IDEAS Orlando

New Blog Location

2010-06-08T20:48:00.005-04:00

We have moved our blog to our website, please visit us at http://ideasorlando.com/

Bob Allen's Dad

2010-05-19T13:08:00.002-04:00

Written by Bob Allen.
IDEAS was hatched in the most amazing creative incubator imaginable- Walt Disney World. We love our Disney heritage and treasure our Disney clients and friends. My own connection there goes even deeper. In 1955, a struggling student going to Cal Poly in Long Beach California on the GI bill heard about a new place opening near his home in Anaheim. We stood in line every day and on the last day of hiring, he got a job. His task was to ride on the back of a small train and blow a whistle if anyone looked like they might fall off! Over the course of 33 years, he rose to the position of Vice President of Walt Disney World (there were only a few of those then!). That guy was my dad, Bob Allen (he was Robert C, I’m Robert M and my nephew is Robert C too!).

Dad served Disney till his death at the young age of 55 in 1987 and while he was there, he worked tirelessly to make Disney a truly generous member of the Central Florida Community. Since his death, Walt Disney World has generously given large community service grants in his name every year. This morning, the Hope Community Center in Apopka received $45,000 to continue their extraordinary work with a community of farm workers. My family was there, along with Mickey of course, and I am filled with gratitude to the “kick-butt sisters” at Hope Community Center, to Walt Disney World and to my dad for practicing unrestrained generosity.

Florida Film & Entertainment Tax Credit

2010-05-05T12:10:00.000-04:00

This past Friday was a monumental day for the Film & Entertainment industry in Florida. For the first time in many years, a bill passed in Tallahassee that will put the industry back on the worldwide map when it comes to work. I moved to Central Florida in April 1998. About a month after I started working for this company (at that time we were part of Disney), until Thanksgiving of 2001, we had at least one television project in the building at almost all times. It was Petsburgh, then Donna's Day, then Good Dog U, then season 2 of Petsburgh, then season 2 of Donna's Day, then Dooley & Pals, then Sheena then season 2 of Sheena. I may have actually forgotten one or two in there as well. And that's just what we worked on, not to mention everyone at Universal and other projects that we didn't work on but were at Disney (Instinct, From the Earth to the Moon, Mortal Kombat, etc.). My point is, there was broadcast work coming out of our ears.

Then it all stopped. I'm not sure what year it was when the state of Florida decided to stop offering incentives to the entertainment industry but it was within a year of September 11, 2001. The combination of those two events devastated the industry in Central Florida and I'm assuming the entire state. Since then our industry has been destroyed by the likes of Louisiana, North & South Carolina, New Mexico, Canada and a couple other places. Those places used direct cash rebate programs but the real key to their success was a tax credit program. In that time our business (our company) has changed a lot. We depend on traditional entertainment far less than in those days. But that doesn't mean we don't miss it and want it back. It has taken a number of years and a lot of pain & suffering but Florida is now back in the ballgame by joining the tax credit parade.

Productions can earn up to 30% back based on the criteria, instantly making Florida a choice destination for productions. In this budget-sensitive time that we live in the beauty of tax credit process is that it costs little if anything to the state. My sense is that the bulk of the cost the state is going to incur is going to come from increase in staffing to deal with all the people applying for the tax credits for the many productions that will be coming to Florida.

Since Friday I've read how this budget was cut and that budget was cut in the state. At the same time, through a non-cash commitment, the film & entertainment industry was resurrected. Just in the last couple days the film office here in Orlando has seen a significant increase in inquiries about shooting in Central Florida. Who knows where all of this ends up. A year or two from now Florida may be the hottest place to shoot, just like it was 12 years ago. Or maybe this time next year we'll be sitting around trying to figure out how to get people here. There's no way to really know but if the past is any indication (the 1990's) and the recent interest plays out, we will look back on April 30, 2010 as the first day of the rest of our life in the film & entertainment industry. Thanks to everyone in the industry who helped make it happen and to all of the politicians who pushed it through.

New Photos for Website

2010-04-30T15:28:00.000-04:00

A couple years ago we were trying to come up with creative for our then new website. We kept coming back to one thing- while the work we do for clients is important, what we really sell is relationships. Ultimately for a project to be successful there needs to be mutual trust between us and the client. The client needs to trust us enough to do what we do best. And we need to trust the client that they are telling us everything we need to know and openly and respectfully participating in the process. Having that mutual trust is huge in order for us to be successful together.

So, as we were coming up with what the website should look like, we believed that someone viewing it needed to be able to get to know us personally instead of just reading about us on a flat text website. Building the relationship with the client needed to start from their first look at the website. The result is the images of each employee on the website. One image has us dressed and looking in our normal everyday work attire. And the second image of each of us has us in our personal off-hours attire. Those are the photos that people really had fun with. Most brought extra cloths, a lot used props, some even brought their pets. It started out as a little thing and quickly got out of control, in a good way. In the end, the result was one of the most popular elements of our current website.

In the next couple weeks we'll be rolling out a new and improved website so we thought we'd give everyone the opportunity to update their photos if they wanted to. Today was the update day. We had a number of people that brought in changes of clothes, props, children (I think belonging to them), and a couple dogs. When we did it the last time it was over a couple days and it was a lot of fun and today was a lot of the same. Keep an eye out for the new website and you'll see some of the results from today.

Bob Allen Honored at Modeling and Simulation Event

2010-04-13T12:36:00.000-04:00

Written by Bob Allen
Last night there was a quiet celebration. The Simulation Interoperability and Standards Organization and the Society for Computer Simulation International teamed up to host “CELEBRATE Central Florida Modeling and Simulation”. Now, that’s a mouthful of organizations and pretty geeky looking till you look deeper. 11 of the honorees represented work right here in Orlando. That has assured that our military is better able to face the rigors of the battlefield, our hospitals are beginning to be able to “rehearse” the most pressing kinds of emergency care and that commercial aviation is safer than its ever been- not to mention how we get human beings safely to space and home again.

What struck me the most in the array of future projects was the incredible potential of this set of largely misunderstood disciplines offers. Orlando has the most potent critical mass for the next generation of solutions for mission and life-critical human immersion in the world. Why? Its because of what I characterize as our four “power vectors”: UCF and its centers of academic excellence, Research Park and its corporate and organizational reach into a world of technological excellence, Medical City with its “greenfield advantage” in research and applied medicine and Creative Village- the nascent downtown nexus of creative digital media and entertainment professionals. As was noted last night, the puffery of “who’s the biggest” in any segment is empty compared to the real issue of who is actually innovating.

I like to think that’s where we get in the game at IDEAS. The 12th honoree was me and I’m really grateful that Priscilla Elfrey, the undisputed QUEEN of MS&T, saw fit to include me. We are an Innovation Studio. Our definition of innovation is “The applied confluence of creativity, artistry and intentional action over time for a specific purpose.” What we’ve been able to synthesize from our early efforts creating Battle Stations 21 for the Navy and Essentials of Modeling and Simulation for the ADL Co-Lab, have carried our work into online virtual worlds, our TeacherStudio™ collaborative professional online community for educators, new cultural attractions and redefined patient experiences in both military and community healthcare. As my old friend Chris Stapleton said last night, its invention until someone actually does something- then it can be innovation. I’m grateful not only for the kind recognition from SISO and SCS but moreover for being part of what is happening in Orlando. This is the right place for the next 20 years.

TeacherStudio Roll-Out In Indianapolis

2010-03-25T21:28:00.000-04:00

Last week we met in Indianapolis with a group of teachers from the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township to help them brainstorm about the best way to get started using the TeacherStudio. Rolling out a new product in a school district (especially one that requires a great deal of buy-in from those who will use it most – teachers) is a delicate yet exciting process.

We had the great privilege of meeting with a group of 30 teachers who took the first steps in implementing TeacherStudio in their school district. Since TeacherStudio is designed to help districts promote and share best practices, our first step was to give the group an opportunity to think about and list the instructional goals that were most important to them. Once they had this list in front of them, we thought it would be much easier to visualize how they could bring these initiatives to life inside the product. This group of instructional technology educators did an amazing job of listing the programs that are most important in their district right now – they were such self starters and really jumped right in. We then shared with the group what TeacherStudio was and the features (and possibilities) that the product offers. It was our hope that during the demonstration they could begin to get an idea of how they could move forward inside the TeacherStudio.

We spent the remainder of our time together creating a list of video clips (they felt they could capture) that aligned to the initiatives they had identified. It was quite an experience to look at the product we’ve been building over the past year through a new set of eyes. They had such insight and wonderful feedback about the product. So many of them saw potential and were already asking about next steps. We look forward to seeing this group evolve inside the TeacherStudio, as well as be a part of their collaboration with other districts.

For more about TeacherStudio go to www.TeacherStudio.com and for more about IDEAS Learning go to www.ideaslearning.com

Has Technology Helped or Hurt the Olympics?

2010-03-02T10:02:00.002-05:00

As I watched the Olympics over the last two weeks I kept arguing with myself- has technology helped or hurt the Olympics? The truth is, I still haven't won or lost the argument. With this being the 30 year anniversary of the Miracle on Ice hockey game I watched a lot of retrospectives on the event. Besides the actual winning of the game, one thing that kept resonating with me was remembering that the game actually occured during the day and was shown tape delay that night. Because there was barely cable TV and it was long before the internet or 24 hour news/sports channels on cable, nobody knew the US had actually won until the game aired that night. Over the last 30 years, specifically, over the last 15 years, TV ratings for the Olympics have declined, except for the years in which the Olympics were held in time zones where most events could be shown live. Declining ratings, in my opinion, can be directly attributed to the internet and 24 hour news/sports coverage. Die hard viewers will always watch, but those who are more peripheral enthusiasts are less likely to watch an event if they already know the results. Over the last two weeks if I wanted to watch something at night that happened during the day it was a lot of effort to not hear the results before watching that night. Because less and less events are shown live, NBC has to resort to stringing you along for 3 hours before they finally show the winning US person in their 2 minute performance. And that's also why we get the never ending tear jerker personal profiles. The primetime telecast of the Olympics is less about the actual events and more about doing anything possible to keep viewers. With that said, the Olympics that just finished got great ratings.

On the other hand, 30 years ago if an event wasn't on the main network it wasn't shown. These past Olympics besides the daily and nightly coverage on NBC we also had MSNBC and USA. If we didn't have 3x the coverage we definitely had twice the coverage than if we just had NBC. The increased coverage is 100% credited with the infatuation people have with Curling now. People started getting in to Curling when it was shown as an after thought on those networks 4 and 8 years ago during the Olympics. More coverage means more exposure for the secondary Olympic sports which I think it good. Also, there is something really cool about watching downhill skiing and ski jumping at 500+ frames per second. Seeing details in extreme slow motion gives you a completely different sense of the action. All the different slow-mos and all the different camera angles really give you a different view of the events.

