What a difference a year makes
As we were leaving the office last night, we started talking about how calm everything was for this time of year. No crazy all-nighters to get everything done before the break, no clients calling 10 times a day with wacky new requests, nothing. It started dawning on me that 2007 has truly been evolutionary for us in so many ways. And through a series of small steps, some on purpose, some forced and some accidental, we are truly in control of our future.
Getting our act together
A big part of 2007 was about improving how we approach every project. This year we decided to document our process and identify the pitfalls projects normally fell into. The result was the Client Guide and it was an instant hit.
Our new site was well received and we could see a difference in the type of leads we were attracting within weeks.
Using simple web-based tools gave us a new level of control over the business side of nGen. Blinksale, Tick and most recently Pulse have been huge timesavers and provide us big picture knowledge and peace of mind.
Hosting has always been an issue and our move to Rackspace was nirvana. Not only did we get our lives back, we improved our bottom line.
Investing in ourselves
2007 was also a year of spending money on ourselves. We bought new equipment and upgraded a few things here and there, but the biggest investments we made were packing up the shop for SxSW and redesigning the office.
The week we spent in Austin invigorated us and made us smarter about how we approach the business and the work. Equally important, we started meeting other people in our industry.
And after talking about it for over a year we finally fixed up our digs. There’s something about walking in the door now that just makes it easier to get INSPIRED!
Meeting our industry
While we were having fun with Happy Webbies, we were introduced to a new audience and made some new friends.
Perhaps the most fitting end to 2007 from an industry perspective was getting asked to work on some of the graphics for Web Directions North. Not only did we say yes with a big smile on our faces, we bought tickets to Vancouver. Snowball fight!
A different type of recognition
This year we had some fun things happen, like being recognized by CSS Glance , having one of our designs finish in the top 5 in a monstrous battle for design supremacy and having a knucklehead in the Yukon say we are one of the top 10 interactive agencies in the world. (Yeah, he caught some heat for that which may have been what he was after.)
Finding our clients
Looking over our project list from 2006 there really isn’t anything stellar that brings back fond memories. In 2007 though, there have been a lot of cool clients and great projects. This month alone we began working with Klaus Heesch, Dave Shea, and Obie Fernandez. It’s pretty awesome to work with clients who really get it.
So we can only wait to see what 2008 will bring, but something tells me great things aren’t on the horizon. They’re already here.