But when it comes to predicting the future, I do believe in the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce Future 50 awards.

Perhaps because for going on 20 years, this award has been a key indicator of the most successful companies in the region.

Or perhaps because Centresource was just named one of their ‘Future 50’ companies.

Being named ‘Future 50’ is not something to sneeze at.

According to the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, in order to be considered a ‘Future 50’ company, one must “exhibit revenue and employment growth” and “possess leadership, innovation, vision, creativity and drive in order to build a successful enterprise.”

We are thrilled to be awarded this honor and hope to join 39 other companies in the ‘Future 50 Hall of Fame’ next year for firms that have achieved five total wins.

Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30 recognizes the city’s most active young philanthropists while benefiting the CFF. Honorees were nominated by co-workers, friends and family for their charitable and professional endeavors. The top 30 honorees were then selected by the Top 30 Under 30 selection committee during the month of June.

“This honoree class has once again shown that Nashville is full of young professionals that care about their city. We hope the community will help the CFF congratulate and honor them by supporting the Top 30 Under 30 celebration in September,” said Top 30 Under 30 co-chair Anne Elizabeth McIntosh.

Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30 will be on Sept. 11, 2010, at Public Square Park downtown. Tickets can be purchased in advance for $50 or $75 for VIP entry. Evan will be selling tickets to help this great cause. If you are interested please email him at evan@centresource.com

Visit www.nashvilletop30.org for more information.

Our downstairs fireplace mantel is getting a bit more crowded. We picked up a Silver Telly Award statuette for our work in creating the online video for the Two Futures Project. This is the second major award for the site, the first a “Best in Show” from the W3 Awards. The second Silver Telly Award is given for our work in creating a video called “No Charity” for Blood:Water Mission.

More than 11,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents were received for the 2010 competition, honoring the very best local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions and work created for the Web.

The entry was in the Web-Based Marketing category, as OHL had recently worked with CentreSource to redesign several of their Internet properties. You can read the case study on our site.

Check out the award-winning sites below!

• OHL.com (main site)
• OHL Activair
• OHL Media
• OHL Career Center
• OHL Excellence

The IMA judges scored our entry in the high nineties in all five of the core criteria: Design, Content, Feature Functionality, Usability and Standards Compliance / Cross-Browser Compatibility. As if the award wasn’t enough, our fellow winners for other categories included: Coca Cola, Bacardi, Red Bull, Sony and Cisco to name a few.

We couldn’t be more proud and thankful to our clients for continuing the privilege of pushing the limits of interactive and can’t wait for the results from other awards we will enter (including the Webby’s) - wish us luck.  :)

The “Hot 100″ list is a statewide Who’s Who of the fastest growing, emerging and most promising companies in 2009. The editors use a variety of criteria for to make their selections, such as revenue, employee growth year-over-year, etc. As they put it, “the companies listed represent the best Tennessee has to offer in terms of entrepreneurial vision and growth.”

We couldn’t be more excited and honored by our selection!

CentreSource Interactive Agency was honored with four total nominations, including Technology Organization of the Year, Innovator of the Year for our Founder/CEO Nicholas Holland, who also earned a nomination for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Our hats are off to all of the nominees and winners for the work they do to make this an incredible city with a thriving technology community.

Look how shiny it is!

You already knew that CentreSource is an award-winning Web firm, but we are really excited to announce that the Two Futures Project has been selected as a W3 Awards “Best in Show” winner as presented by the International Academy of the Visual Arts. The academy says that projects winning “Best in Show” represents only the top one percent of the more than 3,000 entries received.

Naturally, we did not just bask in the glow of this well-deserved award for our team. Okay, so maybe just a little. We also checked out some of the other entries, and there are a few projects with names you might have heard of: Nissan, Gillette/EA Sports, UFC 100 (our CEO really thought that was cool), Pepsi, About.com and Ford. What is even better is the list of judges that included Alloy,
 Disney,
 Estee 
Lauder,
 
HBO,
 Monster.com, MTV, Wired and Yahoo.

“We were incredibly impressed by the quality and creativity of this year’s entries. W3 winners continue to set the bar in Web development and design, push the limits of web advertising creativity and advance the use of web video. We are thrilled to have reviewed such a diverse and respected pool of work” said Linda Day, the executive director of the IAVA. “On behalf of the entire Academy, we congratulate this year’s W3 Award winners as they continue to advance Internet creativity and greatly contribute to the robust and ever-changing online community.”

Well said.

When I first began at CentreSource, I demanded that the title on my business card be changed to “Solutions Consultant.” To this day, I have no clue what that actually means, but I would think it means I help people find opportunities and solve problems. In my effort to say something profound during the City Paper interview, I said, “We want to make sure we’re delivering the outcome the client wants, not just a list of deliverables.”

I’ll admit it’s not all that profound, but I do believe it’s true: as I sat in a room full of the brightest consultants in Nashville, I saw the common thread. Everyone there separated themselves from simply making the sale, and instead focused on doing what was right for the client. The sales naturally followed and didn’t take much prompting.

So in conclusion, if you feel like you’re not being given advice by your web firm….call me on my cell. (Sales Plug…Sales Plug…)