So there you have it. Don't know where I really stand. Maybe I'll pick up the argument in 2 years after the Summer Olympics or 4 years after the next Winter Olympics.

How the Future Works.... by Bob Allen

2010-02-24T16:44:00.003-05:00

It's about 36 degrees and raining outside and the sky looks like an impenetrable roof. That would be Albany, the Capital of New York, at the need of February. I’ve come on our third Radical Platypus mission. You may remember that my pal Jim Brazell, a futurist, scientist and general passionista for all-things Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math; teamed up with me this year and formed Radical Platypus. We brought our very divergent backgrounds along with a couple of other colleagues together to form a new kind of speaking and workshop team. Radical, because we are intentionally iconoclastic on what we present on how the world might be likely to change and Platypus because we are an unusual but potent combination of attributes.

Tomorrow Jim and I will give a PlayShop to the New York State Association of Career and Technical Education Administrators called “How the Future Works Today: yourWORLD, yourSTORY, yourCALLING”. We’ll be combining some speaking (Jim focused on how the world of Tech-Prep education is changing and me on Story and Innovation practices) with some facilitation to help our audience create the future state of their discipline. When we rolled this work out in Atlanta a while back, we got good feedback, We've added and hybridized since then so hopefully we’ll get the same here. Now, if only I can avoid going outside...

Ringling College 2010 Design Summit by Bob Allen

2010-02-09T13:50:00.001-05:00

Last week I got to spend two days in Sarasota as a participant in the Ringling College 2010 Design Summit. It was energizing to be immersed in a group of business and governmental leaders for two days exploring the idea of Design and Business. What I heard and experienced was gratifying for us at IDEAS because the resounding message was that the design-thinking we apply in our Innovation work is deeply needed in business. Moreover, our StoryJam protocols are a viable system of applied design! I learned all this by listening to people from across the country explain it. It was at times all I could do to now leap up and yell “Yes, Right On! That’s us! We DO THAT!” OK...I DID leap up and say it but only once.

Friday our long time creative collaborator, designer and composer Tim Duffy, joined me in presenting a 2 hour seminar to 50 or so students. We got to share our own tales to The Creative Journey and listen to theirs. It's so powerful to see how much fresh talent and energy is being unleashed. Our pal Dr. Wanda Chavez teaches here and she got us connected. Friday afternoon I was able to give a talk on the Power of Story as a design tool to the conference audience and it went well. I think these kinds of events really stretch my head about who we should be working with and how we can help clients in new ways. Later this month, I get to go to Albany NY and do a similar workshop for educators. I’ll let you know how that goes.

To learn more about StoryJam and IDEAS Innovation visit http://www.ideasorlando.com/innovation/index.php You'll find additional information about StoryJam under Story Development.

Avid & Final Cut, Can't We All Just Get Along?

2010-02-03T09:02:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago we hosted a round table discussion involving Kirk Arnold, COO of Avid, Michael Phillips, Principal Product Designer at Avid and about 20 of Central Florida's most highly regarded post production specialists. The evening was put together by the Orlando Post Pros group and we were very happy to play host as well as have our two staff editors involved. The purpose of the evening was for Kirk Arnold & Michael Phillips to tell all of us what they are working on and what's ahead for Avid and also to listen to everyone in the room about what they like, don't like and need from the future Avid products.

I thought it was a good night, time well spent. How often do you get the opportunity to visit with two high ranking people from the company who's product is very important to your business? Inevitably any discussion about Avid these days turns in to a discussion about Final Cut Pro as well. Often times those discussions end up being an us against them or a this is better than that conversation. And my question is can we all just get along?

Our philosophy here at IDEAS is that there is a time, place and budget for both Avid and Final Cut Pro. It doesn't have to be a conversation about whether one is better than the other. It should be a conversation about what's the best product for the project you're working on. We take great pride in the fact that we have both Avid and Final Cut Pro in our facility. Currently we have a Final Cut Pro with all the bells and whistles (Color, Motion, etc.), a Media Composer Nitris DX and a Symphony Nitris DX. All of the systems work almost exclusively in HD off both files and tape.

We have been working with Avid products since they became mainstream back in the 90s. We have been using Final Cut Pro for about two years now so we admittedly have much more knowledge and are more comfortable on Avid. But that doesn't change the fact that we realize the pros and cons of both. Cost will always be something that hurts Avid. Stability will always be something that hurts Final Cut. Avid has the hardware and software parts down to a science. Final Cut is only software so while it will always be on a MAC, there are a variety of media drive choices as well as video cards depending on what you're doing. The Avid DS, which we had for 6 years, is the best tool out of all of them for compositing and effects. But DS is more expensive which means there's less out there which means (as we found out) there are less people out there who know how to operate it.

The bottom line is that some projects are better done on an Avid while some are better done on a Final Cut. Anyone who tells you that every project is best suited on one or the other is, in my opinion, incorrect. We talk to our clients, see what materials they have, what they are trying to accomplish, figure out the best way to produce the best possible final product, then decide whether it should be done on an Avid or a Final Cut. And as far as price goes, we don't really have a rate card for our services on either system. We have done editing for $75 per hour because it's pretty low maintenance (cuts & dissolves only) but we've done editing for $200 per hour because it was intense and it required a lot of resources (color correcting, plug-ins, etc.). And those rates have been charged on Final Cut or Avid so price isn't driven by which system. And of course, the $75 & $100 per hour rates are offered, regardless of the system for higher volume, longer term clients and projects.

Anyway, just my $.02. Both Avid and Final Cut are good systems. There's no need to bash one over the other, they both have their place in our industry.

My Trip to Seattle by Bob Allen

2010-01-28T20:20:00.000-05:00

In the age of the “social network” it's more than ever about who you know. But, before there was ever a Facebook or Twitter, there was hanging out at the gym. A few years back (OK, double digits), I met up with a guy in Orlando through my old boss at Disney. He and his wife ran a personal training business and he took me on as a client. After about a year of working out under Jeff’s watchful eye (he once came in my house and actually dragged me out of bed to work out) I got in tremendous shape and Jeff and I and his lovely wife Michelle (who we still call Mike to this day) ended up running two marathons together one of which was the first ever at Walt Disney World. Well, as luck would have it, Jeff surfaced recently at a trade show in Orlando and came to see me. He is now a new business development executive with a company that makes the most advanced fitness equipment in the world. It turns out these guys have wangled a way to include a pretty cool screen and interface with a lot more capacity to provide content for those long and lonely (and in my case sweaty and breathless) hours (or minutes) on the treadmill or the elliptical trainer. Just a long way of explaining why I flew corner to corner from Orlando to Seattle for a creative session tomorrow about just what kind of content might be cool in this new media. What do you want to see on your treadmill screen? Let us know!

The Power of Story

2010-01-25T16:15:00.000-05:00

Last week was a nice reminder to us of what we call The Power of Story. It's not some mystical or “magic bullet” concept (and there is a lot of that going around about story these days). We conducted one of our signature StoryJams for a client who is developing a new resort-one that has both challenges and opportunities that are unlike any other and at a time in history when conditions are unprecedented.

There were 35 people in the group and they ranged in beliefs from “Let’s Go!” to “You gotta be kidding!”. Many, we were warned, were not into being “warm and fuzzy”. Cut to the bottom line, by noon the group was deliberately and creatively crafting this new resort. Effortlessly changing their own paradigms and willingly donning the guise of their guests as they took the plan to a new level. Some of the biggest and most thoughtful contributors? All of the people who we were told “might not get into it”.

In the other case, we got a chance to help an institution harvest and collect some of the core stories of their origins. This is, to us, sacred tribal knowledge and when the holders of it move on, retire or pass away, organizations can be forever disconnected from the stories that define their purpose. Not so in this case. Two great days of dialogue and sharing of stories from the people who made history for our client resulted in a cache of real treasure-now preserved and useful for generations. Two great stories we think!

Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) Recap

2010-01-21T15:20:00.002-05:00

The Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) was held last week here in Orlando, Florida. It is fascinating to see the number of technology offerings available to those in the education industry. From SMART boards to classroom response systems, companies continue to gear up to meet the needs of teachers and their students. Although seeing all of this technology was “cool,” the more important question that people were asking at the conference was, “How are teachers using this technology to improve their craft?” And, “Does all of this technology actually enhance the way teachers teach and students learn?” It seems to relate in many ways to the same debate that Richard Clark and Robert Kozma had in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The debate revolved around whether or not the media (or technology) you use to deliver content improved one’s learning. There have been many arguments made on both sides of this discussion, but at the end of the day most would agree that the technology you choose has to make sense for the content you are teaching and the instructional strategies you are using. The two go hand-in-hand.

Of particular interest to us last week was to see how educators are using technology to improve their own professional development. Since the creation of our TeacherStudio product (http://www.teacherstudio.com/), we have participated in many conversations that revolve around this topic. Several sessions were focused on this subject and we enjoyed learning about how others are approaching this very important task. It’s no surprise that teachers are doing more with less, and it is important that they still have time for their own professional growth. Some school districts are partnering across state lines to share best practices. Others are looking to “free” online tools, such as Moodle and Ning, to provide their teachers with online support. The reason we put “free” in quotes is because although these tools do not cost any hard dollars, per se, it does require someone’s time within a school or district to get these sites set up and organized. Great progress has definitely been made in this arena and it is exciting to see.

We attended Diane Lewis’ presentation where she talked about how her district, Seminole County (Florida) Public Schools, is using a palette of professional development options to meet the diverse needs of their teachers. From face-to-face training to an educational world in SecondLife they offer a wide array of options. However even with all they were providing – there was still a gap. They needed a way to give their teachers just in time training and a way to see exemplary teachers in action. Our TeacherStudio product is proving to be an answer to that question. It gives districts a way to offer an affordable online professional learning community for their teachers. It makes sharing of best practices easy which lets districts maximize face-to-face time with their teachers, as well as dollars. Although this is just one solution, it definitely offers online tools that teachers and administrators can use.

For more about IDEAS go to http://www.ideasorlando.com/ and for more about IDEAS Learning go to www.ideaslearning.com/

IDEAS Healthcare Practice- Part 3

2010-01-19T12:18:00.000-05:00

The final installment on our Healthcare Practice. Once our 4-step approach is followed (talked about in our previous entries), we believe an organization's staff can now learn concrete steps to improve patient satisfaction based on our groundbreaking qualitative research and experience design expertise. We help teach an organization what we have learned about the patient’s perspective, and how nurses, physicians, and non-clinical staff can make a tangible difference in the non-clinical aspects of patient care that are integral to the HCAHPS performance.

We teach 6 New Ways to Improve Patient Satisfaction
1. How to Identify Patient Satisfaction Drivers: The organization must attend to the 6 core drivers of the patient experience to guarantee positive patient satisfaction. We explore these drivers work, and show how to make them work for the organization to make a difference for patients.

