Peter Chester

Shane and I had a great time at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year.  As the event slowly becomes more distant in my memory I’m attempting to post some of the learnings on the blog.  In this post I’m going to address the session titled, 10 Strategies for Building a Happy and High Performing Team, lead by Beth Hallmark and Drew Scherz.

Let me start by saying this was one of 2 sessions that we attended in a small room.  Both were extremely engaging because everyone had a voice in the conversation.  I highly recommend attending some small sessions if you plan to visit SXSW.

Beth and Drew work as team leaders in the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts overseeing Susan Combs’ award winning Window on State Government site.  Here’s what they handed us at the session:

1. Know what people like most about their jobs
2. Expect high performance
3. Find and hire high performers
4. Promote the power of the team
5. Share success and failure
6. Embrace the importance of dreams
7. Reign in the Ego
8. Celebrate Differences – especially among high performers
9. Remember, there are no guarantees
10. Know that “happy is” as “happy thinks”

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Warning: helpfulness can be inspiring and contagious.  I’ve been hit with the bug since our star designer and PM, Reid Peifer, launched his beautiful new project, REMAKERS.

REMAKERS is a center dedicated to bringing new media to non-profit organizations.  As Reid puts it in his mission:

REMAKERS strives to be a resource, sounding board, and source of inspiration to groups and individuals working to make the world a better place.

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The Opportunity

We’re looking for a talented Wordpress developer with extensive plugin experience to join our crew on a handful of upcoming projects. This is a freelance position – we’re game for people located anywhere in North America.

Are you clued into the latest wordpress happenings and developments? Have a hankering to extend Wordpress in new directions? We’re currently working on high-profile Wordpress implementations that range between conventional to seriously bleeding edge. We will want to see plugin code examples – public plugins are ideal. We want people that are able to develop code that can withstand high profile sites and intense loads. You should be comfortable working as part of a team – your code will have to integrate into an existing architecture. If the tightly optimized code get’s you excited – you’re probably a good fit.

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Often I find that when pressures mount my first reaction is to defend myself.  Take, for example, a recent conversation between me and Reid.

Reid: Peter, when you have a moment, I could really use some dev support to spec out a small plugin for one of our clients.  It’ll only take an hour tops and would really help me a bunch.

Peter: I’ll get you some dev support as soon as our dev projects calm down in a couple of months.  We’re working as hard as we can and you’re not the only one who has need you know?  I mean I’ve barely slept in like 5 months and have started to BUY laundry and dishes instead of cleaning them because of these deadlines that we have to meet and oh my god you’re totally STRESSING ME OUT WITH YOUR INCESSANT DEMANDS!  CAN’T YOU SEE THAT WE’RE DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN? AHHHHHHHHH!

Reid: Um…  I’m sensing that this is not the best time to ask you about this.  When can we talk about this again?

Peter: I’m sorry Reid, I don’t mean to be wigging out so much.  I’m really not that stressed.  But I don’t know when I’ll be able to help more.  I appear to be double booked for every appointment i have over the next 6 weeks and I just can’t think about this right now.  I know it might not seem like it but I’m working really hard and you should know that I’m working hard, can’t you see that I’m working hard?  What more do you need from me?  AHHHHHHHHH!

Obviously this slightly dramatized interaction could be improved.  There are any number of ways to better address Reid’s request, but one stands out to me in particular: an open call for help (possibly paired with some anti-psychotics).
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Today our good friend Iris from NextSpace asked us about our corporate culture mantra. Shane and I delighted in recounting it:

Happy, Helpful, Curious and Accountable.

As we recited our beloved chant, it dawned on me that it deserves a long overdue blog post.

What, you ask, is this 12 syllable slogan? It’s our cultural measuring stick. These are the words that we iterate whenever we meet someone new or review someone we’ve been working with. It applies both to our colleagues and to our clients.  In fact, we apply this gauge to everyone in our lives from presidential candidates to car mechanics. I asked Shane, who recently became a father, how he envisions his daughter as an adult. He thought about it for a while and after a couple days of deliberation replied,

I would be delighted to see Serenity grow to be happy, helpful, curious, and accountable.

(I am thrilled to report after the first 6 months, Serenity has a great head start on the “happy” part of the equation and is currently working on “curious”.) Continue Reading »

Today our good friend Peter Koht, the Santa Cruz City Economic Development Coordinator, presented our work at GOV 2.0 Expo.  We’re proud to announce that we won one of five Showcase awards for the Santa Cruz City Budget Website.

What started as a volunteer weekend Wordpress project to help the City of Santa Cruz address the budget deficit has transformed into an adventure. Partnering with UserVoice and Rob Knight Shane, Peter, and Brandon Jones produced an integrated portal for community participation. Mayor Cynthia Mathews worked with Koht and a number of collaborators to produce content for the site and to articulate the state of the budget.

The resulting site instigated conversation amongst both the online and offline Santa Cruz community setting the tone for collaboration.

Our friend Jonathan Fields was just interviewed on Fox Business regarding his recently published his book, ‘Career Renegade‘. We are super excited to find that in his interview he mentioned our iPhone Surf App (at 5:15).

On a related note, Jonathan also interviewed Shane on his podcast, Career Renegades Profiles.

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We are delighted to announce the launch of our first complete iPhone app: “Surf“. Working in conjunction with WaveWatch.com, we’ve developed an iPhone app for surfers. The app features the first ever iPhone streaming surf cams, an intuitive user interface for reviewing current conditions as well as 6-day forecasts.  Surf also features:

• Tide
• Swell & Surf
• Wind
• Sunrise, Sunset
• Lunar Phases
• Weather Conditions

For more information or to download the app, visit the tunes store:
http://iphone.wavewatch.com/download

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We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 3 honoree positions in the 2009 Webby Awards. Giant Mag won a spot in the Magazine section as well as in the Celebrity/Fan section along side The Urban Daily.

David-Michel Davies, Webby Awards Executive Director, writes:

As a result of the exceptional quality of submissions this year, the Academy has recognized outstanding entries as Official Honorees alongside our Nominees and Winners. The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement. With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and over 60 countries, this is an outstanding accomplishment for you and your team.

The Opportunity

We are in the middle of a pretty sweet gig. We’re looking for a Wordpress Plugin Master (no themer this time folks) to join our team on the project for the next 4 months starting now. Help build a high profile full-scale Wordpress suite of 54 sites with elements from various 3rd party web applications.
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