-world advertising changes with the landscape. Simply seeing a new place can inspire a lot of new ideas about how to more effectively design for different regions.
3. A Visit Is Worth A Thousand Words
As I mentioned, we decided a dual-purpose trip was in order. Our dinner at East by Northeast was a lovely excursion in Cambridge, and the food was beautifully presented and delightfully delicious. We learned a lot about who our client was and what their neighborhood was like. We also got to experience first-hand their service and menu, giving us a deeper understanding of both our client and what they do.
Any chance to visit a client or a client’s business in person is a wonderful opportunity to better understand what they need and how you can make what you do relevant to them.
4. You Never Know What You’ll Learn or Who You’ll meet
WebMaxed presented a well-informed look at the history of marketing and it’s evolution towards the word-of-mouth strategy of modern marketing campaigns. The key to rising above the static lies in the ability to have relevant and honest conversations through social media. Our hosts began the presentation with an important and compelling argument regarding social media: people trust the words of those that they know. In the old days, before advertising was prince, word of mouth was king.
TV’s once dominated american living rooms, spewing out the exaggerations and outright lies of brands, but as we move further away from tube-fed entertainment, conversation and word of mouth have once again gained strength. We have not removed the TV from the living room so much as we have moved the living room into the rest of our lives, simultaneously hosting and visiting friends from our mobile devices.
For Skytemple, the presentation was a bonanza of information and ideas. On top of the excellent information provided by the guys at WebMaxed, hearing other attendees questions during the presentation and listening to and participating in discussions during the break and the Q&A section provided a great depth of perspective on the problems and worries our present and future clients have when going into a meeting to discuss developing an online marketing campaign.
The trip proved to be a real boon for the Skytemple team as it could be for anyone.
Pleasant Street Video To Close
But An Unlikely Source May Save the Iconic Video Store’s Vast Library
Recently the Hammer Came Down
Word on the street picked up momentum over the week that Northampton’s last and greatest video store would be closing it’s doors this coming July. It became official today when the video store announced it on their Facebook Page. A sad development for the Northampton community, but one which was, as many had said in interviews, “inevitable.” Even the mighty Blockbuster in town fell to Netflix this year.
The question of what will become of the store space and employees remains unknown for the time being. One thing is certain, however, the friends of Pleasant Street Video and the fans of classic & eclectic & cult cinema Pleasant Street Video has come to symbolize will not allow those memories of the community to go quietly into the night.
Local Video Stores Vs. The Internet: An Uphill Battle
By many recent accounts Netflix usage has surged to staggering numbers, with users overtaking all other forms of bandwidth use; an impressive thirty percent is streamed Netflix content – followed by BitTorrent, another less legal solution to accessing television, film and other forms of entertainment. We saw similar tools take down the record industry years ago. With the onset of portable tablets that can play media anywhere, and the rate at which television and movie studios are getting involved with the web (to the point of exclusive web content for many shows and movies) the days of local video rental stores seems doomed.
And so it is with Pleasant St Video, a long time compatriot to neighbor Pleasant St Theater- which recently went through an almost identical financial crisis (saved at the eleventh hour by Amherst Cinema). Pleasant St Video has been a mainstay in Northampton for twenty five years and has survived like it’s compatriot through the many acculturations the town has witnessed.
When Dan Crowley of the Gazzete spoke with Dana Gentes, the Video store’s general manager, a few weeks ago, Pleasant St Video staff and patrons were still unsure of the future of their beloved haunt. Dana Gentes’ words foreshadowed the coming tides:
“I sense it is coming eventually. I don’t see this kind of business lasting. Might be three months from now, might be a year from now.” She went on, “The revenue isn’t there to sustain the business,” he added. “We’re in the same boat as every other video store.”
Save The Pleasant Street Video Movie Collection
Film and Literature has classically been at odds, with the former thinking the latter a bit snobbish and the latter thinking the former a bit shallow, yet throughout the years theirs has remained a give-and-take relationship. Primarily with movies taking all kinds of things from books – plots, characters and worlds. But now the world of Literature is giving a little back.