2. How to Bridge the Gap between Patient & Caregiver: Clinicians and patients live in two separate worlds and speak two different lead to huge disconnects for patients, how staff can learn to see the world through the patient’s eyes, and what they can do to bridge the gap.

3. How Physicians Can Become 10-Second Heroes: Physicians often miss the mark with patients, and consistently receive the worst satisfaction ratings of all clinical staff. We’ll teach how they can improve the way patients perceive their care in six easy steps that won’t require any significant time commitment.

4. How to Protect and Nurture the Caregiver’s Circle™: We’ve learned in great detail how caregivers and family members are frequently pulled out of what we call the Caregiver Circle. We’ll show what the organization can do to optimize how staff enters that circle, decrease patient isolation, and improve patients’ perception of care and support.

5. How to Utilize the Patient Journey to Develop New Service Offerings: Patients are on a distinctive journey in which their clinical care is just one facet. We’ll show new ways to view the patient journey through the patient’s eyes and help discover unique opportunities for improvement.

6. How to Escalate the Perception of Care: Clinicians communicate with patients on a continuum that can directly impact patients’ HCAHPS evaluations. We’ll show how to move clinical staff from “clinical” to “informative” to “empathic” care, and how the latter is the most valued and remembered by patients.

IDEAS Healthcare Practice- Part 2

2010-01-14T21:19:00.001-05:00

In a previous post I talked about our 4-step process for improving the patient experience in hospitals and health care organizations. Through the patient’s eyes, we have developed a proven custom program to enhance and transform their experience and satisfaction ratings, throughout an entire hospital system. Here's the 4-step model for improvement:

Step 1: Culture Mapping
We begin with “Culture Mapping” the stories of patients, their families, and both clinical and non-clinical staff. Out of this time “living” in every corner of the institution—interviewing,
talking, listening, and watching — comes a matrix of stories and observations. Then, using StoryAnalytics, we distill this material into focused and actionable conclusions that become the seedbed for understanding the cultural drivers and the gaps that exist between the current patient experience and the optimal experience the institution is striving for. As a bonus, the staff is invigorated by inclusion in the process.

Step 2: StoryJam
Does the organization have a vision and mission that the staff is passionate about? Can the organization articulate the kind of experience they want to deliver to their patients? Through our years of creating entertainment experiences, we have crafted a rigorous story development process that can be applied to real life business issues in practical ways. In StoryJam, we make a safe and creative environment for 25 to 40 people from the organization. Over two days of iterative story making as part of our creative team, we draw out a clearly articulated vision of the patient experience within the organization. This is not traditional brainstorming. It harnesses the power of storytelling to engage the imagination of participants on the deepest level, and reinvigorates their vision of their work and future. We’ve used it to help organizations as diverse as Novant Health, Roche Molecular, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the United States Air Force Research Labs.

Step 3: Experience Design
Culture Mapping shows us the “actuals” of your patients’ experience and StoryJam weaves a rich tapestry of the “optimals.” Experience Design creates the operational architecture for bridging these two, with guidelines for the organization's culture, offerings and physical environment to deliver an engaging new patient experience across the organization. It includes global elements as well as distinctive offerings for unique points-of-touch to delight the patients wherever they are in their journey.

Step 4: Enculturation
With the design in hand for improvement and transformation, the our Learning Team, in collaboration with the client's HR professionals, develops a suite of Enculturation tools, media, and supporting programs - online, on screen, or in a classroom- to roll out the new Patient Experience to staff and embed behaviors so they aren’t a brief blip, but consistent, daily and authentic.

More later this week.

IDEAS Healthcare Practice- Part 1

2010-01-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

One of the lesser known but very important parts of our business is our work in the healthcare industry. So how do you diagnose, prescribe, and rehabilitate when the one needing treatment is the hospital itself? By seeing through the patient’s eyes, we have developed a proven custom program to enhance and transform their experience and satisfaction ratings, throughout an entire hospital system.

Applying “guestology” know-how derived from our years of designing intentional experiences for theme parks, resorts, and Fortune 500 companies, we offer healthcare organizations a fresh way to understand their patients’ experience, and shine a light on the practical pathway to improvement of HCAHPS scores. Our qualitative approach delivers the actionable results patient surveys are calling for and addresses the “invisible factors” that are often difficult to identify through surveys alone.

We use a 4-step process that provides a complete solution pathway for improving the patient experience – assessing the current state of the organization, envisioning the ideal patient experience the organization would like to deliver, developing the experience architecture for implementing it, and creating the necessary enculturation tools to transform and sustain it within the organization.

More later this week.

Wild First Week of 2010

2010-01-10T21:34:00.003-05:00

Everyone starts out a new year with wide eyed optimism. You can go to sleep on December 31 burnt out, disgruntled and generally down in the dumps but then wake up on January 1 a new person full of enthusiasm, optimism and feeling like a million bucks. And our company is no exception.

So this past Monday January 4, 2010, the first work day of the new year, we showed up and besides everyone freezing their butts off, we all were fired up for the start of the new year. When we left before the holidays we had sent out a couple of important proposals and we were looking forward to getting positive feedback on some of those. Monday came and went and we heard nothing. Not completely unexpected since it was the first day back. Tuesday was a different story but not the way we wanted. We found out two proposals would be put on hold and the largest would be, at the very least, delayed, but more than likely gone. The optimism of the new year quickly turned in to a kick in the stomach.

Wednesday was a new day though and Tuesdays disappointments quickly turned in to Wednesdays accomplishments which lead in to Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesday we finalized a handful of new tasks for one of our best clients. For a variety of reasons we have not done much for this client over the past couple months so it was great to get back on the horse. Then we made a great step forward on phase 2 of an important project that we finished about 6 weeks earlier. When you finish a project and you're able to go to phase 2 it's a great piece of positive feedback that the client is satisfied with the work. Then Wednesday night a couple of us had a great dinner with some clients to talk about 2010. I don't think the meeting could have gone any better. On a scale of 1 to 10 the dinner was a 12. We went to dinner hoping we would have the opportunity to do a fair amount of work with this client in 2010 and the volume of possible work for us is far more than we could have hoped.

And then it got even better. Thursday, out of the blue, we got a call for a very important and meaningful opportunity. All of us do things because it's good for business because, quite frankly, every company has to pay the bills and every employee needs to collect a paycheck to live. On the other hand, some projects are far more important than the money and are worth doing because they are good for people, a lot of people. We started the process of working on a project like that Thursday morning. Before the end of day Friday we had three members of our team booked to leave Monday night coming back Wednesday to spend the day Tuesday with this client figuring out to what extent we can help them and how quickly.

At the end of day Friday I was exhausted. It's hard enough getting back to a five day work week after 2 weeks of break and partial work weeks because of the holidays. But then when the first week is such a roller coaster it makes it that much more exhausting. I'm ok with the roller coaster as long as by the end of each week the highs are much higher than the lows. I hope to look back at this blog at the end of 2010 and say that this was the first great week of many more in 2010.

2009 Year in Review

2010-01-03T16:50:00.000-05:00

A year and two days ago I wrote our first blog. A year later and 144 blog posts later, it's now 2010. So just like everyone else, I thought I'd do a year in review post. Obviously the thing that dominated our 2009 was our move. I looked back at the first blog posting and it was about hoping we'd finalize things with the landlord for the new building. I read some of the early posts and I can't believe it's been a year since some of those things. I also look back at some of our early Making Of webisodes and think the same thing. So January was dominated with finalizing the new lease. Then February was focused on getting the build out going, which began before the end of February. I remember March 1 coming along and thinking "holy crap, we're moving in a month". March was a whirlwind of packing and getting the build out completed. I read through the blog postings and can't believe all of that happened in just one month.

Then April 3 happened, the big moving day. I will never forget it. Started at the old place, it was so calm and quite. Then the movers arrived and it was crazy. Then the rain came and everyone sat around for 2 hours. Once it stopped, movers finished packing the trucks, and got down to the new place and the craziness went from the old building to the new place. A lot of boxes and only some minor damage later, everything was in the new building. What a day.

The rest of the year was a lot of firsts in the new building. First client meeting, first edit session, first margarita Friday, which by the way has become a regular occurrence. We celebrated our 8th birthday this year as IDEAS, our first birthday in our new home. We also had our first Thanksgiving in our new home. We hosted a couple events at our new home. We had an event with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer in which he welcomed us to Downtown Orlando and we presented him with original artwork we created for Orlando's Creative Village, we hosted a Women & Film & Television quarterly meeting with the Film Commissioner of Florida, and we have hosted a number of staff meetings for our friends at Vitamin Water. All of this of course is on top of the hundreds of client meetings we have had since moving in.

Once we were in the new place it was back to 100% focus on the business. Operating business in the new place was different than the old building. We got to meet a lot of great people, from new clients to people from the Mayor's office. From a business perspective it's been an interesting year. Here's some breaking news, the economy has been tough on everyone. We've have clients who have been a regular client go to nothing. We have had clients who typically pay in regular 30 day payable intervals now pay in 45-60 days if not longer. And there have been a lot of clients who want and need our help and we get all the way to contract and they have to pull back.

On the other hand, we have found new clients who have been very creative in how to work us in to their budgets. And we have found ourselves also being more creative in finding new clients and new ways to work with our old clients. In the end, it is what it is and we're optimistic about 2010 when it comes to current clients as well as some great new ones.

We are very proud of the work we accomplished in 2009. If I listed notable projects I'd forget plenty so I don't want to do that but generally speaking, we look back and realize that we worked on a couple broadcast television projects. We worked on a couple projects that entertain kids and a major project to help kids stay safe in weather emergencies. We worked to help returning veterans from Iraq and Afganistan and we're working with other branches of the government and military to help those involved with our military. And we continue working in various areas of the helthcare industry, trying to improve things for workers and patients. We are proud of the work we did in 2009 and look forward to more projects in 2010 that make a difference in the world.

So here we are, the end of 2009/beginning of 2010. A lot has happened since this time last year. But don't we say that at the beginning of every year? Every year we look back at the past year with some good memories and some bad. And we look forward to the possibilities of the new year. This year is no different so we start 2010 with the same optimism and excitement. We look forward to the possibilities of the relationships we have been building over the past few years, especially those we have built since moving to our new home last April. We will work harder in 2010 than ever before. And I'm quite certain at this time next year we'll have some good memories and bad of 2010. But I think there's going to be a lot more good memories than bad.

