What makes this site different? We had the pleasure of working with photographer Carrie Vonderhaar to really bring the nautical look and feel to the Web. Our strategy from the beginning was to let her photography shine throughout the site to help create a unique user experience. The older site lacked a CMS and was spread out over several domains. Now, updates to the latest environmental news and information comes at the click of a mouse from anywhere in the world.

The site also tracks the OFS team on their expeditions around the globe, and a new Live Events section will bring the experience right to you through an integration with Ustream. Registered members can also download ringtones and wallpapers for their mobile phones. Users that register on the site are simultaneously added and updated through the Democracy In Action’s Salsa supporter management platform.

Visit the site at http://www.oceanfutures.org

We split into two groups to answer a big question: where will the web be in 10 years? Each group was required to deliver 5 concepts. We talked for 15 minutes, and neither group was short on ideas. The hardest part was whittling it down.

Team 1

1. Instant, on-demand purchase through smartphones and always-connected tablet devices (Apple has that oft-rumored tablet coming, you know). Buy anything, anywhere. This will likely be tied to “real-world” advertising: see an advertisement, scan/photo a barcode, buy in one click.
2. Direct marketing will be customized based on more detailed demographics about the user. By understanding user’s behavior online, marketing and advertising will be more pointed at who you are. It will be personalized, too — think about online ads that talk to you directly, and then think about how this will inevitably be woven into advertising in television and other mediums…
3. More online colleges/high schools/vocational schools, with personalized curriculum based on the student’s needs, strengths, and weaknesses.
4. From a hardware standpoint: there will be the previously-mentioned tablet devices that serve as ever-connected (running on mesh-fi) mobile devices tying all your actions into the web. Furthermore, internet capable devices will be pervasive — imagine cars with internet capability, appliances that send you update when they need service, fridges that are intelligent enough to help you manage an online shopping list. Really, we think you’ll manage your entire home from a browser. And all this will enable more peer-to-peer interaction outside of “at the desk” scenarios: you’ll be “social networking” while you’re driving, walking down the street, shopping, etc.
5. Finally — no operating system — all programs run in a browser.

Team 2

It’s encouraging, then, to see some recognition for our hard work. We received two great pieces of press this month worth sharing:

First, we were selected again this year for the Nashville Chamber of Commerce’s Future 50 award. This is our second year of being apart of this great group, and we’re honored to be placed among 49 other fast-growing Nashville companies. We’re also thrilled to see so many tech and interactive-based companies on the list — further proof that Nashville’s tech community is thriving.

Secondly, CentreSource was recently featured in the Nashville Business Journal. The interview with Evan Owens, our Director of Business Development, tells the story of our growth over the last six years, and the challenge in balancing small clients and big clients as a growing firm. It’s a good read, and Evan tells our story well with lots of transparency into some of the obstacles we’ve faced.

If you have yet to make a CentreSource mixer, we hope you make the next one. We’ll promote an invite soon (follow us on Twitter for the full scoop), but go ahead and mark your calendar: Thursday June 25th at 5PM.

Also, thanks to Nashvillest for a great summary of the May Interactive Mixer.

Finally, no mention of the Mixer is complete without a mention of our Golden Kraut and Silvery Beans winners.

Our Mixer Winners:

Golden Kraut — Justin Davis of GBOD

Silvery Beans — Matt Reed of redpepper

Our CentreSource Winners:

Golden Kraut — Morgan Zuehlke, Strategist

Silvery Beans — Chris Wage, Director of Operations

We partnered with Kent Creative in order to bring this project to life, and planned with implementation in mind — a fixed budget required that our Planning process work closely to expand scope as much as possible without exceeeding budget. As a result, we focused on building a clickable prototype, which helped us reduce surprises, elminate uncertainty, and streamline the development process. And we also enjoyed working closely with podcasts — a process which yielded new procedures for making podcasts even better!

Congrats to the team at AuTube for a seamless launch!

All Hail the Golden Kraut

Motivation can take many forms. At CentreSource, it takes the form of spray-painted canned food.

But first, a bit of backstory…

In 2008, we were the leading sponsor of Nashville’s Barcamp. We created a program for the day, acted as MCs, and designed some interactive games for what was a great day of speaking, learning, and networking. We forgot one thing, though, until the last minute: prizes for said games. So in desperation at the 11th hour, Nick grabbed the only free things in the house: two cans of spraypaint and two cans of canned food. And this begat the dumbest prizes ever — Golden Kraut and Silvery Beans.

