A couple weeks ago I was randomly inspired to do something kind for my fellow colleagues. Not having any actual hypothesis in mind, I referred to it as a “social experiment”, hoping it would yield some sort of result or impact – and that it did.

I filled a small white bowl from our kitchen with jujubes and placed it at the end of my desk. I felt good about it. As people started coming into my office, they would notice the candy, be pleasantly surprised and indulge.  Making them happy, made me even happier and gave me incentive to continue to fill up my bowl (at this point, the bowl was being emptied after about 5 – 6 hours).

People were showing up in my office for no apparent reason, making up all kinds of excuses to be there, all the while, feeding like vultures from the bowl.  In true Pavlovian fashion, the mere sound of a bag opening or treats filling up the bowl, would create a response from the team (at this point the bowl was being emptied after about 2 – 3 hours).

The happier people were, the more excited I was to go out of my way to get more rubbery-textured confectioneries into that bowl the next day. Every day I would fill the bowl with something different – jujubes, pistachios, Clodhoppers, chocolate covered almonds, swedish berries, M&M’s (by the time the M&M’s hit the bowl, it took 20 minutes to empty).

Then, somewhere between the chocolate covered almonds and swedish berries, something started to happen. People started verbalizing preferences and complaining. Several “facts” about free candy and nuts began to emerge; apparently pistachios are “too much work” and chocolate covered almonds are “boring”. The more complaints I received, the less incentive I felt to fill up that stupid little white bowl.

As I stopped filling it up, the expectation for the candy became apparent. People were actually getting upset that there wasn’t anything in the bowl.

“Oh, the bowl is empty again?”
“Where the f&*% is the candy??”
“I’m not very happy about this empty candy bowl situation.”

In hopes of cutting down on the comments, I ended up taking the bowl out of my office altogether.

So, my theory is this – the candy bowl is just like life:

Unexpected pleasantries = satisfaction
Expected pleasantries = dissatisfaction

So the next time life hands you a gummie bear, just eat the friggin’ thing and be happy!

I am very excited to announce that the 76design and Thornley Fallis family has grown…yet again! Emmitt Franklin Tackaberry will be leading our new infant/toddler/youth division. His arrival on October 27, 2008 at 5:15 pm made it a little late in the day for his employee orientation, however we expect young Emmitt to be put to work in the very near future.

Father Brett, and mother Anne are in fine form and deeply proud that their little bundle will be an instant contributor at the office — once he is completely adjusted from his first 9 months of living in a sac of fluid and amino acids.

Well done Brett, Anne and Emmitt, y’all done good.

It is widely known that across the universe, the unofficial 5^th season is Construction Season. Which beat out Wabbit Season about 12 years ago.

Currently, when downtown you couldn’t spit without hitting a labourer or an asphalt roller. Summer construction may mean many things to different people. To some it may say that there’s growth and expansion happening. Others may connect it with an outdated infrastructure that badly needs revitalization. Regardless, we thought why not bring the experience in full “Imax-esque” glory right up into our collective grills.

Our office construction season kick-offed this past Tuesday, and it is scheduled to run to the end of the month. That means wall to wall action of drywall and reciprocating saws in HD! The image attached gives you a small glimpse of the added space coming our way. What you don’t see, is that there’s a mass of 20 people working diligently behind the camera trying their darnedest to ignore the cacophony of power tools behind those flimsy plastic drop sheets.

Personally, my annoyance has been slightly subsided since it gave me an opportunity to use the most awesome animated gif up top. Look at those little dudes diggin’ away.

To our clients, I say this to you: Service will not be interrupted throughout the entire reno process. That’s our 76satisfaction guarantee.

Interesting fun fact: alcohol consumption rose 30% in the past 2 days.

You may be familiar with the Italian clothing brand Diesel. Trendy, cool, hip stuff. And generally very creative campaigns highlighting their edgy brand. (For example, their logo is a guy with a Mohawk and their slogan is “Only the Brave”).

I recently visited the Diesel website and sent them this email via their customer service page:

“Hi. About 10 years ago I purchased a pair of silver Diesel glasses. I have worn them ever since. They are not only the best glasses I have ever owned but probably the best value of anything I have ever bought. They have endured despite the arrival of my two kids, who grabbed and flung them around more times than I can remember. I also love the look. You can see a picture of me wearing them if you search my name – JOHN SOBOL on Facebook. (I’m the guy with the flower on his head!
But I am not just writing to praise your glasses but to ask whether or not you still have any pairs like mine kicking around anywhere in storage. Mine are on their last legs and I haven’t found anything like them in any of the many stores I’ve been to. I would be very happy to buy a pair, or a few pairs from you, if you can locate any. Thanks.”

The next day I got this response:

John,

Carlotta
Diesel Customer Care

It is not possible to reply directly to this message.

Now I know Carlotta was just doing her job as she’s been told to do it (assuming Carlotta is not simply an automated reply function, which I suspect she may be) but considering the unusual (for me, anyway) degree of loyalty I expressed to Diesel in my email, this response amounts to a complete kiss-off. How disappointing. I mean, if you are going to bother having a “Customer Care Centre” you should at least show that in some small way you do actually care about your customers. Unfortunately for me, Diesel apparently doesn’t.

Always looking for the right candidate. 76design is looking for a full-time web developer with a minimum of 3 years professional experience to join our talented team. We need a smart and responsible individual who is ready to be a key contributor to several exciting new projects. Our ideal candidate is equally comfortable talking to computers and to people. He or she is proficient in multiple programming languages but is also deeply engaged with the social aspects of web culture.

