For those of you not paying attention (and why should you, unless you're in the staffing industry or HR?) in 2000 Microsoft paid out millions to settle a lawsuit because they didn't protect themselves from co-employment liability. It was ugly messy.
If you're in HR, staffing, or think your company might run the risk of co-employment issues, then my friend, you should tune into the Aquent webcast Co-Employment: Risks and Rewards.
(Once again, I was barred from titling it, "Co-Employment, Scourge of the DEVIL!" They really don't know what they're missing hiring a Branding genius like myself.)
Moving on, Edward Lenz, who is Sr. VP for Public Affairs and General Counsel for the American Staffing Association and wrote a book on the topic, will " help you gain a better understanding of co-employment, the potential risks, and how you can manage this dynamic to best serve everyone involved."
And keep Satan out of your workplace! (Okay, that's mine.)
In case you've been away from your email for the last month or so (and, curiously, are visiting my blog) you may not have heard about SoCalAMA'sRed Hot Marketing Connections 2008 being held next Tuesday at the LA Times Building.
There will be food, hosted beverages, fun, and an Aquent table, staffed with friendly Aquent people (our Area Manager and VP of Membership, Susie Hall and Account Director and noted Pokemon authority Diana Scott and a few other staff members).
Your ticket includes a free VIP tour of the Times' news room and networking with colleagues from the Direct Marketing Association of Southern California (DMAsc), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA-LA), and the Women in Technology International (WITI).
You may even get an Aquent pen!
It works better than a regular old pen, believe you me.
Flashforward2008 is rapidly approaching. Well, not exactly approaching, as it will be in to San Francisco, but you know what I mean. As ever, Aquent is sponsoring, along with Lynda.com.
During the event Lynda's company is premiering Creative Inspirations: Big Spaceship, which is their documentary series which looks "at the inner workings of one of the web's most innovative firms." True enough, they've done work for Nike Air, Adobe, HBO, and a host of others.
You can watch the first three movies gratis here on the Lynda.com site. For the rest, I believe you have to subscribe to their Online Training Library. But heck, for $25 to get inside the heads of the staff at Big Spaceship, that's a very small price to pay.
Really, there are better ways to get people to look at your resume.
Julia and Tony, our stellar Recruiters here at Aquent LA, pointed out that Update Your Resume Week is coming up on August 11 - 15 (right in the middle of Psoriasis Awareness Month if you can believe it).
And unlike, say, National Catfish Month, there seems to be a reason Monster picked this point of the year to celebrate. According to them, "In 2007, as in past years, August continued to be one of the busiest months for employers to view resumes on Monster."
Though I know the last thing you want to do after a hard day is pull up your resume and start working on it again; but like a 401(k), if you don't start now, it's really going to bite you in the behind. (Not to get all PG on you.)
Here's an idea, start here on these links and let it settle in.
Drink 4 cups of coffee in rapid succession and then start working on your resume.
Figure that you'll throw the first several tries in the trash. That should ease the burden up a bit.
Let's start with the articles... I'll get the coffee brewing.
Though I'm not really a fan of the word "geek" (wonder why that is?), especially when it's used to refer to someone who is incredibly sharp at what they do, Anne-Marie Concepcion calls herself one and we'll just have to go with that.
Anne-Marie runs DesignGeek Central,which is a great site if you're looking to get help:
As a Designer, Art Director, Creative Director, Project Manager, etc. that is.
Not to push the Eco Point so far that I create backlash make people destroy the Earth just to spite me and my treehugging compatriots, I did want to pass this site along.
Great advice like, 30. Avoid using colored paper stock, 14. Use something besides vinyl for banners, 13. Support your local paper mill, 6. Think about shipping.
Maybe I can just tell the naysayers since Aquent sponsored it, it's a marketing ploy.
Our stellar Recruiters, Tony and Julia, started sending their Aquent Talent Community emails a few weeks ago which I thought I'd pass along.
Yes, I'm always thinking about you.
Okay, I can take advantage of their awesome brain power on this Monday afternoon.
If you're a MyAquent user, the Job Search Agent tips below works really well.
The article on Too Much Information seems obvious, but when you've sat through a number of interviews, you'd be surprised how many times interviewees will make these pretty obvious mistakes.
Here's what I've cribbed from their most recent e-mail:
Job Search Agents ...A great way to be alerted about jobs that match what you’re looking for is to sign up for Aquent’s Job Search Agents in the Job Center. In this way, YOU choose the criteria and our system automatically emails you as jobs are posted that match what you’re looking for!