Pricing in a Tough Economy

2009-12-14T20:44:00.000-05:00

A large part of our business is providing services to clients and them paying us for those services. Inevitably the conversation of pricing comes up. In the current global economic times, finances are much more of an issue than they were a couple years ago. Because of this, we need to model our pricing differently than in the past. The struggle for us is that some of our creative services are tough to price by the hour. We know going in to a project we need to devote X hours and generally speaking those hours are billed out at Y dollars per hour but in the end, creative services are not that cut and dry. Over the last year or so, rather than look at pricing that way, we have had to say "we need to deliver this result/product and it's worth this amount of money." If the hours work out to make an hourly rate, great, if not, maybe on the next one.

On the traditional pay by the hour services, we have definitely looked at our pricing. We normally look at pricing every 6-12 months to be sure we're in line with what we provide and what the market will bear. It doesn't matter if we offer a service that is worth $200 per hour, if someone can offer a similar service for $100 then we lose. Even if we believe the service is worth $200 per hour, if our clients don't believe there's value, then we won't get a chance to show we're worth it.

Most of our clients don't even know we're making some of these changes since they have received the benefit of it already. One of the misnomers of IDEAS pricing is "they are too expensive" - that is not a reality when you factor in our flexibility based on many factors - time of year, volume from the client, new ways to create the solution, etc. We believe this is smart business. Our goal is always to offer the best product at a fair price. We know the quality of work we provide will not change but the definition of fair will always change and we need to be on top of it to make sure we don't lose clients. It's not about saying the economy is bad so we need to charge less. It's about making sure we're offering a fair price for what the client needs based on understanding the scope and being a very creative place, we can be creative with our pricing as well.

Friends with Benefits

2009-12-04T15:13:00.003-05:00

Get your head out of the gutter, not those kind of benefits. When we first started talking about moving to Downtown Orlando more than a year ago, one of the things we said would be great was that we were going to meet so many new people. We've now been in our new home for more than 8 months and it is still one of the best things about where we are. We have met so many great new people and companies and it's not always about just finding a client that will hire you and pay you lots of money. Sometimes just making new friends and being able to help each other in non-monetary ways is important too.

Case in point, our friendship with Vitamin Water. Someone on our team knows someone from Vitamin Water. Back in April or May the people from Vitamin Water asked if we "rented out" our Conference Room. They were having a meeting and most of their team doesn't work in traditional office settings so the needed a suitable place for a group to meet. They needed a space and we have it so we figured why not let them use it. Rather than charge them a small amount for the room, we trade the space for their products since we like Vitamin Water products. Every time they come, which is about every other month, they bring cases of their products for us.

The best thing about having them around, even better than their products, is that they are great people. They are very nice to our staff and treat our building as if it was their own. It's certainly not a profitable relationship but they are good people and who knows, maybe someone on their team knows someone who we could help in the future. It's never a bad thing to help out friends.

Teaching is too Important to do Alone

2009-11-30T13:18:00.000-05:00

Teaching is too important to do alone.™ That’s why the IDEAS Learning team is preparing for the national launch of TeacherStudio™, our new worldwide professional learning community allowing teachers to see, hear, and collaborate with exemplary educators in action. Through a unique combination of networking technology, rich-media, and proprietary tools, TeacherStudio™ allows educators from member districts to come together anytime, anywhere to share ideas, receive mentoring, and learn best practices. We’ll be manning a booth with our sales partners (eSchool Solutions) at the National Staff Development Conference held this year in St. Louis, December 5-9.

The product, designed and developed by IDEAS, is currently being alpha tested by teachers and administrators in Seminole County (Florida) Public Schools. We are so thankful for the efforts of their district instructional technology team, led by Diane Lewis. Diane and her team have provided us with myriad suggestions throughout the year for how to make the product better, and they’ve been wonderfully tolerant as we have gone through the development process.

Just before Thanksgiving, we also signed the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township in Indiana as our first Pilot district. We are excited to begin the rollout there and to connect their users with those from Seminole County so they can begin sharing classroom best practices immediately!

We’re also looking for other districts who might want to use the product FREE OF CHARGE throughout this school year. Check out http://www.teacherstudio.com/ to learn how districts are using the product. You can even drop us a line if you’re interested in attending a Webinar by clicking on the “Request More Information” link on the website.

The Future of Education

2009-11-19T15:39:00.001-05:00

IDEAS is wonderfully eclectic. We are often working on a new kids website, a highly technical immersion center for a government or corporate client and an organizational transformation program for a fortune 500 company all on the same day. That diversity is what leads to the extraordinary opportunities we get to interact with world-class professionals. We are as we speak in the woods of Kiawah Island in South Carolina participating in a two day think-tank with some leading superintendents and educational reformers. We are having a very robust session built around a new protocol for teaching teachers better skills called The Power of Teaching developed by our old friend Joey Wise. Part of the work today is sharing the progress of our new TeacherStudio (http://www.teacherstudio.com/) on-line professional network with this top user group. We got a lot of good feedback and its always awesome to see how the right group of minds can co-create given the presence of a compelling need and an opportunity to fill it. It helps when the place is beautiful too!

The Worst Presentation EVER

2009-11-16T15:54:00.000-05:00

Last week we sat through a PowerPoint presentation and as we watched and listened all we kept thinking was that we wish they had hired us to help them. Right there, within 5 minutes of sitting through their presentation, we could make the decision that this was not a company we wanted to work with. The presentation was sloppy, the presenter didn’t know their talking points, the visuals were busy when they needed to be straightforward and it was boring when it needed to be flashy. It had made an impression on us, and it was not good.

The best thing about PowerPoint is that it’s easy for just about anyone to use. The worst thing about PowerPoint is that it’s easy for just about anyone to use.

Which brings me to my point, our company has been helping businesses with their communications and branding efforts for many years, for as long as we have been in existence. Over the years we have seen that some of our clients have chosen not to use us for this type of work as they try to reduce costs by moving to in house resources. And let me tell you, presentations like the one we sat through this week have proven to us what a bad idea it is for them to do.

There’s a difference between "can do" and "should do" when it comes to communicating your brand. Just because someone in your office "can" create a PowerPoint deck doesn’t mean they "should" be the one to create your PowerPoint. I can write a script but what would take me a day would take a writer an hour. I can edit on an Avid or Final Cut Pro but that would take me weeks when a professional editor could do it in a day. That plus the quality would be better.

The point is, we tell our clients to do what "they" do best and let us do what "we" do best. If you want the presentation that represents your company to be done by someone who does it on the side, you need to accept the results you get. Or you can hire us and have it done by someone who does that kind of work every day and has done it for years. It may be one of the safest decisions you will make.

Denver Snowstorm and IDEAS (Part 2)

2009-11-09T10:51:00.003-05:00

Two weeks ago a team from IDEAS went to Colorado to present at a seminar and got caught in the early season snowstorm. We wanted to close the loop on the trip so here's part two of their travels. We have been playing with our StoryJam product this year to broaden the offering to fit different client needs. The idea behind this one was to see if we could use our tools to help the Colorado Association of Leaders in Educational Technology imagine and nail down a compelling story for the future of a broadband network across all of their schools. As luck would have it, the same storm that plagued our team getting to Denver wreaked mayhem on the attendance at the host conference (NASB) and it didn’t back off on CALET one bit.

By 5PM the day before the gig, our prime contact and fearless leader Denise Shorey was stuck n Phoenix and couldn’t get to Denver till just before start time. We told her not to worry, worked with the convention center to verify the room set-up (Bob's past life as an event-guy comes in handy. Its nice to be able to read a BEO and know how to ask nicely for a direct box for computer audio) and showed up loaded for broccoli (can you tell Bob wrote this blog, he's a vegetarian and would never point a gun at a nice bear!) Out of 12 confirmed and an additional 25 rumored we got a grand total of…8. It worked like magic. Everybody engaged, they got a great creative result, we validated a new half-day format for a StoryJam-type product and still made our flight back to Orlando to rest up for trick-or-treating. We also got a lot of interest from school districts around the country in our new TeacherStudio product (http://www.teacherstudio.com/). More later on that.

Audio A & Stage Update

2009-11-04T08:28:00.006-05:00

It's been two weeks since I did a detailed update on the Audio A & Stage construction so here's where we're at. This has definitely been a different construction process than we had for the rest of the building back in February & March. For the original build out we drew it out and if we got to a point where something wasn't really working, we just changed it on the fly. For the audio build out, it is such a precise design and was put together so scientifically, that it has to be built exactly the way it was designed or the acoustics will be altered. In the original build out if we needed to move a door a couple inches, no big deal. For audio, when we found out we needed to move a door, we needed to move a cinder block wall so we didn't have the move the door. In the original build out if the builder could find a material a little cheaper then great, save some money. In the audio build out, if the builder could find 5 materials cheaper, too bad, the room was designed knowing the exact make up of the materials spec'd.

If you look at the new walls built for the new Audio A they are almost as long as my arm from shoulder to finger tips. The obvious question is WHY?!?! When we first started the process our acoustic designer came here and did all kinds of measurements to determine how much material and air was needed to get the appropriate acoustics for what we were trying to accomplish. Building inside an existing building is good because a lot of the building stuff is already done but at the same time it's bad because you're stuck with what you have. So in order to achieve the acoustics and sound isolation we need, it was scientifically determined that we needed X layers of materials for the walls. The east side wall includes a double layer dry wall that already existed. Then the new wall includes 3 layers of 5/8" drywall then 2 layers of 5/8" sound board on top of 6" of insulation. The west side wall includes 5 layers of 5/8" drywall, 2 layers of 5/8" sound board, 6" of insulation plus 2 inches of air. The back wall of the room has 3 layers of 5/8" drywall then 2 layers of 5/8" sound board on top of 6" of insulation. Then the back also has 24" of airspace with sound absorbing insulation hanging inside the 24". All of these walls will then have the framed soft walls. Every time they put another layer up all of the seams are also caulked so there's no sound seepage through the walls and when one layer goes up the next has the seams off set so none of the seams line up which would possibly allow sound to seep through. Each time a layer goes up we look at each other and say "is that it?" and thus far it has not been, they keep adding layers but we think we're all done. Next up is the soft walls. They begin being framed up today then once they are framed the fabric gets stretched over the frames to give the room a finished look.

Speaking of fabric, our designed gave us renderings a couple months back of what the room will look like. The room looks great in the renderings but it was all one color. We didn't know if we could change it so we were ecstatic to find out we could add more color. For the front of the room we chose black fabric. Our thinking behind that was that the projection screen needs to be the focal point of the front of the room. We want the rest of the room to sort of go off in to infinity. We didn't want someone looking at the screen but having their eye caught by the walls around the screen. The ceiling gave us a similar concern so we went with a dark gray for the stairs of the ceiling. The back, however, is where we could lighten things up and add color. Under the chair rail, we went with a lighter textured gray and above the chair rail and on the ceiling in back we went with a bright bold red. From day one in the building we wanted to have some red but in the rest of the building we couldn't make it work so we were happy to be able to incorporate some red in Audio A. Then there are multiple client workstations in the room. In the front of the room we went with a textured middle gray for the counter tops. In the back we went with a textured black. We think the back workstations in black will look really good with the red and gray fabric around it. For the flooring, the back of the room has a raised platform for clients. We matched the edit suites in the building by going with the same color and design that we previously chose. Then for the main floor of Audio A we went with a wood planking in a Honey Oak finish. For those who have been in our building in the lobby and lounge we have dark brown wood planking. It's a great look and is very durable so we went with the same material but different color in audio.