Our ideal candidate knows what’s happening today and what’s coming down the pipe tomorrow, and can’t wait to get there. He or she is driven to achieve but is also comfortable working in a collaborative environment, and is bursting with ideas and skills, just like we are.

The core technical skills we need are expertise in:

• PHP, mySQL and HTML

Knowledge of one or more of the following is also necessary:

• ASP.net, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, Ajax, SEO, podcasting, advanced web metrics

If you think you’ve got what it takes to join our team, tell us now! Email your CV and a cover letter to: jobs@76design.ca

Still looking for the right candidate. 76design is looking for a full-time web developer with a minimum of 3 years professional experience to join our talented team. We need a smart and responsible individual who is ready to be a key contributor to several exciting new projects. Our ideal candidate is equally comfortable talking to computers and to people. He or she is proficient in multiple programming languages but is also deeply engaged with the social aspects of web culture.

Our ideal candidate knows what’s happening today and what’s coming down the pipe tomorrow, and can’t wait to get there. He or she is driven to achieve but is also comfortable working in a collaborative environment, and is bursting with ideas and skills, just like we are.

The core technical skills we need are expertise in:

• PHP, mySQL and HTML

Knowledge of one or more of the following is also necessary:

• ColdFusion, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, Ajax, SEO, podcasting, advanced web metrics

If you think you’ve got what it takes to join our team, tell us now! Email your CV and a cover letter to: jobs@76design.ca

I’m not usually one to gush, but it just occurred to me as I sat here writing up a proposal for a really cool project that I think we’re very likely going to win, having just finished an excellent lunchtime learning session about Action Scripting led by our venerable Lead Designer, and basically getting this and that done usefully and efficiently with other people in the studio that …I LOVE MY JOB! It’s been about 3 months now since I arrived at 76design, fresh from a bloodcurdling year in grad school (OK, it was a crazy misguided idea) and it has been a blast from day 1. Talented, good-humoured and supportive co-workers, demanding but well-heeled clients, nice digs, visionary leadership…hey, it’s a great setup and I’m really looking forward to 2007! Thanks to all of you who have made room for me here at 76design!
j

Can you make code sing? Make it swing? Make it sting?

76design is looking for a full-time web developer with a minimum of 3 years professional experience to join our talented team. We need a smart and responsible individual who is ready to be a key contributor to several exciting new projects. Our ideal candidate is equally comfortable talking to computers and to people. He or she is proficient in multiple programming languages but is also deeply engaged with the social aspects of web culture.

Our ideal candidate knows what’s happening today and what’s coming down the pipe tomorrow, and can’t wait to get there. He or she is driven to achieve but is also comfortable working in a collaborative environment, and is bursting with ideas and skills, just like we are.

The core technical skills we need are expertise in:

• PHP, mySQL and HTML

Knowledge of one or more of the following is also necessary:

• ColdFusion, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, Ajax, SEO, podcasting, advanced web metrics

If you think you’ve got what it takes to join our team, tell us now! Email your CV and a cover letter to: jobs@76design.ca

Last night at Ottawa’s Fresco Cielo, Qumana evangelist Jon Husband spoke passionately and insightfully about blogs and organizations as part of the Third Monday speakers series organized by Joe Thornley and and Ian Ketcheson (who hosted the evening).

Jon’s extensive experience in organizational change management informed his vision of how organizations must evolve in order to avoid becoming knowledge dinosaurs (my term not his, but that was the general idea). The future, as Jon clearly explained, lies in organizations using social media to become learning organizations, so they can a) take advantage of the knowledge that is already embedded within their organization but is so often wasted; b) become more responsive and nimble in terms of taking advantage of rapidly changing economic landscapes; and c) attract and retain young talented workers who simply will not put up with management practices that are based on command and control. To some extent we all recognize that this is not a new message (Jon talked about a bank that had hired him briefly as a consultant 5 years ago and that is facing the exact same issues today and still hasn’t been able to respond) but it remains as true as ever, and more and more dangerous to ignore.

Young workers who are ‘digital natives’ expect to collaborate, iterate, create and share with relative autonomy, and they have shown themselves to be very productive when doing so. The challenge organizational leaders face is that they themselves are often not good at these things and are afraid of them, yet unless they promote them within their organization they are risking their future. It’s a difficult paradox and one that can really only be overcome with the help of knowledgable and caring professionals (like Jon, Joe, Ian and others) who can accompany organizations as they grudgingly commit to reinventing themselves in the networked 21st century.

The other theme that Jon emphasized and that really resonated with me was the notion of the generation gap (again my phrase but this was the general idea Jon spoke to) which has serious implications for organizations and for society at large. As boomers retire, networked kids grow up, technologies improve and broadband speeds and penetration rates increase, the challenge of bridging the gap between what older and younger people know and do becomes increasingly important. I wrote an article about this subject recently. It’s online here: Stopping the Copyright Wars of 2017

Thanks for the talk, Jon. Good luck with Qumana,
John Sobol

We’ve got another one! I am particularly pleased to welcome John Sobol to the 76design team.

John will be working with both new and existing clients to provide counsel on communications and business issues. John is well versed in leveraging the web to reach, and build relationships with, stakeholders and customers.

John has served as Co-Director of Digifest www.dx.org/digifest Canada’s leading festival of digital art, culture and design. He was the Producer of www.electroniccities.ca, an ambitious e-learning site featuring 20 profiles of new media artists and innovators, and he has worked with The Convergence Consulting Group www.convergenceonline.com,one of Canada’s leading independent Internet consulting firms.

John is truly an innovative thinker who is sure to add a whole new dimension to our team. I personally believe that the addition of John Sobol brings us that much closer to world domination. Stay tuned.