Login to your MyAquent account
In the left hand column/list, double click Job Center
Under FIND WORK in the left hand column, double click Manage job Search Agents
Click Create Job Search Agent
Enter search criteria and click submit
When jobs matching search criteria come up, you will automatically receive an email with that job listing
Content Social Networking We’ve been talking about social networking, online and off, but have you actually thought about the content you put on your social networking pages? It’s very easy for someone to find us these days, so if you’re actively looking for work, you might want to consider your content! In the following article, Ellen Sautter and Diane Crompton, co-authors of “Seven Days to Online Networking” mention how important it is to use these sites to “establish your credibility and personal brand.” WE LOVE THAT! Establishing your personal brand is the best way to think about it!
Too Much Information Going along with the theme of branding yourself, here’s a useful article on too much information shared while interviewing. This might seem like basic common knowledge but you’d be surprised at how much information a candidate is willing to share about themselves. Lets just chalk it up to nerves...
We're still recovering from Aquent Prom but I felt I'd be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't pass along this CreativePro story on Photoshop's Camera Raw:
"Camera Raw comes free with Photoshop, but many people ignore it because of its complexity."
A nice Adobe / Flash pass along Jenn in our office sent to Flash-related Aquent Talent:
Gain more notoriety with your multimedia projects and development via Search engines.
Adobe announced the company is teaming up with search industry leaders to dramatically improve search results of dynamic Web content and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).
If you're currently on assignment through us, you probably get a number of emails from your Agent about what's going on around town during the summer, but I've been WOEFULLY poor at keeping up on events on this blog.
I'm sorry, so very, very sorry....
To try to make up for my lamedness, I'm giving you the hip tip on tomorrow's designer roundtable down at Barbara's at the Brewery. It's a group called Kernspiracy and is hosted by our friend Spencer Cross, and is absolutely free.
Okay, you have to buy the drinks.
But the friends, networking, business advice, and cold AC are all included in the price of admission.
The 2008 AIGA Leadership Retreat was held in my home town of Omaha, Nebraska for "three days to connect with and be inspired by other chapters across the country."
And it's odd to think of AIGA leaders from NYC, LA, and SF, going down to Johnny's for the country's finest steaks, a restaurant conveniently located right above a stockyard. (No, I am not kidding. My prom was there. A scene in "About Schmidt" was filmed there. Years ago a steer got loose while everyone was dining quietly on martinis and New York Strips.)
Regardless, the current president of AIGA LA, Michael Lejeune gives a great blow-by-blow on what he learned on the Omahablog portion of the site.
If you're interested in where AIGA is headed, including AIGA China, you should definitely take a look.
Don't you wish there was a product like this to take care of your InBox? I mean, all the cc's, bcc's, fyi's, etc., etc., etc.
I don't know if you've been listening to NPR this last week, but they've been running stories on Email Hell.
In the series they've got: Making Fridays E-Mail Free, Does E-Mail Curb Productivity?, Family Spam Is Crushing My Inbox, and so much more.
In fact, you could make today an e-mail free day and spend the rest of the afternoon listening to these stories.
I'd recommend it, as they've got some pretty good people giving advice on how to control the 5th Circle of Electronic Hell.
CommArts is having its Call For Entries for "the most prestigious juried competitions for graphic design and advertising" with winning entries being published in their November 2008 Design Annual and the December 2008 Advertising Annual.
I believe, by using the word "prestigious" they are not referring to its archaic form: "of, relating to, or marked by illusion, conjuring, or trickery"
Otherwise it'd be a waste of your money and talent.
Regardless,here's the spielio:
"Juried by nine top designers and attracting entries from the USA, Canada, England and 40 other countries, theDesign Annualfeatures the best posters, brochures, packaging, trademarks, corporate identity, annual reports, catalogs, letterheads and signage, and is fully indexed for reference. Only 2% of the work entered is selected for the annual. Detailed captions provide the reader with an explanation of the project's scope, the concept and solution."
Past judges have included Saul Bass, Michael Beirut, Lee Clow, Hillman Curtis, Louise Fili, Milton Glaser, Jeff Goodby, Hal Riney, Sam Scali, Paula Scher, Michael Vanderbyl, Lynda Weinman, Fred Woodward and Jeffrey Zeldman.
Any design or advertising project printed, published or aired for the first time between June 3, 2007 and June 2, 2008 is eligible.
