Another sign the economy is really good

I'm looking for a UI firm to redo the UI on my first product. Right now, it's pleasing and usable enough, but going forward with this and our other products, I'd like our products to have a unique, company-specific "personality" (most people would call this look and feel) . I call it personality because I want it to be a bit more pervasive and a lot less surface level than simple look and feel. But that's not the point of this post.

So far, I've written 4 firms.

One called me immediately. They totally and absolutely "got it." But, I need more bids before I just blindly go with the first group I talked to.
Another one wrote me back after 2 days and said they'd routed my RFI but they weren't sure if they really did that sort of work, but they'd let me know (doesn't sound promising does it).
Two others - not one peep. Seriously. Not one.

I find it somewhat amazing that companies won't follow up on leads. However, I know that at my last large company, they basically tossed all the leads that came from the web. But small companies... especially companies that deliver web-based products... wouldn't they be interested in talking to a new business prospect?

Apparently not.

Please send recommendations my way... The two that haven't responded are no longer contenders. I will not be ignored!

As bad as they say...

Despite the comments on the version linked below, the Zuckerberg/Lacy interview is as bad as they say.

This is a better quality version.

The YouTube version is here but not quite as well recorded:



Lacy is clearly at fault... she forgot they are having a keynote, and clearly thinks they are on a first date.

• Hair twirling
• Posture/body language
• Giggles
• Inserting herself into the story
• Vocabulary/adulation
• And when the audience demands Q&A so they can ask some *real* questions, she puts on a petulant face and looks like she's about to cry. Poor thing.
  

Overall verdict? Painful to watch.

sxsw - so much goodness - so much tiredness!

For the last few days, I've been attending SXSW. Having spent a while in Dallas and CA, I haven't been to the festival in a few years and well... it's different. Here's a photo from 2003 - the last time I/my company was involved with SXSW. We had a booth, we all attended the conference, and we handed out the web awards. Now they have famous people handing out the awards, the conference is packed, and booths are mostly big companies (not a boutique interactive firm to be found). Yay Austin. Yay SXSW. The parties were excellent, and having a houseful of guests and seeing people from all over the country that we all know and love has been so much fun. As one person said, "it's like a big class reunion," and he's right, it absolutely has that feel. I was talking with some Five Runs folks at their packed event and we all agreed - the social part of social networking is really our favorite.

Posts on actual insight from the conference... coming soon.

Indepent Film Site - My Latest Project is a Go

And... we're live.

The Jackson Hole Film Festival Contest, brought to you by MovieHatch

We've all very excited to see this project go live and we wish Jackson Hole a ton of success with the contest and the festival.

The Project Management Series

I stopped writing the PM series... because the project I was writing about came to a standstill. There were internal logistic issues with the client, but those seem to be resolved, the series, like the project will resume. At this point, we (the designer, developer, and myself) are trying to figure out where we left off. From the looks of our basecamp site, it appears we have about 40 hours of dev work to do.

Basecamp is a fantastic thing. If you haven't used it, it's definitely worth a try. It's structured to easily manage Agile projects, and it allows really granular to-do lists, message categories, and generally keeps everything really nice and tidy.

More on that project as we go.