The next day, at the culmination of this event with everyone gathered together in the main hall, Nick gave these prizes away. The Silvery Beans, given first, elicited mostly confusion from the audience. Lucky for us, however, the winner of The Golden Kraut played along with our game and announced his excitement by running through the aisles with his prize in hand, shouting like a madman.

Afterwards, I suggested we had two options for dealing with something so ridiculous: either we pretend it never happened, or we own up to it so tenaciously that it becomes the joke that never dies. We choose the latter.

So, we implemented Golden Kraut and Silvery Beans as an interactive tool. How?  We give one Golden Kraut and one Silvery Beans each month to the most deserving members of our team. We use the free Google Docs Form tool to submit nominations in a single location that is reviewed at the end of the month by our management team. The nominations are frequently so genuinely complementary (and hilarious) that we share them openly at our weekly staff meetings.

Jason "Shamus" O'Brien's Silvery Beans Win

And we built a website at www.thegoldenkraut.com where we feature a gallery of winners. Everyone who receives the Kraut or Beans gets to answer a questionnaire (again, collected using the free Google Forms tool) that is then posted to the site — a ritual that has become well-loved for the cleverness of answers. It gives us something to laugh about, and links to send around to our peers.

After five months of giving Golden Kraut and Silvery Beans, we’ve found that its already made a noticeable impact on our culture: we’re more likely to rely on each other, reward each other openly for outstanding performance, and collaborate to develop Kraut-worthy ideas. When the winners aren’t announced promptly, our team is openly asking for the results — proving that even silly ideas can be highly engaging.  It also proves that incentive can come from, well, anything – as long as you’ve earned it by earning the respect of your peers.

With an idea this ridiculous, we decided to expand it outside our little house and into our community. Each month, CentreSource hosts an Interactive Mixer for our growing interactive and web community, and each month we award one Golden Kraut and one Silvery Beans to non-CentreSource attendees who participate in our interactive games. We circle up in the foyer of North Fourth — a community of partners, references, competition, and friends — and laugh along as someone is bestowed a tongue-in-cheek honor and given the chance to answer an equally tongue-in-cheek survey online.

Sure, it’s mostly all about humor — but we like to think it means something more. It gives us a moment each month to laugh about something as a community and recognize two people, even for something as silly as finding the most hidden silver coins in the house or getting enough signatures from other attendees. And as such, our community is beginning to recognize names and faces as being a part of a community that is moving, growing, and learning together. And that’s exactly what we want for Nashville.

Not bad for a can of paint and some canned vegetables.

Shaun is a long-time friend of the firm — several of us have known Shaun for a while and respected his leadership skills and passion for interactive. Shaun actually comes to us from the other side: he’s been a client of CentreSource many times over as the Director of Online Marketing for Word Entertainment. He has the unique perspective of knowing our processes from the other side.

Five days in and Shaun is settling into the Account Manager role with ease — we’re more than confident that clients are going to appreciate his expertise, organization skills, and deadline-focused mindset.

Welcome Shaun to c{s} team by sending him a message at www.twitter.com/globalblitz.

We launched a new site this week for a great cause called The Two Futures Project — an organization is focused on nuclear abolition.

The Two Futures Project was one of those great projects in which everyone on the team — client included — was passionate about the idea and about what interactive could do for the cause.

In our Strategy session, we focused on developing meaningful ways that users could take action in a cause that seems immovable from an individuals perspective (it’s not like you can disarm the world’s nukes by switching light bulbs).  Our strategy aimed at on using the web to leverage the user’s voice. As a result, our Phase 1 includes a registration process designed to automate the process of writing letters to government officials. We integrated social networking tools to help the user spread the word through social networks. And we developed a “Make the Case” section that invites users to share their own YouTube videos offering their “30 second pitch” for why nuclear disarmament is necessary.

We’re most proud of our multimedia work on this one. We identified during Strategy that an emotional topic such as this needs media to highlight the importance of the movement — one that could be easily shared between users and multi-purposed as the movement grows into speaking engagements, community meetings, and more. Our multimedia department put the video together, and we’re extremely proud of the results.