But on the subject of Webcasts, Aquent has two upcoming ones you may be interested in:
The first is Managing Your Excel Addiction given by Dan Neff, president of Aquent IT Solutions.
Is your marketing department addicted to spreadsheets? Overwhelming majorities are admitting that the answer is yes. While Excel spreadsheets are the preferred choice to segment, merge, and analyze marketing data, Excel was not designed as a data management tool. In this free and informative Aquent/AMA webcast, Dan Neff, president of Aquent’s IT Solutions, will illustrate how conflicting marketing data is more often the result of a process problem, not a technology gap. Neff will also provide practical examples for working your way out of a spreadsheet nightmare so you can improve your marketing efficiency.
It's on Thursday, May 29th at 10am (PDT) and absolutely free, as usual.
Next up Web Design for ROI: How Design Impacts the Bottom Line with Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus from Closed Loop Marketing.
Learn how to prioritize your design efforts by identifying which elements have the greatest impact on Web page effectiveness. Using a practical, how-to approach to design, Lance and Sandra will discuss the most important concepts and elements for effective landing pages, home pages, category pages, product pages, forms, shopping carts, and checkout processes. They will share guidelines, show case studies, and look at current examples to illustrate what works—and why. When it's your job to make a site beautiful and profitable, you'll want to start here.
This will be on Thursday, May 22nd at 10am (PDT) and is also incredibly free.
So, I'm on Day 3 of biking to work and I do not yet look like this.
Which is good, because chains make me look fat.
The thing I'd forgotten about biking to work? That everyone you meet in the lobby of your building tells you, "Man, I wish I could bike to work." (Except the woman who told me, "I was going to say you look like an ad for REI, then I saw your REI shorts".)
So, if you're looking to spend tomorrow as a superstar to everyone in your office lobby, which I know has been your secret wish all along, there's still time to sign up for prizes on the MTA site and join in the fun.
This bike routing map is probably the best tool you can use to map out your ride to work. (Seems to be working very slowly today
Let me know if you do? I may have an Aquent water bottle in it for you!
No one said working for yourself would be easy (except, of course, Donald Trump), but it does have its perks.
Say working close to your toaster.
Or learning an awful lot about the personal life of your postman.
On the minus side is learning to cope when people keep telling you, "OMG, the economy is in the gutter!"
Especially if its your postman.
Happily, the fine folks over at Creative Pro (Terri Stone in particular) put together a "boat-load" of articles from their Business section on, well, the business of creative.
Sometimes relationships with vendors (that includes staffing agencies) don't work out the way you like.
When you're counting on someone to provide so much, having them fall far short is enough to make you pick the phone up and give them the old "what for". (I was going to go for something more offensive, but after all, this is a PG blog.)
Stop! Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200.
The recent issue of iMedia has an interesting article on ending business relationships graciously.
The first caveat?
Lesson #1: The interactive space is one where people jump around from company to company on a regular basis.
Which means you could be calling a new company for help only to find you're dealing with the rep you let have it 6-mos. ago at the old company.
Insert frownie face.
The lesson, no matter how hard it may be, don't burn your bridges when it comes to important business relationships.
But don't just take it from me, read the whole article here from Sean Cheyney, VP of Marketing and Business Development for AccuQuote.
That is, until I found the final piece of my daughter's pink MALM 3-drawer chest I was assembling was nicked. And I rang customer service to find out how they wanted to go about replacing the piece. And I rang. And rang. I rang for 10 minutes. And no one answered. I rang for two days. And still...
Nor did anyone answer at the HQ IKEA number (they redirected me, after much pushing of buttons, back to my local store where it rang some more.)
There's a lot to like about IKEA, but what's not to love is their customer service. (Please see Danielle Crittenden's blog "Why I Hate IKEA" at the The Huffington Post.)
Maybe one of the execs from the Scandinavian giant will take a moment to attend the latest AMA/Aquent Webcast:
Optimizing the Profitable Link Between Employees and Customer Loyalty Behavior
Michael Lowenstein, Vice President and Senior Consultant at Harris Interactive, points out that research indicates "at least 70% of your customers’ behavior is driven by their interactions with your employees."
Which would explain why there's no rush for me to hustle on back to that big blue and yellow store to get more furniture.
But enough about my allen-wrench assembly skills, here's the delio on the Webcast.


In this free and informative Aquent/AMA webcast, Michael Lowenstein, Vice President and Senior Consultant at Harris Interactive, will present critical insights about the relationship among profitability, employee behavior, and customer loyalty, which will prove that true customer commitment is attainable only when the entire organization understands and performs its roles in providing superior customer experiences.