On the stage side, we will be repainting the cyc so it's a clean white. Then the new wall on the stage will also be white. We have the extra large, extra think rug that was on our old stage so that will be on the floor. Then we have gray fabric fiberglass panels that will hang on the non-shooting walls on the stage to help the acoustics. In addition, as part of the Audio A build out we are having some 6 ft. custom mobile sound baffles being built that will be positioned in the room depending on what we're recording. Beyond that, it will be trial and error testing the acoustics. Once the construction is over we will do some recording, take it in to our acoustical measuring devices and determine what other acoustic tricks we need to do for shooting and recording. We have done some internal recording in there already even with the Stage in construction disarray and the sound is good so we are very confident that when we're done doing what we're planning the sound will be excellent on the stage as well.

So there you go. That's the update. Things are coming along very well. A little slower than we had hoped for but when designing such a precise room it's better to be accurate than fast. We have done 3 webisodes on the audio process as well as lots of construction photos. You can see them all on our new home website www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

American Red Cross

2009-10-31T21:52:00.003-04:00

We have been working with the American Red Cross for the past six months of so. Rick Stone has been the primary member of our team working with the Red Cross and he recently took a trip to Houston for the project. As his connecting flight was pulling away from the gate in Memphis last week, the pilot came on the intercom to inform everyone that weather in Houston was quite nasty, and that there was a distinct possibility that the flight might not be able to land. To be safe, they had to pull back in to the gate and top off the fuel tanks. The flight did make it down but it was about as rough a ride as Rick has ever experienced, and the weather only got worse from there. There were flood warnings and the Red Cross was considering opening shelters in parts of the city.

How ironic—Rick's there to work with them to help them better tell their story so folks like you and me who hear the Red Cross mentioned in almost any story that entails a disaster, but think nothing of it, will think twice and consider donating money to sustain the good work. The stats of their contributions to local, national, and international relief are staggering—in Houston alone they respond to over 700 house or apartment fires a year. That’s two a day. While the assistance they provide to families who have been devastated by the loss of everything in a fire is routine for them, the meaning and relevance of their help has monumental importance for the people they serve. Unfortunately, the Red Cross is not alone when it comes to not adequately telling their story. Nearly every nonprofit we have run into, from big organizations down to small endeavors, is deficient in preparing their staff and volunteers to effectively tell their story to the people that matter—their donor base. And the same is true of for-profit companies. It’s what we call the organization’s Narrative Assets—perhaps the most valuable thing in a company next to its people. So, are you capitalizing on your Narrative Assets and putting them to work to build greater support or sell your customers?

Denver Snowstorm and IDEAS

2009-10-29T16:19:00.000-04:00

So, a colleague and friend of the company set us up to do a couple of speeches and a workshop at the National Association of School Boards Technology and Learning conference in Denver. Who knew an early season snowstorm would almost shut Denver down! Anyway, we accepted the invitation to speak and sent our owner and Chief Storytelling Officer Bob Allen and Kelly Pounds, VP, IDEAS Learning, to conduct the workshop and also take advantage of this collection of top level educational decision makers to talk-up our new TeacherStudio (www.teacherstudio.com) product.

The saga started at 4:45am on Wednesday the 28th as the United website said the dreaded words FLIGHT CANCELLED. By the time Bob & Kelly got on another flight that could get them to Denver, it was nip and tuck to make the first talk they were scheduled to give (one called “Pandora’s X-Box” about games, mixed reality and other virtual tools for learning). They got to the room 10 minutes late after a slushy cab-slide through the white out on I-25 but there was a sign posted on the room saying “Session cancelled due to inclement weather”. The day wasn’t lost though. They met with a potential collaborator for TeacherStudio content and Kelly worked the room positioning TeacherStudio with a number of potential district clients. Bob was up at 4:30am local time on Thursday re-working the talk for that day (STEM to TEAMS: Arts in the Science/Math effort). Bob had the privilege of presenting with Dr. David Thornburg who is a deity in this world. The man’s resume is unbelievable and he’s a brilliant and entertaining presenter. They had 12 minutes to synch their talks before showtime. The feed back was great! They didn’t throw rocks or tomatoes. We'll post another report after tomorrow’s workshop called “The Colorado Broadband Revolution”.

Audio A Construction

2009-10-21T11:55:00.003-04:00

We've been doing a lot of Facebook and Twitter posts about the construction on our stage and Audio A but it's been a while since I wrote about it here. There has been a lot of progress. Actually, there's something new every day. Whether it's another layer of drywall, HVAC ducts going in, HVAC work on the roof or door framing there's something new to look at every day. We got over a big hurdle yesterday. There has been quite a bit of back and fourth between our designer and our HVAC contractor. The concern has been whether the HVAC unit will create too much noise in Audio A or the Stage. Not just coming out of the vents but the whole until coming from the roof above the ceiling in to the room. After, literally, weeks of conversations and drawings we all came to an agreement on where we are. Now just the final execution is needed. The sound attenuators arrived this morning for the duct work so those will be installed today & tomorrow, almost a week early.

All of the framing has been up for a couple weeks now. There's a total of 5 layers of drywall that make up the hard walls of the new Audio A. In most areas all 5 layers are up. It has been interesting to see how they do the layering so no seams match up. Making sure no seams line up is very important for the sound proofing aspect of the room. After the hard walls go in the final electric gets surface mounted on the most inside layer of drywall. It's amazing how important it is that there are no penetrations in the walls. The acoustic integrity of the room can be ruined by one small hole the size of a nail. If there is a penetration in any of the wall structure it effects how the sound bounces off walls and how sound is let in to the room. So all penetrations need to be in the far front of the room under where the mixing console will be.

Yesterday the platform for the front and back of the room were framed out. The back step/platform is interesting because the design plans were so precise about the curvature of the step. I wasn't out there with my protractor checking the angle but hopefully they followed.

Last week we picked the colors for the walls. All the soft walls have fabric so we had to choose the fabric colors. We're doing with black on most of the walls in front and a light gray in the back with a decent amount of red on the back wall. Then the ceiling is dark gray. Our old Audio A was a light green so as long as we stayed away from that we were good. And it was important to us to have more than just black & gray. Knowing we needed the black & gray in front so there's no reflection on the projection screen, we focused on the back wall for our color. We looked at a couple reds and blues and red won out. We're excited to see it.

On the stage side, we're learning more about how we're going to treat that space to get it to where we want. There's a lot of HVAC work going on in there and we have a number of acoustic treatments available to us so we're extremely confident that the stage will be great for VO recording, ADR, Foley and shooting.

So there's some detail on the construction process. We're posting pictures almost every day on our new home website http://www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome/index.php and we've done 2 webisodes focusing only on the audio construction. The webisodes can also be seen on our new home website. It's been exciting, it's been exhausting but we can certainly see the light at the end of the tunnel (or hallway). It shouldn't be too long now.

Teachers Helping Teachers, A Way To Improve Education

2009-10-15T16:35:00.002-04:00

We have a product that we have been developing for more than a year now. TeacherStudio™ (www.TeacherStudio.com), is a multimedia, research-driven, Web 2.0 site where teachers can see, hear, and collaborate with exemplary educators. This online professional learning community allows teachers across districts to come together anytime, anywhere to share ideas, receive mentoring and experience global best practices. Supporting each other, they can improve their skills in the classroom and build confidence.

Designed by our own instructional designers (former public school classroom teachers) and built by our design and programming department, TeacherStudio is currently being tested by teachers in Seminole County Public Schools (SCPS).

Diane Lewis, Director of Instructional Technology at SCPS says, “Teaching is a profession where, oftentimes, professionals don’t get to observe each other. A teacher knows teaching from their own experiences or from limited examples that they may have had during a peer teaching phase, but they don’t usually get to spend a lot of time going into classrooms and really studying master teachers and how they teach. What TeacherStudio offers us is a way to capture that master lesson and get teachers to feel as if they are in other classrooms, many classrooms, getting a lot of experiences and broadening their understanding of teaching and learning.”

TeacherStudio allows users to share teaching strategies via online videos. These videos demonstrate how strategies and techniques are incorporated into lessons and provide a true visual of what great teaching looks like. Via TeacherStudio, educators can participate in continual, non-disruptive professional development. It supports cross-district collaboration and mentoring and allows districts to focus on and promote what works best for student learning and achievement.

This is a product that we have a passion for. Our teachers are suffering, not just in Florida but throughout the United States. It's not just about money, it's about the lack of support they get. This product is a way a teacher in Florida can get and give support to a teacher in Wyoming. We are now looking for other innovative school districts to help us Pilot the product and provide feedback to guide further development and enhancements to TeacherStudio. If you’d like to learn more, visit www.TeacherStudio.com and drop us a line!

Enhancing the Patient Experience at the Naval Hospital - Jacksonville

2009-10-13T21:05:00.002-04:00

We are commencing work this week with the Naval Hospital - Jacksonville on a number of fronts to enhance the patient experience throughout their system as well as identify ways to improve patient safety. In many ways it’s a classic example of the way we approach to culture change. We are beginning with extensive interviews of all of the leadership within the organization, both civilian and Navy. Following these interviews we will “embed” ourselves in the system—interviewing patients to discover their stories, extensively interviewing clinical and non-clinical staff to increase our understanding of the Naval Hospital’s culture vis-à-vis its impact on patients’ experience and the degree to which it supports various safety initiatives which have become fairly universal features of most hospitals’ attempts to improve their delivery of care.

The Naval Hospital is in many respects like any other community hospital, but it also has some unique challenges. At any one time 10 to 15 percent of their doctors and nurses rotate out of the hospital to medical facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. This destabilizing factor is not new to the military, but it tests the organization’s resilience and complicates the institutionalization of initiatives such as TeamSTEPPS—a program with its roots in the aviation industry that focuses on communication and teamwork, especially in the operating room. We will be examining how the Naval Hospital can continue to improve, ensuring that these initiatives remain viable and effective.

We’ll also be looking at how new staff are on-boarded. They currently have a 4-day orientation program, and they recognize that in addition to not being totally engaging, it’s not as effective a tool for quickly integrating these new staff into the fabric of the organization.

We’ll also be taking a hard look at the physical plant with regard to how it impacts the patient experience. It often comes down to simple things, like being sure that patients and family can find their way around - more in a few weeks as we learn more.

