Another Year Older

Posted by: Carl Smith on Tuesday December 16, 2008

As 2008 comes to a close it’s time to look back and try to figure out what the hell happened.

Redefining what we do

Taking a page out of Gordon Ramsay’s book we looked at our menu and realized we had too many entrées. So we decided to get out of the application building business. This couldn’t have come at a better time as we started working with great developers like Hashrocket and Zetetic. Our ability to help clients focus on what matters and how to make things simple for the end user was a perfect fit with the developers who know how to make crazy complicated things work. As a result we’ve refined our process even further and have more tools to choose from based on the needs of a project.

Great clients

We couldn’t be happier with the clients who selected us to be a part of their evolution on the web this year. Our updated portfolio highlights many of these projects, while there are many more to be included in the coming months. The biggest shift this year was getting to work with more clients who both understood their users needs and had great corporate personalities.

Hanging out with the cool kids

This year we traveled more than ever before. It started in late January with the whole gang going to Vancouver for Web Directions North. From there we headed to SxSW in March where Varick cleaned up as the best bowler and we were asked to illustrate the now infamous jQuery Rockstar. April found nGen represented in New York at the GEL Conference and in May we took a scout party to RailsConf. In August we headed on a short trip to Gainesville for Summer of Web and the end of our travels were in October as we headed to Camden, Maine for Pop!Tech.

Getting a chance to talk

We were also fortunate this year to be asked to speak at various events. We joined some Razorfish peeps in talking to The University of Texas. AIGA invited us to participate in several panels as well as presenting at re:Charge 08. The University of Florida invited us to talk about Jazz & Agile at the Summer of Web. We were also excited to be interviewed by Subvert on what it takes to run a successful web business as well as being selected for the Superest Guest Spot.

Giving back to the web community

This year we also started giving back to our fellow designers and developers by launching Structure for ExpressionEngine. Not to geek out too much for our non-technical readers, but Structure provides a simple interface to edit all of your site’s content in one location. It also provides dynamic output of navigation and breadcrumbs. Along with offering Structure to everyone, we were thrilled to have an extension we developed included in the release of ExpressionEngine 1.6.5.

New faces

In 2008 we welcomed two new nGeneers, Lori Averitt aka Super Glue and Fred Boyle aka Grease Monkey. They’ve been helping from day one to keep us in line and get things done smarter. Happy to have you crazy kids on board!

Celebrating 5 years

Perhaps the craziest realization is we aren’t really a start-up anymore, but I don’t think we’ll ever be able to stop acting like one. Things in this world and this industry change too fast to sit back and do the norm. For those of you that didn’t make The Space Between party, you missed a hella good time.

What’s next?

Who the hell knows, but it’s gonna be fun. We’ll keep refining our process and if history is any indication we’ll find ourselves talking with more and more cool people. Happy Holidays everybody!

Comment RSS Filed under: Business, nGen News

Keith

12.16.08 at 5:27pm

Congrats on a great year! And thanks for the great work on our SXSW poster – see y’all there in 2009!! :)

Josh Hallett

12.16.08 at 6:02pm

Good to see all the great things that have happened to you guys this year. Need to get up there…(I always say that)

Kevyn

12.16.08 at 6:35pm

Congratulations guys! Here’s to an even better year for ya’ll in 2009!!

Have fun,
Kevyn

Carl Smith

12.17.08 at 3:56pm

Thanks fellas. Fingers crossed this business ice age we’re staring into won’t slow any of us down. Have a great holiday!

Dave Hund

12.18.08 at 6:15am

Good on ‘ya mates!

Hope 2009 will bring more of good stuff!
You guys are inspirational to a starter like me!

Greetings, Dave

Peggi Karnes

12.18.08 at 9:26am

You guys still grace the bulletin board in my office in your Beatles-esque ad for the JBJ…good times. I also “need to get up there.” …I’m proud of you guys and delighted at your success. Wishing you guys and gals even greater challenges (the good kind) and greater successes in 2009.

Ryan Ketterman

12.18.08 at 3:04pm

Glad to see you guys are still rocking! Best of luck in ’09.

Halo night anytime soon?

Bruce Floyd

12.19.08 at 2:04pm

Summer of Web was not mentioned once, but twice! Hizzah!

I am so grateful to have met you guys and can’t wait to see what great things happen for you (and us) in 2009!

Carl Smith

12.20.08 at 1:08am

@Dave Glad we can inspire you!

@Peggi You have the old JBJ ad? That was a blast. You should come see us!