Finally, we talked social media — and days after launch we’re already seeing results. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, the director of the Two Futures Project, launched his organization and site in conjunction with this weeks’ Q Conference. On Monday after his speech, there was palpable buzz about Two Futures on Twitter — we’ve already seen hundreds of Twitter posts featuring this brand new cause. This corresponds to traffic: as of yesterday, Twitter and Facebook combined account for about 32% of the site’s traffic, lagging just behind direct visits as Q Conference attendees type the URL directly into their browser.

We’re thrilled to see that the press machine is moving quickly for the Two Futures Project — three days in and the movement is already featured on the Huffington Post!

Tyler thanked us in the best way possible: by posting a shout-out in our digital world (on his @2FP Twitter account). See the Two Futures team below with the best Thank You note we could imagine.  Bigger thanks to you Tyler — we’re so glad to be a part of this.

Now, check out www.TwoFuturesProject.org and join the movement!

Vaco – a Nashville-based recruiting, placement, and consulting firm — reached out to us in 2008 to help update their web presence and create a site that better serves their internal and external stakeholders. In the months since, we’ve worked closely with the Vaco team to develop an interactive strategy that delivers the outcome they desire.

Vaco introduced some new challenges in strategy development – namely, the service of multiple stakeholders balanced with a large network of internal stakeholders. Vaco is unique in that it offers nationwide service delivered through 27 local offices – each with it’s own unique skill set and culture. Ultimately, we wanted a strategy that would let each office express it’s strengths, while retaining a core functionality that applied to companies looking for talent and candidates looking for placement.

As a result, we focused on three major components to deliver Vaco’s outcome of building their brand and attracting new talent and companies:

• A Job Search tool. This section features permanent, temporary and temp-to-hire career opportunities nationwide and features a 3rd-party integration with Vaco’s internal systems. Unlike some of the popular job boards on the market currently, all of the postings on Vaco.com are vetted by the industry veterans of Vaco, so candidates know that the positions they are viewing are truly viable.
• A Knowledge Center designed to allow Vaco’s nationwide network of experts to share their observations and expertise in recruiting, placement, consulting, hiring, and beginning new careers.
• Unique Office Microsites, designed to give each office a podium to promote their expertise, culture, and involvement in their community.

We learn something from each of our clients, and Vaco was no different: we had to develop a strategy for a site that thinks nationally and works locally. Design was a challenge, in that we had to develop an easy-to-manage site that presented a consistent brand with just the right flexibility for each office to show their personality. Our web designers focused their efforts on usability, in order to build a site that seamlessly funnels users from a “national” main site down to the local office “microsite” that will serve them.

Congrats to the Vaco Team for a successful site launch, and we’re looking forward to all our next phases!

In these six months, we were able to accomplish a load of work. We launched SEVEN new web sites, each with a unique design, strategy, and focus on a specific stakeholder. We focused on social media and multimedia as a means to engage new users. We dug deep into Search Engine Optimization to learn how to “be seen” at the right time by more searchers.

And throughout our strategy we conceptualized, created, and launched five unique blogs for the company as educational resources for SW’s wide range of stakeholder types. These blogs include:

• The Southwestern Company Blog – a podium for company info and insight into the unique culture of the Southwestern Company.
• The SW Sales Talk blog – a resource for anyone interested in sales tips pulled from the company’s 100+ years in selling.
• The Southwestern Alumni Blog – a connection too for Southwestern’s huge alumni network.
• The Southwestern Difference blog – education for the public about ethical selling practices.

The Campus Relations blog — a blog for campus officials, written by noted Southwestern Company Campus Relations director Dr. Ralph Brigham.

And I’m pleased to say that our efforts are reaping results and rewards for Southwestern, including honors in several categories at the Public Relations Society of America – Nashville Chapter’s 23rd Annual Parthenon.

The Parthenon Awards can be compared to the Academy Awards of the Middle Tennessee PR industry. It’s a who’s who of agencies, nonprofits, corporations and solo practitioners, all vying for bragging rights in over 30 categories.

Southwestern took the top award in the following two categories: “New Media – Websites” and “New Media – Blogs”

All of the centre{source} team is proud to see Southwestern’s hard work being recognized. A special thanks from myself to all the C{S} team members who helped us work on these various projects, and congratulations to Trey, Geoff, Becky, Lee, Ryan, Ed, and Dan at Southwestern!