For more on our process in transforming culture visit http://www.ideasorlando.com/innovation/innovation_culture_transformation.php

YouTube Channel

2009-10-11T16:55:00.003-04:00

So I think this You Tube thing is going to stick around a while. I know, I'm a genius for thinking that all by myself. But what I really meant was that creating our own IDEAS You Tube Channel is really going to help us. Here's the story. A couple months ago I got frustrated because any time we wanted to send a client a video to watch to learn more about us we needed to put it up on our FTP site, tell the client how to download it and then they could watch it. But even then we needed to get the file made, upload it and hope that the client could play the type of video we created (WMV, QT, MPEG, etc.). All of that takes time and once you do it once there's no telling if we'll remember where we put it for the next time.

Then the next option was to post it on our website but that required us to get the file to one of our programmers, have them compress it and build the page on our website. For that to happen the programmers would need to be available which would mean they were not working on a client project which is never a good thing.

So, someone made the suggestion to use You Tube and let me tell you how easy it was. We created our own channel then started posting away. A month, 60+ videos and hundreds of views later, I don't know why we didn't do this a long time ago. If we want to show a client a video we go to our site, find the video and copy the URL in to an e-mail or in a document and once the client clicks on it they go to our You Tube channel and can see that video and others. It has really helped our company's visibility. http://www.youtube.com/ideasorlando

Playshop for the Nat'l Assn of Tech Prep Leadership

2009-10-06T21:32:00.001-04:00

IDEAS is always experimenting. We also have a long history of collecting fascinating colleagues and friends on the road of story. A few years back, we were doing some work with the Navy Learning Strategies Consortium and we were part of a discussion panel on “learning games”. The dialogue was, to shine it up a bit, “robust”. In the middle of the melee, we got to know a fascinating and passionate young man from Texas named Jim Brazell. Now, there are a lot of people who glom on to the label “Futurist”. Jim is the real deal. He has a handle on what is going to happen next, particularly in education and with a strong focus on how we can and MUST integrate the arts, science, math, engineering and technology so that we can HAVE a future.

Recently, Jim, Kelly Pounds (IDEAS’ VP of Learning) and Bob Allen spent a couple of days with two other wonderful thinkers-Mary Shenck-Ross and David Thornburg. What came out of it is a new co-venture called Radical Platypus. We’re a Platypus because we come from such diverse backgrounds and world experiences just like our namesake expresses a lot of different genetics. We’re Radical because we’re pooling our speaking, leadership and creative talents to help organizations-especially in education-change the future through playful investigation and strategic action.

Last week, Jim and Bob Allen had a chance to do what we’re calling a “Playshop” for the National Association of Tech Prep Leadership. For those of you who aren’t current in the lingo of education (as we weren’t), “Tech Prep” is the name today of what we used to call “vocational education” back in the day. Its also called “CTE” (Career Technical Education) and it is way cool. Jim set the stage with three stories about how CTE looks today, how it bears on jobs and how it may affect the future. Then Bob dug into our StoryJam arsenal and we facilitated several explorations that enabled about 100 educators to craft a revolutionary platform from which they will build their action plans for bringing TPE into its proper place. In the end, we got good feedback from our audience. One quote was “You and Jim complement each other in terms of styles and presentation skills. It was like the right brain and left brain processing the message and playshop.”

The Platypus is on the loose! We’ll keep you posted on where we’re playing.

Audio & Stage Moving Along

2009-10-05T16:53:00.001-04:00

This past week was pretty much the midpoint of physical construction for our new post production audio mixing suite and our insert/Foley stage. All of the framing is completed (hard walls, closets, ceiling), doors are cut, rough electric has been run for Audio A. We should be obtaining final permits and inspection this week then it's off to the races. We made some final decisions Friday about how to handle the HVAC situation that will give us the best overall control and functionality for the various spaces. Last week we also obtained additional curtain track and curtain for the stage side. We will now have a black curtain running over 1/2 the wall space on the stage. This will obviously help the acoustics but more needed was additional flexibility in backdrops for shooting.

This past Friday we shot new interviews for our next Behind the Scenes webisode installment documenting the entire moving process that we've gone through the last 8+ months. The previous interviews have been in a controlled setting but for these we decided to shoot them in the middle of the construction site. We'll be editing this week and should be able to post the finished webisode before the end of the week. We also got our fabric samples last week for the soft walls in the audio mix room. Whatever we do we won't be picking a light green like our old Audio A or a mauve like our old Audio B & stage. We're thinking something in the gray area near the front of the room as to not distract or reflect color on the projection screen. Then towards the back we're hoping to include some red or burgundy. We'll see but it's exciting to have options.

We go tomorrow to get a full demo of the board we are buying for the mix room, an ICON console. The order is in but it's going to be nice to see a full working studio with the board we'll have. Renderings of the room are on our new home website: www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome then go to the Pictures tab and click on 9-28-2009. You can also see the renderings on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ideas.orlando

Building Social Capital Through Storytelling

2009-10-02T22:29:00.001-04:00

For a number of years an organization in Winston-Salem called ECHO has grappled with ways to build social capital in its community. In short, social capital refers to the richness of trusting relationships in a community—the premise is that the more these exist, the better a place it is to live and grow. Lots of communities around the country are grappling with how to break down barriers in their communities—ethnic groups living and working in isolation, often distrusting the other. Breaking down these barriers, some of which are more than relational (there’s a highway that runs through the heart of downtown Winston-Salem that is the literal divide between the historic African-American community and the rest of the predominantly white community). In addition, over the past years other ethnic groups have been moving into Winston-Salem, and they too have felt the sting of exclusion from the mainstream of business, commerce, and government. In many ways their voices are rarely heard when important decisions in the community are being made. And n many ways they are invisible to the white community—their only identity being associated with menial labor.

ECHO became convinced that perhaps the best way to tackle this issue was through the age-old art of storytelling. They began with a simple question: could people sharing their stories build bridges of understanding and compassion. It was a bold idea, and looking around for potential models for using storytelling, they became curious about the national StoryCorps initiative in which people come into a recording studio in pairs, share their story, and these stories are these shared out through NPR. How this would build social capital was unclear, but there was a large enough group of volunteers who were energized by this notion that they got seed funding and called their initiative Storyline. With a lot of sweat equity, they converted an old van used by the library to lend books to areas in the community into a decent traveling recording studio. This past April the van started showing up around town, and people showed up to tell their stories. Many of these have been edited down to 3 minutes in length, and a number of radio stations have even agreed to regularly air the stories.

Now that this milestone of regularly producing stories for airing and making them available on their website, the Storyline steering committee realized that as wonderful as many of these stories are, there was still a lot of ground to cover to get them to their goal—demonstrably increasing the social capital in their community. Moreover, they realized that they didn’t have a cohesive story that paints the vision of what they’re going to do to make a serious difference.

To that end, 30 people (including Winston-Salem’s mayor, representatives from a number of stakeholders in area organizations, community activists, business leaders, and many of the volunteers who have nurtured this effort) gathered today for an 8-hour conference to build that story, and imagine what else they could do with storytelling to achieve their goals. The material we generated in this short time frame was astounding.

Our next step is to analyze the breadth of stories that were developed for key themes, look for clear action steps, and build a cohesive story that can inform and clarify their mission and vision. Equally important, they will now have a compelling story they can take to potential funders to enlist their support.

As the project develops, I anticipate that we will be engaged to assist them further to build a scalable approach that can be replicated in communities across the country. For more on Storyline Project visit http://www.storylineproject.org/

Employment Help in a Bad Economy

2009-09-30T21:53:00.000-04:00

There's nothing good about a bad economy and people losing jobs. If you can't make the economy better and you can't hire everyone that has been laid off, the only thing you can do is try to help people find new jobs. One of our clients, Navigator Executive Advisors (http://www.navexec.com/), does just that. The Navigator Career Institute serves as an online career transition support system for corporate and individual clients participating in the outplacement programs of Navigator Executive Advisors, Inc.

We created a media-rich eLearning course that featured an on-screen narrator, and video-based drill downs featuring helpful tips and techniques. The eLearning course is supported by a database where learners can answer reflective questions and work with career coaches to reach their goals and work through their career transition. The objective of the course was to provide users/learners with the specialized coaching and technical expertise necessary to improve their ability to engage in effective and successful job searches. Whether they are just graduating and have never yet had a job, are presently in a job and want an employer or career change, or are “in between” jobs, the online instruction and guided exploration via database questions and interaction with professional coaches will help them navigate through their career transition.

In the end, this is a project that has taken on much larger importance since we started. We can't fix the job market on our own but we can help people get back out there when they need to.

Emmy Awards Review

2009-09-21T13:58:00.000-04:00

Here's what I thought of the Emmy Awards last night. First, Neil Patrick Harris was great. Since he started on How I Met Your Mother he has gotten increasingly silly and I don't mind it. With everything going on in the world I don't mind a celebrity that acts like a sophomore sometimes and isn't afraid to poke fun at himself.

I found it very interesting that a couple of the shows thanked the geographic area in which they shoot. I heard a specific mention of Hawaii, New Mexico and NYC. Coincidentally those places have very aggressive incentives for production. I hope the state if Florida did the math: Major Production Incentives = Big Time Productions.

I follow the ratings of prime time shows pretty closely. It's amazing to me that a clever show like 30 Rock still struggles in the ratings. Here's the confusion for me: people complain that there's no good comedies anymore but when we get some no more than 6, 7, 8 million people watch. Last year a big complaint from people was that there were too many crime dramas on that were all about violence. OK, I agree with that but those shows still get 15, 16, 17 million people. I am reminded that Seinfeld didn't start out as a huge ratings show but grew in to it. I hope shows like 30 Rock and Big Bang Theory continue to grow to the level of Two and a Half Men and beyond. We see enough violence on the 11:00 news, it would be nice to see some people smile on TV.

And the Kanye West jokes were flying. I couldn't decide whether it was good or not. On one hand, it's nice to see that nobody supports what he did and maybe he and young kids learned something about being a mature professional. On the other hand, we're still talking about him so did he really win in the end? He obviously likes attention so was this a stunt to get us to talk about him?

Emmy Award Memories

2009-09-20T21:59:00.003-04:00

Sitting here watching the Emmy Awards brings me back a couple years when a miniseries we worked on, Elvis, was nominated for 6 Emmy Awards. I don't even remember all of the categories but I do remember the one we were most proud of, Best Miniseries.

We got a phone call from a friend in December of 2004 and he said he was working on a miniseries and they needed some post help. We said sure send us the script and we'll do a proposal. A couple weeks later we were contracted to do the final video (on-line, color collection, etc.) and post audio (Foley, sound design, mix, etc.) for the 2 part miniseries that would air on CBS during the May sweeps period.