You will learn how to:
Effectively measure and understand customers’ perceptions
Pinpoint which employee attitudes and actions affect customer behavior
Leverage employee positivism and customer focus
Identify and eliminate employee sabotage
Develop a customer-centric culture
The AMA recommends attendees of this Webcast should include Senior Executives and Managers of:
His recent post, Why bother having a resume? started a bit of discussion around the blogosphere, but the bare facts are, yes, you still need a resume.
Seth's point is that if you "you're remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn't have a resume at all."
Riiiight.
I like Heather Hamilton's point, "Donald Trump doesn't need a resume, Seth Godin doesn't need a resume. You? You need a resume."
Make that "You, me, and Heather Hamilton." (No, Susie, I'm not currently looking for work.)
Seth Godin's job is to shake things up, to be, in his own self-description, an "agent of change" (for some reason I'm thinking about the time Lenny Kravitz declared his album was better than Sgt. Pepper, then later admitted he just said it to hype sales). But really, there's little information in this post for 99.999% of folks looking for work.
Not only should you have a resume, you should pay very close attention to the information you put on it.
Most importantly, have a Grammar Police friend proofread it. (True, I heard tell of a Recruiter who'd toss any resume who misspelled QuarkXPress.)
And when you change it, have them proof it again.
Make it as cool or as daring as you want, just as long as you have a resume.
We're still big on these tidbits for style:
Keep to 1-2 full pages and use letter size paper
Use bullet points, bold type, etc.
Use past tense without subject (eg. created, worked developed, implemented) except with current position
Market your skills and experience relevant to the position you are looking for
Analyze ads and job descriptions to identify keywords
Use power/action words to get attention
Prioritize the content of your resume (most important=first)
Tweak and target each of your resume(s) and cover letter(s)
Keep your resume updated!
State URL of profile or portfolio site
I've got a PDF we produced a few years ago with Dos & Don'ts if your interested.
Not that you need my lame excuses... but now I'm back and raring to go.
An interesting thing about camping with a group is seeing how each person adapts to the environment, especially when that environment has no water and the weather can vary by 70 degrees in a day. If one person has a great idea, the others will probably use it the next time. (We learned a couple years ago from someone that it was just as easy to pack an espresso maker as it was drip coffee maker. Man, that's a nice lesson at 6am.)
Which brings me to the Core 77 1 Hour Design Challenge. Industrial Designers are given an hour (or so) to take on a design challenge and post their work.
"Can you design a better bike lock in one hour or less? Push aside that looming deadline and pick up your Sharpies….its 1HDC time again! What can you bring to the table to prevent [the stolen] Huffy Heartache?"
A few years ago, not long after I started this blog (yes, a few YEARS.. where'd the time go?), Amy Joyce over at The Washington Postinterviewed me about blogging.
As with all interviews, our 20 minutes spent on the phone was boiled down to a paragraph or two at the end of her column.
She used my comments to illustrate the positives of blogging, but most of her article was concentrated on employers disciplining staff members for their blogging content and potential employers not hiring people due to the content on their blog.
She pointed to a survey of 278 HR folks by the Society for Human Resource Management, 7% of whom said they read candidates' blogs to gather information on they decide to extend an offer.
This was 3 years ago, so you can imagine what that number is now.
A different survey last year in the UK revealed a full fifth of employers looked up candidates on-line, with over one half those saying it affected whether or not they hired the person based on their findings.
Now a coalition of UK children's charities is "seeking to ban employers from researching prospective employees on Facebook", according to PC Pro UK. The charities are hoping to convince the British government to tighten data protection laws so employers require permission to access on-line data.
Critics have pointed out that a blanket ban of accessing candidates' sites might hinder companies (like Aquent UK) from looking at a Designer or Art Director's work if it's on-line.
But the reasonable assumption is, if you're putting yourself out there for everyone to see, whether it's on Facebook, MySpace, Friendster...
Everyone might just see. I guess that's just as good a reason as any to get a good Avatar.
Right before Spring is another, fifth season: The Season of Creative Contests.
I'm not kidding (did you think I would?), AIGA and CommunicationArts are opening the floodgates for contestants for their Illustration, Design, and Photography competitions.
Starting with AIGA's 365 Design competition:
Work in all media that has been designed, produced and used in the marketplace between January 1 and December 31, 2007. (The contest) represents the best work across all disciplines of communication design and strategy and "50 Books/50 Covers" represents the 50 best book covers and 50 best book designs for the given year, both chosen by a jury of industry peers.