Forbes Library is leading an initiative to save the entirety of the Pleasant St Video Library and make it a part of their on permanent video collection. Effectively this would make over 8,000 titles available for rental to the public – for FREE! The Library is looking to raise the $60,000 dollars needed to save the entire collection through small individual donations.
For just eight (tax deductible) dollars, you can save one film from the fires and place it in the Forbes stacks, helping the library to nearly triple its collection, and help save many rare and hard to find titles.
Forbes has made it easy to donate – setting up a site here, linked directly from the Pleasant St Video website.
Forbes Library seeks to acquire the entirety of Pleasant Street Video's Collection
Seeking Local Web Developer
We are a small company in Northampton that offers innovative design and development of websites, as well as a host of other services. We are a close-knit, dynamic team that collaborates transparently at all levels of a project. While we all have deadlines, we are very fluid in our approach: we do not fear Skype, are huge fans of “the cloud,” and dispatch with tradition in the interests of efficacy. We work from home, cafes, the office, or anywhere which affords us a WiFi connection. We are flexible with our schedules while actively checking items off our to-do lists, and meeting (if not exceeding) the expectations of our clients.
If this sounds wonderful to you, you might be in luck! We’ve got an opening. We are seeking to add a part-time, front-end focused web developer to our ranks. There is a strong potential for full time down the proverbial road. We are seeking someone with the following skills and abilities:
Essential:
- HTML/CSS
- PHP
- Javascript, jQuery
- Fluency in building WordPress & Drupal themes from designs
- Experience troubleshooting WordPress plugins/Drupal modules
- Great attitude and communicator
- Enjoys problem solving and learning new skills
Also, ideally:
- Experience writing WordPress plugins and/or Drupal modules
- MySQL
- ecommerce integration into WordPress or Drupal
- Flash (editing or converting to better formats)
- VPS/server administration
- Familiarity with HTML5/CSS3 and new technologies
Sound like you? Then, send us your resume and tell us a bit about yourself. Also, in an effort to get a handle on the skills and abilities which cannot be itemized on your resume, we would like you to send 3 – 4 code samples (at least one HTML/CSS, one PHP, and a sample of your choice) to: info at skytemple.com
We hope to hear from you. You’ll love us.
“Rhymes with Orange” Cartoonist Appeared at UMass-Amherst on April 7th
Hillary Price, who does the strip “Rhymes with Orange,” appeared at UMASS-Amherst on Thursday, April 79th, 2011 at 5:00 PM in Room #249 of the Boyden Gym. We hope you are familiar with her work and know the strip in particular, as it’s a surreal masterpiece – and she’s wonderful, too! Take a look at the strip that accompanies this post and please share this info with anyone whom you think might be interested.
The Pioneer Valley Web Summit is Here!
(Saturday, April 9th, 2011)
Pioneer Valley Web Summit is Western Massachusetts’ first annual web conference. It will be held on Saturday, April 9th, starting at 10:00 AM, in Seelye Hall at Smith College in Northampton, MA. Registration begins at 9:30 AM.
There is no specific focus of this conference, making it accessible to all. We plan on having three rooms active, one of which will be an “unconference” (so bring your session ideas with you!)
Some broad topics you can expect to encounter include: web design, social media, SEO, web development, discussion of CMSs… and anything else web-related! See the “Speakers” page to see who will be presenting, and the Schedule page to track which sessions you would like to attend.
Sponsors include:
- Skytemple
- common media
- Communicate Health
- Scout Moderation
- Hearth.com
- Midnight Son Designs
- Sarah Meikle – Consultant
Additionally, you can follow notices from the organizers via the @ValleySummit Twitter Account as well as follow commentary from attendees (and organizers) via the #valleysummit Twitter “Hash Tag”
We look forward to seeing you there!
