Google Sites Debate

This is a very interesting article exploring the new Google Sites Application. The application aims to help teams and companies collaborate. The same thing CWD does. However, there are things to be cautious about with Gsite. The basic debate is around IT, content protection and features. Read some of the comments (the 3-4th one) in this article. I see a niche in the middle between totally open google sites and IT bogged down feature rich applications.

AMA Max Awards: Moon Boot Give Away

At the AMA Max Awards, CWD offered up a free pair of Moon Boots for booth passers by. It was a hit! Obviously, this must be one of the best Swag items ever created!!

Winner:

Karen Gibson, Creative Director from Orange
Karen can't resist anything orange! It seemed almost fate that her card was pulled out of the Moon Boot by a passer by from Angel Vision. Have a look at this attached image. Most marketing campaigns don't integrate this well!! On top of it all, Karen does great work. It was a pleasure getting to know her and the Orange Creative work when she dropped by the office last Friday.

The AMA Max awards was a blast for us. The Vibrant Table Event application, nominated for Best Web Campaign, created a lot of buzz. The depth and functionality of this tool blew most people away. It is amazing how these tools can transform a business process!

The AKT brand and web project was also a huge success for Cascade Web Development. We would like to publicly thank our partner YRG Communications for doing such a pro job on the message and brand design.

Visit our website or contact us for more information about Cascade Web Development or Evergreen Content Management!

Web Applications for College Students

Last week I gave 2 presentations at the Art Institute of Portland.  The first to a project management class, the second to a technology class. 

The talk went something like this: What is software as a service? Think about it as running the same software as you use on your computer at home, but faster and better because the computer you have at home is nothing like Blue Genie or the servers companies like VMware are using these days. See how much more you can do if you harness the power of web applications? As college students you are using web applications every day. Google docs, Facebook, Del.ic.ious (which none of them used by the way), Blogger, IM, and many more. These are all forms of SAS or hosted applications. Now what does that mean to help you communicate and collaborate with others? Let's think about it from a business perspective. As project manager, I need to work with people in remote offices, I need to find a way to bring everyone on the same page. Make sure they know what is happening and have access to information they need. 

As students you can start to use these tools in class projects. Use google docs rather than passing a word doc around with a crazy version code. Use del.ic.ious to store links and resources to project research. If you put these tools to use, then once you get into the business world, you can create and use these same tools, but in a closed business extranet or intranet. 

Then I exposed them to web project management applications to see how this was implemented. MS sharepoint, Basecamp, Whitepass from Cascade Web Development, and Vibrant Table Events.  I think it really hit home when they saw how similar these tools can be. In the end it is all about working with people, finding opportunities to make them shine.