The contest includes: Brand and identity systems, Corporate communications design, Package design, Editorial design and illustration, Typographic design, Promotional design and advertising, Experience design, Entertainment design, and Information design.
Deadline is March 7th. Entry fees are $35 for members, $55 for nonmembers, per individual entry.
49th Annual Communication Arts Illustration Competition
Any Illustration first printed or produced between March 14, 2007 and March 11, 2008 is eligible. Selected by a nationally representative jury of distinguished designers, art directors and illustrators, the winning entries will be published in the July 2008 Illustration Annual. Over 70,000 copies of the Illustration Annual will be distributed worldwide, assuring important exposure to the creators of this outstanding work. As a service to art directors, designers and art buyers, a comprehensive index will carry addresses and telephone numbers of the illustrators represented.
Categories include: Advertising, Books, Editorial, For Sale, Institutional, Motion/Animation, Self-Promotion, and Unpublished.
Deadline is March 11th. Entry fees are $30 for a single entry, $60 for a series.
49th Annual Communication Arts Photography Competition
Any photograph first printed or produced between March 14, 2007 and March 11, 2008 is eligible. Selected by a nationally representative jury of distinguished designers, art directors and photographers, the winning entries will be published in the August 2008 Photography Annual. Over 70,000 copies of the Photography Annual will be distributed worldwide, assuring important exposure to the creators of this outstanding work. As a service to art directors, designers and art buyers, a comprehensive index will carry addresses and telephone numbers of the photographers represented.
Categories also include: Advertising, Books, Editorial, For Sale, Institutional, Motion/Animation, Self-Promotion, and Unpublished.
Okay, maybe not the appropriate posting title for a Marketing Webcast, but I was trying to make it sound exciting.
By referencing a 20-year old work of music.
Regardless, Aquent and AMA National are sponsoring another of our wildly successful Webcasts: 7 Steps to a Stellar Online Reputation, hosted by Andy Beal, author of the award-winning Marketing Pilgrim blog.
(See, you knew the reference would come around, didn't you?)
Here's the lowdown:
Companies spend millions of dollars building and promoting their brands online by creating engaging multimedia content, building and maintaining a blog, and improving rankings in search engines. Yet despite these best efforts, it is possible for a single negative review – on a social networking site, a blog, or YouTube – to destroy a company’s reputation.
Reputation management requires new skills in a world where the power to control a brand is shifting away from traditional media and corporate monologues on Web sites. Marketers must now build strategies for managing, monitoring, and maintaining their online reputations.
(This Webcast) will outline a seven-step action plan that will give attendees the tools they need to maintain a stellar online reputation by:
devising online media strategies and objectives that engage customers,
developing a monitoring system will work best for their company, and
implementing a crisis management plan when the company’s reputation faces attack.
Andy's worked with Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, SAS, Lowes, Quicken Loans, and NBC and has been published in BusinessWeek, Search Engine Guide, and WebProNews.
We've been hosting (with the AMA) quite a few Webcasts for Marketing folks.
And while they've been extremely popular, we've yet to have one exclusively for Creatives.
Until today, my friend.
Well, until February 7th.
That's when Aquent and Aquent Graphics Institute will present 8 "Need to Know" Technology Trends for Creative Managers.
AGI co-founders, Christopher and Jennifer Smith, who have collectively authored more than 20 best-selling Adobe-related books:
"will make sure that you know the eight technology trends impacting creative departments for 2008--and why they're important to your team's success. New technologies designed to help creative departments keep consistent messages across multiple mediums, create more engaging interactive content, upgrade their Web design, improve the approval process, build effective workflows, manage assets, and free up resources. "
(Weird, because I was guessing the 8 tech trends helping creatives would be: better coffeemakers, stress-relieving squeezy balls, sharper pencils, Mighty Mice, moisture wicking socks, GPS-enabled job jackets, better anti-depressants, and the new Sia CD. Which is probably why I'm not hosting the Webcast myself.)
Did I mention it's free, Free, FREE?
Consider it our incredibly creative Valentine's Day gift to you.
And you will be too, after you hear Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, discuss the latest trends in social media in this free IABC Webinar.
Cosponsored by Dow Jones, next week you'll be tons smarter when you:
Discover how social media is being deployed throughout the enterprise and how listening to the conversation can help you identify your audience and their drivers while seizing opportunities and mitigating risks.