As luck would have it, the schedule was a suicide mission to begin with then it got delayed in off-line so we had even less time. We used 2 HD Avid systems and had a D5 deck in for 6 weeks since all the source material was transferred from film to D5. I lost 15 pounds in the 5 weeks we were doing post and spent more nights in our building during that time than during any other project in the time I've been with IDEAS.

In the end, we delivered Part 1 on Friday morning and it aired Sunday night with more than 13 million viewers, the most watched non-series program of the week. Part 2 was delivered Sunday, a day early, and it aired Wednesday. The work we did on Elvis opened the door to the movies and miniseries we have done since then. Including Elvis we have done 13 movies since 2005. We have obviously learned a lot in that time but we have also proven one important thing- that we can execute Emmy and Golden Globe winning work at a price worth coming to Orlando for.

By the way, Elvis did not win an Emmy but did win a Golden Globe. Go to http://www.youtube.com/ideasorlando#play/uploads/36/v0L7wjP7Y-o for one of our favorite clips.

Audio, Science & Navy

2009-09-19T14:34:00.000-04:00

This was an interesting week at IDEAS, although not that out of the ordinary when it comes to the varied types of work. Except for the ceiling, we have a fully framed Audio A mixing room built inside our stage. There have definitely been bumps in the road over the last two weeks but we have a room framed out so that's where we wanted to be. By end of day Wednesday we'll have the ceiling and rough electric done.

One of our clients is the C-iT corporation. Their goal is to help teach science in a fun way using characters. We're at the beginning of our work with them but it's a really cool concept that we hope to be a part of for a long time.

Tuesday & Wednesday we had a large group of people in for a development conference for the game we're involved with based on the BattleStations 21 Navy training simulator we helped create. It was great seeing so many members of our team work with so many people on something that most of them haven't been involved with. Some of our team really had no background on the project before last week and to see them jump right in and be able to add value is a real tribute to our team.

IDEAS Helps BattleStations 21 Redefine Navy Training

2009-09-15T16:35:00.006-04:00

Battle Stations 21 utilizes storytelling techniques and tested immersive technology developed in the entertainment industry. By delivering the Battle Stations 21 training content inside a rich story and a high fidelity, immersive environment, the U.S. Navy achieves better retention, comprehension, and integration of key training objectives.

The objective of the Battle Stations 21 Program is to provide Navy recruits with the culminating physical training exercise in the final phase of their training. This entire Battle Stations Exercise is comprised of 14 scenarios each containing specified events (e.g., move aboard a ship) and scenes (e.g., small boat attack) that push recruits to their physical, mental, and emotional limits, requiring them to draw on multiple aspects of their basic training curriculum.

The recruits must utilize the skills and knowledge they obtained during recruit training in an environment that approximates the stressors that can be encountered in the operational shipboard environment. Immediately after the successful completion of Battle Stations 21, there is a graduation ceremony where recruits are designated as sailors for the first time. A successful completion of Battle Stations 21 is required for graduation from recruit training.

The objective of this program is for an enhanced, World Class Battle Stations Exercise that will produce a sailor that is team-oriented and better prepared with more confidence to meet the challenges that may be faced in today's uncertain environment. All Battle Stations 21 events/scenarios are designed and located such that the recruits will not be required to exit the facility to transit between events/scenarios.

The Phase I Conceptual Design of Battle Stations 21 was developed by IDEAS along with a team of outstanding companies and was completed in July of 2003. As part of Phase II, IDEAS was responsible for the entire 12 ½ hour on-board audio experience. Field production, sound design and Foley was all part of the post audio process. The audio production portion of Phase II was completed in February 2007.

Today was day one of a two day of a developmental experience design conference with our partners on the VESSEL team. We are planning how to make the Damage Control Trainer Game more engaging. This serious game is training all US Navy recruits how to appropriately respond in the event of an emergency on board a warship. That's right, we're working to expand the original physical training simulator to a game. The more practice and training recruits get, the better trained and safer they will be.

To learn more about BattleStations 21, visit http://www.youtube.com/ideasorlando#play/user/5D974BAA47A212B4/5/jibm7kyIGcM to see the story from CNN.

Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Construction & MegaStructures

2009-09-12T20:51:00.004-04:00

This week was busy, and it was a short week. We stepped up the social networking marketing. While we continue using Facebook quite a bit (www.facebook.com/ideas.orlando), we are stepping up the Twitter page (http://twitter.com/ideasorlando) and we have started our own You Tube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/ideasorlando). As of today we have more than 50 video clips of our work on our channel. We talked long time about whether to use You Tube or keep all that content on our website. In the end we decided that You Tube is hugely accepted as a content source and it's just so easy to use that we figured why not use it instead of having to set up our website for that much content.

Tuesday construction started on our stage to build our post audio mixing suite on one part and our insert stage on the other side. Lots of progress was made but it was a bumpy first week of construction. Our acoustical designer was meticulous about the details in order to ensure a perfect acoustical room. Making sure all the little details are followed by the contractors is a big deal. If one thing is not followed it could potentially hurt the acoustics of the room. Rob Hill has already gotten to know the crew very well and I imagine they'll get to know eachother even more over the next 2 months.

We finished our post production work on the MegaStructures episode about the UK Train for a new client. There were a couple bumps in the process but considering this was our first project with this client I believe overall things went well. We are looking forward to working more with this client in the very near future.

Lots of other good things happening during the week as well. Key is converting good conversations and meetings in to good projects and happy clients. Lots of work on that over the next couple weeks.

Audio A Construction Begins

2009-09-08T20:45:00.003-04:00

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that as part of our relocation to Downtown Orlando, the facility owner agreed to pay for most of the build out of a state of the art audio facility for IDEAS. Today, construction officially began. Around 9am the contractors arrived and demolition of the stage began. There wasn't a lot of work done today but what was done was significant to us. Miscellaneous things in the ceiling were removed. All the walls were drawn out on the ground so we could clearly see where the "hard walls" and "soft walls" will be. Where the one wall currently is will be punched out to be the entrance to the mix room, the door is outlined with lines and measurements. Inside the current closet that will be closed off from the stage and will go out to the back hallway has the same outline and measurements. Like I said, there wasn't a ton of work done but any work signifies construction has begun. Pictures from the progress from today have been posted on our new home website www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome then click on the pictures & blog tab. With any luck, within months construction will be done and we'll have an awesome post audio mix room and a nice insert stage.

The Week That Was

2009-09-05T13:53:00.004-04:00

Nothing major this past week but a lot of little things. We spent the week in the Symphony with our client that is producing Megastructures for the National Geographic Channel. We were supposed to be done by the end of the week but mid-way through the on-line edit the client realized additional changes needed to be made. We quickly went from on-line/color correction mode to off-line edit mode. Instead of finishing this past week we'll finish this coming week. We continue talking with the client about additional future work which we look forward to.

We sent a team to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico this week to do two site visits for future resorts. Over the past couple years we have grown our Experience Design business. We work with clients to ensure the best guest experience possible. We do this for hotels/resorts, museums and even hospitals. While people don't necessarily want to be in a hospital the end result should be that guests (patients) enjoy their stay as much as possible. The overall principals are the same so our goal in Mexico is to begin formulating what the best possible experience can be for the guests before the resort is even designed and built. For more about our experience design work, visit http://www.ideas-innovation.com/innovation/innovation_experience_design.php

We had a team from Ascension Health in this week for a day long session to work further on the eLearning course we are creating for them. The course will combine teamwork training and simulation exercises in order to improve communication and teamwork skills and in the end, ensure the safety of expecting mothers and their babies. Our team then went down to Miami to experience the physical simulator at work. Ascension Health is the nation’s largest nonprofit health system.

We also spent a good amount of time this week working on our You Tube channel. We created a channel to make it easy to upload samples of our work for clients to view and/or people to stumble upon our samples and learn more about us. More on the channel later.

We also completed the prep work to start the audio build out next week. Our architect finalized the plans and our electrical engineer finalized the complicated electrical plans. Demolition work starts this coming Tuesday. Obviously more on that later.

And finally this week we celebrated College Colors Day Friday by people wearing their favorite college colors and we had a little tailgate bar-b-que for lunch. All to celebrate the opening of College Football season. Nothing like watching college football in HD with picture in picture.

Communication Tools for Children’s Cooking Utensils

2009-09-02T12:31:00.001-04:00

The neat thing about working at IDEAS is that we get the opportunity to work on so many great projects that are nothing alike. One day we're doing an eLearning course for Hill-Rom, a major innovator in the medical technology field, providing medical equipment and health care solutions to enhance outcomes for caregivers and their patients with more than a million of their hospital beds in use around the world. The next day we're doing post production on made for TV movies for Lifetime or direct to DVD movies for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Then the next day we work on marketing for Children's Cooking Utensils.

The Head Chefs are a revolutionary new line of children’s cooking utensils by Fiesta Products that are "Cool Tools For Kids". The client asked us to create a suite of communication tools to be used at their trade show that would assist them with buyer relations, media relations, and brand support for their product launch.

We started by using our 2-day STORYJAM™, as a starting point of a total BRAND RING™ concept for the products. From the STORYJAM™ session, we were able to develop the core story of the brand and create names and character traits of each product. We began production of 3 key products necessary for a successful launch. These products included a character-branded web site (http://www.head-chefs.com/), a product video that included a 30 second 3D CGI animation and original production with the creators of the Head Chefs, and a full-color print piece for distribution at their trade show.

We created a web site that included descriptions of each product as characters, giving each of them a back story. Downloadable audio interviews with each of the 5 characters are available for users. The 30 second animation was also utilized in the web site. A unique spot on the web site was created to accommodate the future development of age specific games for children and a “Vote for Your Head Chef” allows visitors to participate in naming their favorite. A store locator allows consumers an opportunity to find retail locations where they could make their next purchase. The video includes interviews of the products’ developers and was integrated into the 3D animation to promote the whimsical and mischievous brand of the Head Chefs. The animation was so well received that we were asked almost immediately to translate it into several languages including Japanese, German, and French.

In the end, this is one of those projects that you just shake your head and say "wow, that's really cool." It's not the largest project we have ever done or even the most visible one, but my 5 year old will tell you, the products are some of the coolest things we've ever been involved with.

Favorite Lunch Spots

2009-08-31T09:56:00.001-04:00

We've been in our new home for almost 5 months and one of the best things about being in downtown Orlando is the lunch options. Over the past couple days we've compiled our list of IDEAS favorite lunch places. In no particular order here's our list, let us know what you think.

Shakers, Edgewater Dr., College Park- Consistently one of the best overall lunch places in town. Portions are plentiful and they only use Boars Head products. Large menu and offers a ½ sandwich and soup option (with fruit) which is a bonus and the wide array of salad are yummy!

