85 Designs in 20 Minutes!
We had a great start. Everyone seemed pumped. I'm sure the sugar and caffeine buzz from the muffins and coffee helped too. Today was design day. In our twenty minute individual brainstorming session we produced 85 entry possibilities. Some of them great, some not so much. My favourites in the Manitoba themed designs included the perogies and kobassa, the falling Crocus stocks, and Brent as the Golden Boy, in a G-string.WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2008
I Want Something Great
For the past four years our studio has sent folks to attend the Flash-in-the-Can (FITC) conference in Toronto. Produced by Shawn Pucknell, it's one of North America's premier events for all things "Flashy". Our own John Jameson, then serving the role of Executive Director of MIDMA, convinced Shawn over a couple of beers to bring his roadshow version of FITC for Winnipeg. Manlab sponsored the entire studio to attend the 'Peg events in 2006 & 2007. Unfortunately looks like FITC is jumping over Winnipeg this year and heading out to Calgary. Hopefully they'll return next year. FITC is the ideal opportunity for our studio to learn and get inspired from the world's leading Flash developers. This year we sent a contingent of six to Toronto - John; our Flash development team of Ryan, Ryan, Aaron and Curt; and myself serving as tour guide.
The week after FITC, each of our four Flash developers presented their highlights to the rest of the studio, True to their geekiness, they all produced their 30 minute presentations in Flash. True to Flash's "personality", all had minor technical problems. Why the aversion to PowerPoint guys? Just like my hero Norm, you need to use the right tool for the right job.
Today was my turn. I fired up my PowerPoint slides for my "inspirational" ramblings on "Building a Better Studio". Over the past year and a half, our studio has grown significantly as our project demands have increased. Most challenging for new members is the expectations of our studio. We demand each member to contribute to a project - to offer ideas, to develop and nurture the broad strokes that the senior staff have outlined into a quality product that made sense, and to speak up when our ideas are just too screwed up to work. And to paraphrase Brad Hamilton, they must "learn, know and live" our mantra, "We're only as good as our last project." Otherwise its "No dice!"
So 30 minutes and 93 slides later, I finish on time. As I often do, I cited 14 movie and television titles ranging from "With Six You Get Eggroll", "Hello Down There", "Bye Bye Birdie", to my all-time favourite "The Fountainhead". And I finished with a personal guilty pleasure, a video clip from "Eddie and the Cruisers" where rebel rocker Eddie Wilson says "I want something great. I want something that's never been done before!". His best buddy replies "Why? We ain't great. We're just some guys from Jersey." It's a beautifully bad scene in a bad rock and roll movie; never less, a staple in my music-based movie fest.
So that was my rallying call. Are we just some guys from Winnipeg? Or do we want something great; something that's never been done before.... like tossing Brent off the dock in Ottawa?
MONDAY, MAY 5, 2008
It Works, Right Brent?
We're at Number 8 Cafe down in Chinatown for our weekly lunch. We order the usual. Brent has the sweet and sour pork, one egg roll, Pepsi and a tall glass of ice. Jeremy has the sesame chicken. I order the Singapore noodles, with no salt. It's usually a toss up for me - Singapore noodles or beef brisket with chui chow sauce. I like to keep Joe, Andy and Gary (the Number 8 owners) guessing. Gotta have some variety in life right?
I approached Brent earlier in the morning and asked him if he was a strong swimmer. He mumbled something about a life saving badge and I said "Great! I would like to send you to Ottawa and push you off a dock. I'll pay all the expenses....." So over lunch I explained to Jeremy and Brent that the Flugtag contest was one way of creating some interesting content for our long awaited new Manlab site, We never seem to have enough time to make the perfect web site since we're always so busy. We're the poster child for "The shoemaker's children are often shoeless" proverb. So I said let's blog this Flugtag thing and it will be a great way of showcasing our studio. It will show how we think, how we solve problems and how we always seem to work some fun into our work. "It'll be great. We just need to use our new Blog module in miUpdate. It's working right Brent?"
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2008
Let's Push Brent Off a Dock
Brent Cross joined Manlab in 1995. His high school teacher, C.T. Leung has asked my brother Fred if Brent can hang out at Manlab and perhaps learn how to assemble and fix computers. Brent had shown a passion for computers at school and Fred agreed to mentor him. He'd come in on Saturdays taking the hour long bus ride from the other side of town to our office at the Inkster industrial park, and spend the day with Fred. Well it didn't take long for Brent to catch on. Soon he was as adept as any of our full time service techs. Occasionally I would overhear "Leave that one for Brent. He'll fix it when he comes in."
Our friendship started slowly. Brent was very shy. I don't recall that in any of our conversations back then he had strung more than 2 or 3 words together. I'd be playing around in the multimedia room and Brent would be on the other side of the glass: headphone on, plugging away diligently at the stack of computers laid before him, nary saying a word. Brent spent a couple years with us then went off to college. Upon graduating it was Fred who offered him a programming job. I really didn't think I could use him. In our first project together, he had estimated the task at hand would take a couple of hours. It took him three days. What impressed me was the "uniqueness" of the solution. Thus the "Brent Factor" was born. We've been working wonderfully together since then.
Over the years Brent has taken a lot of "good natured" abuse from the folk's in our studio. For what ever reason, he's usually on the wrong end of the stick. I Pwned him one Saturday afternoon as both of us upgraded our respective laptops with new hard drives. It was not a good day for Brent and his MacBook Pro. He admits that he can be a "jackass" at times and probably deserves some of the teasing. He takes it all in stride and often comes back with some great zingers of his own. His charm, wit, and heart of gold always saves the day for him. One shiny moment was his appearance as our Happy Christmas Elf [INSERT HAPPY ELF VIDEO] delivering our magnetic bulletin boards featuring Manlab paper cut-out dolls.
So when I decided that Manlab should try its hand at entering the Red Bull Flugtag contest this year there was only one pilot considered for the job. The trouble is going to decide which four will have the pleasure of launching Brent off the dock. The line forms on the right folks. No pushing please.