Using advanced text-mining and visualization technologies Dow Jones Insight helps you easily discover what's being said about your company in blogs, Web sites and message boards. Learn how to easily monitor and understand the latest news, market trends, and business challenges relevant to your organization and your customer
In fact if you are not tons smarter by the end, I will personally refund the money you spent to get into it.
Yes, I'm just that confident this free Webinar will be of interest to you.
I don't know about you, but when I hear the expression "Marketing Ops", I picture MBAs stalking around in black ninja outfits using collateral as throwing stars and nunchaku.
But then again, I work in a very small Marketing department.
If yours is a bit larger, you may want to listen in on another one of our uber popular Aquent/AMA Webcasts: Do More with Less: Put Marketing Operations to Work in your Department
Marketing leaders in many industries and in companies large and small are responding by launching transformation initiatives to operate more efficiently, to improve the effectiveness of marketing initiatives and programs, and to better align and measure what marketing does against company objectives. Critical to a transformation are new enabling technologies like Marketing Resource Management (MRM), adoption of a measurement mindset, and the establishment of a centralized Marketing Operations function.
In this Aquent-Sponsored webcast, MarketSphere National Practice Director Mayer Becker will discuss the importance and role of a Marketing Operations function in a marketing organization and will lay out a 5-step approach to achieving a successful transformation. These steps include:
Selected by a nationally representative panel of distinguished
programmers, interface designers and creative directors, the winning
entries will be published in the September/October Interactive Annual
of
Interactive Design Competition. Any interactive project created for
digital distribution on the World Wide Web, CD-ROM, interactive kiosk
or handheld device is eligible.
Entry fees are $100 (U.S.) per Web site entry and $125 (U.S.) per
disk-based entry.
Hurry, deadline for entries are January 11th, 2008.
Aquent and AMA national are doing another in a series wildly popular Webcasts at the end of this month.
Global vs. Local: Seven Key Insights for Global Marketing and Brand Management
Though the words "Seven Key Insights" makes me think of The DaVinci Code, I think it's more down to earth than that:
Don DePalma, President and Chief Research Officer at Common Sense Advisory and author of "Business Without Borders: A Strategic Guide to Global Marketing" will outline seven key considerations for marketers charged with managing and maintaining their brands across borders. From the best practices to the pitfalls, Don will provide insights on taking a website, sales and marketing promotions, and documentation abroad.
Don is an industry analyst, author, and corporate strategist with expertise in business- and marketing-focused application of technology. He lectures, writes, and is frequently quoted on the topics of online marketing, content management, multicultural marketing, localization, return on investment, and website globalization. His book, "Business Without Borders: A Strategic Guide to Global Marketing," is widely used in universities and in business training courses.
Yup, much more down to earth.
Weird that I was looking for something more elusive, eh?
Story of my life.
Regardless, the free Webcast will take place on November 29 at 10am, PST .
I have the bad habit of leaving at least one of my backpack zippers undone when I go out the door. Which is fun, because my wallet is usually the first thing to hit the sidewalk with a thud, followed by various paperwork, business cards, and Post-It notes to myself ("Remember to zip backpack!")
What does all of this have to do with Layer Tennis, a match where two Designers volley their pieces back and forth across cities?
Gentle Reader, a note to blog about this was on a Post-It which fluttered out of my pack and onto the ground at the VW shop this morning.
Regardless, you should check out Coudal Partner's Layer Tennis site because, whether you're a Marketing Manager or Production Artist, you should see how fast some people go from concept to completion and work on another's piece. (Not to mention how funny they are while they're doing it.)
Here are the rules: "Two artists (or two small teams of
artists) will swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and
embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a
"volley" and then we post that to the site. A third participant, a
writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action, as it happens."
And if you have time to burn on Friday afternoons, you can subscribe to their RSS feed to get pinged when matches are announced and when volleys go live.
If your Friday looks like mine, you'll get to it Saturday.
I bet you, like many people, wonder aloud while reading this blog, "Just how high and whiny is Tim Donnelly's voice?" Or, those of you more familiar with our office, "Just how fast does Susie Hall speak. And how is it she was born and raised in the South and has no trace of an accent?"
All your questions will be answered (and some you don't) courtesy of Jim Stroud.
Jim was kind enough to interview Susie and I for his Recruiters Lounge and make us sound funnier, smarter, and cooler than we are in real life. I think it might be the addition of music in the background.
If you'd like to hear more of what life is like in staffing, what it's like staffing at Aquent, or where we stash our chocolate and loose change, click below.
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