What do you get when you cross two grown men with a roll of toilet paper and a baby shower?

Need I say more?

If you’ve ever been given a business card from a Willow employee then you’ve noticed that there is no title, just an icon.  Staff members select an icon that represents them, or as I understood the assignment, what they do for Willow.

Last week I gave an old friend my business card. He took one look at the binoculars (my icon of choice) and in his most sarcastic tone asked, “What are you? A peeping Tom or did you take up a new hobby as a bird watcher?” For the record: neither, but his response did require that I provide an explanation for my icon selection.

Admittedly binoculars seem a little scientific and even though both my parents are scientists it has never been my area of interest or expertise. I’m more the creative type. However, I felt that binoculars were a good representation of exploring and how they work is not only fascinating, but relevant to my role at Willow.

In lay man’s terms (remember I’m no scientist) binoculars are simply a pair of identical telescopes mounted side-by-side and aligned to point accurately in the same direction, allowing the viewer to use both eyes when viewing distant objects. Unlike a telescope there is no need to close one eye to avoid confusion when looking at an object in the distance. The ability to use both eyes significantly increases the resolution giving the viewer a clear image.

It is my job to provide a clearer image for our clients. To work with the talented team at Willow and explore the many options we have available in this complex world of communications, to understand the picture that our client is trying to create, and to provide a solution to their needs.  I like to think of our clients and Willow as the two telescopes working together.

If there was a title on my card it would read Director of Business Development, but I prefer my icon and what it stands for. Each day I’m looking for new and innovative ways to help our clients.  I won’t discover the New World like Christopher Columbus, or circumnavigate the world like Sir Francis Drake, but I’m probably a step ahead of Dora the Explorer and I am confident that I’ll discover a solution for the clients I seek to assist.

The last week of September…but the first full week of fall! My favorite time of the year. A great time to be out on the road, with the windows down, visiting some of my favorite clients and Willow friends. Monday was a great day! We have been working on planning a surprise baby shower for our 3 preggos (Sarah, Sue and Marizka) for the past month and the day finally came. All of the ladies were surprised and we had a lot of fun playing some really great shower games. Lets just say that Brad Gillum makes for a really nice looking baby and Marizka has some major bottle sucking skills! The day also included a video shoot of the Willow team. Look for something out of Doug’s editing bay here soon.

Tuesday takes the Willow crew to lunch with the Hall Render executive marketing team to continue planning for the rest of 2010 and into 2011. And the day ends with a brainstorm (and adult beverages I’m sure) with the Rivar’s gals. Wednesday entails a visit from our favorite TKE to plan for 2011 and the usual visit to the Phi Psi crew. Thursday looks like a La Piedad day with lunch with Alpha Chi Omega. The day closes out with the Bedel Financial Consulting Open House at their new office location. They’re also launching their new brand! Exciting! Friday we will be shooting at this fun little theatre for an Alpha Chi Omega video.

Photo Credit: Greg Malone

We’re also meeting with the Indy Parks & Rec staff to discuss some exciting initiatives for 2011.

It’s another busy week…and lots of planning for 2011! It must be fall!

In a recent issue of Communication Arts, an article entitled “Thinking in Systems, Design and Otherwise” lists 9 ingredients for a successful team. They are: empathy, size, diversity, communication skills, perspicacity, trust, talent, intellectual ability, and curiosity.

My question to you is which of these do you find most important when working within a team? Would you make any additions or subtractions to the line up? Let’s hear your thoughts!

Inspiration..?!?!!

After working on web sites and computers for 15 years I find things run together. Site coding practices and design have changed considerably since I first got my feet wet. I find from the coding and structure side of things I generally follow trends that make it easier to build sites faster, robust, and with the appropriate functionality.

You might think that things are stagnant when it comes to this, but it changes just as much as any technology does. While HTML, CSS, and PHP don’t change often, they do change. HTML 5, CSS 3 and PHP 5 are all newly fleshed out and soon to hit the scene if not already here. On top of that you have frameworks that compile useful procedures into streamlined syntax from all of those languages. This leaves you, as a coder, with a large amount of virtual tools to ply your trade with.

How do you keep from getting lost in all the spaghetti and come out with elegant working code? Well that is where the creativity comes for a coder and like all creative people sometimes you need a spark to get the imagination flaming. I find that having interests outside of programming help me considerably. I like music and science a lot. Did I say a lot? I mean a LOT. Music is very mathematical and when thinking about theory and why music sounds a specific way or induces a certain emotion or memory, I sometimes see things that can be applied to programming.

Programming consists of speaking a language that a system understands that produces a certain response – similar to music. And then there is science, more specifically physics. It is a mathematical language used to predict or explain events that happen in the universe that we perceive allowing us to communicate them to others. When I study or learn a new underlying representation of how reality functions I can sometimes find symmetry in my coding logic.

While this may not be the way you or others think about programming, it is the way that I have progressed in dealing with inspiration on complex puzzles that arise in coding. Certainly you can gain inspiration by seeing another perform or write something in an efficient manor, but if you are on a limb trying to come up with something that you have no examples for, where do you find that spark?

My question to you is how do you find inspiration in your intricate logic that you apply? Is there something that seems unrelated that you draw from and tie into what you do?