Beefy King, Bumby Avenue- 40+ years in the business as a family owned restaurant they have perfected the steamed roast beef sandwich, although they also offer turkey, ham and other types of sandwich meats. Always a favorite for their wonderful tater tots.

Daily News Cafe, Magnolia St.- Great burgers and surprisingly large menu of other items. Easy walk from our office if it's not too hot, otherwise it's a bit tough to get to because of parking.

Hot Dog Heaven, Colonial near 50- A bit of a drive from our place. Authentic Chicago Hot Dog place, great fresh fries. Not cheap for a hot dog and fries but worth it.

Royal Thai- Great prices and great tasting food.

Viet Garden- Great prices, great spring rolls!

Five Guys, Baldwin Park- Great hamburgers and underrated hot dogs. Regular and Cajun fries are very fresh. Expensive for a fast food burger but quality is as good as any sit down restaurant burger so it's worth it.

Little Vietnam- Great prices, awesome selection (menu has lots of pictures). They also have bubble tea and Durian smoothies.

Virgin Olive Market- Sandwich/soup shop, healthy options and good prices.

New York Deli, Orange Ave. & Colonial- Great sandwiches, walking distance from our office.

Shin Sushi (next to Virgin Olive Market)- A little more expensive than other sushi places, but different selection and you get to sit next to the chefs as they make sushi.

Pom Pom's, Bumby Ave.- Awesome soup/tea/sandwich spot, large selection of classic and crazy combinations and good cupcakes.

White Wolf Cafe- Seriously good sandwiches and salads, sometimes there is a small wait.

There's many more, but that's our first list. Let us know what you think about our list or if we forgot some.

Stage Prep

2009-08-26T21:15:00.000-04:00

The Stage was the first place that stuff went when we started moving things from our old building to the new one back in March. Since that time the Stage has been quite the dumping ground. When we were packing if we didn't really have a place for something, it was assigned to the Stage. Then once we got to the new building if we didn't like where something was assigned, it went to the Stage. We knew all along that we needed to get the Stage cleaned out in order to start construction on Audio A. And as things progressed with the design of Audio A we would make baby steps in getting it clean. But every time we would get something out of the Stage, something would be put in there, or should I say dumped.

About 6 weeks ago we had recyclers come in and take a fair amount of things that we determined were no longer needed. Then today they came back to take the remaining items that we no longer needed. The arrived around 10am and by 11am they were done and the stage was as clean as it has been since the beginning of March. We still have a number of things on the stage but they are organized, stacked and covered with a tarp on the far west side of the Stage. We are now officially ready for construction to commence on the Audio A mix room inside the Stage. Design plans were locked last week, General Contractor was chosen and contracts signed last week, architect finished plans today and are now ready for turning in for permit. Scheduling reasons are keeping us from starting next week so construction is officially slated to start Tuesday September 8, 2009. For pictures of the Stage after it was cleared out visit our new home website www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

Siemens Corporation

2009-08-25T10:36:00.000-04:00

I was meeting with a potential client the other day and they asked the question: What is the perfect project/client for IDEAS. I proceeded to tell the story of our relationship with the Siemens Corporation. 3 years ago, Shirley Decker and I went to a luncheon for Operating Participants of Walt Disney World. It was at the Rainforest Cafe at Disney's Animal Kingdom, food was excellent. We sat at the opposite end of the table from a guy that, personality-wise, was eerily similar to Shirley's. After talking a bit over lunch, the conversation continued after lunch and we (not so much me as I was just standing there for the most part) decided to set up a meeting for a couple weeks from then to talk about what he had coming up and what we do. The person's name was Darren Sparks from Siemens.

2 weeks later, Darren came over and explained what Siemens had going on at Epcot now that they had taken over sponsorship of Spaceship Earth. Siemens had the opportunity to use the back part of Spaceship Earth for just about whatever they wanted. After the initial meeting with Darren he brought back some senior staff from Siemens to learn more about us. From there we did a proposal for a one day Story Conference with key Siemens executives, to understand what were the key message points and what outcomes were desired for the visiting guests. After the Story Conference we presented the findings back to Darren along with our recommendations of how to execute the Guest Experience plan.

3 years later, we're still working with Darren and Siemens at Base21, the Siemens VIP Center at Spaceship Earth, Epcot. We initially worked with the Siemens team to design the guest experience, which caters to Siemens’ employees from around the world, key clients, VIPs, and dignitaries visiting the attraction. Being able to create a branded Siemens space was the key to implementing a creative and immersive experience.

We developed guest experience concepts focused on the visitor experience with specific emphasis on attracting Siemens employees and their families and encouraging regular use of the facility for Siemens clients as a business closer. Specific attention was given to way finding, interior design, interactive design, media development, light and sound effects, and displays to highlight the key branded messages of their various operating companies that make up the world of Siemens.

We created a variety of media experiences that educate in an entertaining way, knowledge about the company, communicate its vision to their broad range of employees and stakeholders and become a unique location for all key client briefings and company sponsored events. These tools include hand held tablets that will allow the guests to interact with their environment, a 3D monitor featuring Siemens technology, a hidden display wall utilizing smart glass, a ten foot interactive wall, a simulated world command center, and a multitude of unique video formats. A media server and show control unit allow the staff to instantly customize the visitor’s experience based on their demographics plus allow easy updates to the media.

Base21 is a platform to showcase current and future thinking of the company and how Siemens impacts their visitors’ lives. We provided ongoing creative input and oversight of the user experience back during the construction phase and since opened, we continue to add new elements, and refresh elements within the center as the company continues to grow.

For a behind the scenes video look at the making of Base21, visit http://www.ideasmediastudio.com/studio/MakingBase21.php

The Dumpster

2009-08-20T12:23:00.000-04:00

Since about February 1 of this year we have lived with a dumpster almost every day. Whether it was for 2+ months back at the old place or the 4+ months since we've been here, we have had a dumpster outside our front or back door almost every day. Let me tell you, having a dumpster gives you great motivation to throw stuff out. Unfortunately, the last 2 weeks we have not had the dumpster outside our back door and I feel like a piece of me has been missing. Thankfully, a dumpster has returned. The task this week has been to go through all the stuff that has been stored on our stage and put it in different piles: 1. Electronic stuff that we're keeping and needs to stay inside where it's cool, 2. Stuff we're keeping but can go outside in our storage unit behind the stage, 3. things that will be picked up by a recycling company that will then sell what they can sell and recycle the rest and 4. TRASH. #4 is my favorite.

Our acoustic designer is done for now with the design of the room, the drawings are now with our architect going over everything to ensure it all follows code, then we'll get our permit and be off to the races. Be sure to follow the progress visually with photos on our new home website (www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome). But before any construction can start the stage has to be clear and between the dumpster arriving today and the recyclers next Wednesday, that will take care of most of that task.

Kids Get A Plan Next Book

2009-08-19T17:07:00.003-04:00

A couple weeks ago I mentioned the kick off meeting for the next phase of work for the Kids Get a Plan website (www.kidsgetaplan.com) that we did for the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Yesterday we had a group of our team and a couple people from the client side to figure out what the topic of the next book will be. The purpose was to create a story for a book that would fit with the rest of the series while also being applicable for 4th graders. The topic ended up being forest/wild fires.

We'll write the book over the next couple weeks, then give it to our illustrator to draw to and then add it to the website, including the same elements as the other books have on the website: interactive stories where the user can have the story read to them, read on their own with just-in-time help if they get stuck, reading cues to help improve comprehension and a glossary to help increase their vocabulary, instructional activities include games that reinforce the learning from the books, including an activity that allows them to build a disaster supply kit for their own family, downloadable coloring pages, character profiles and fully produced and sound designed depictions of the books are also available. The entire project should be done by the end of this year.

Audio A General Contractor & New Webisode

2009-08-17T16:21:00.001-04:00

This past Friday we signed the proposal for our General Contractor on the Audio A build out. After 6 weeks of getting proposals, working budgets and lots of conference calls we settled on The Collage Companies for the work. While all the Contractors were great, we felt Collage was the best fit for us.

Fittingly, last week we posted the next webisode in our Behind the Scenes series to our new home website (www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome). This was Audio Part 1. There will be at least a Part 2 and maybe even a Part 3, it depends how much there is to talk about.

Today started with the arrival of our portable storage unit. It arrived this morning so we'll start loading things in there so they are out of the way while construction happens on the stage. The rest of the day Dennis worked hard to mock up what the new Audio A will be like. The purpose was to get a sense of the size of the room and the positioning of things: the console, the producer desk, the couch, the window looking in to the stage, the projector, etc. It's been a while since we consistently posted many photos to the new home website. Consider today the start of getting back in the swing of things with that, new photos are up on the new home website from today.

New Interns

2009-08-15T15:14:00.005-04:00

For the past couple months we had two great interns, Nate and Shawn. Both of them finished up two weeks ago so I spent last week interviewing a new batch of potential interns. We have been using interns for many years and some batches of interviews seem to better than others. This was definitely one of the best batches I have interviewed. I interviewed 8 people and I would feel comfortable if I had to choose any of the eight. Unfortunately, I only need 2 interns so the other 6 will lose out when if they would have interviewed at some other times, they would have been slam dunk candidates. We'll set schedules this week for our two new interns and I'll unfortunately have to inform the others that they did not get the internship.

Audio A Build Out To Start

2009-08-12T10:13:00.004-04:00

When we made the decision to move a major criteria for our new home was the ability continue doing the level of post production (editing and audio) that we have done in the past. A couple months in to the process of looking for a new place we made the strategic decision to focus on the Creative Village area in Downtown Orlando. In doing so, we found a studio facility that was near perfect for or business needs. As part of the relocation, the facility owner agreed to pay for most of the build out of a state of the art audio facility for IDEAS. The design work is now complete, and the construction and build out is about to begin.

We will make a final decision on our general contractor this week. That group will work closely with our acoustical designer and our architect to lock the plans, obtain the proper permits and begin build out. Over the last couple months we have been lucky enough to have our Audio B up and running so we can continue doing most of our audio work but we are looking forward to having our larger mixing studio and Foley/insert stage up and running in a few short months.

For those who followed the build out of the main part of the building, you'll remember periodic blogs and in progress photos as things progressed. Once the build out of audio gets going we plan to do the same thing. Between status updates on Facebook, blogs here and photos and webisodes on our new home website (www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome) we'll keep everyone updated.

Lifetime Movies

2009-08-11T14:39:00.001-04:00

I was flipping channels this past weekend and came across a movie on Lifetime Movie Network that we worked on a couple years ago. Back in 2006 we were introduced to executive producer Bill O'Dowd and his company, Dolphin Entertainment. Dolphin Entertainment was about to start shooting a series of 3 thrillers in Puerto Rico for Lifetime and they needed a place for post audio. A quick proposal later, we were on the team.

Set in the Caribbean, the three made-for-television thrillers debuted with “Stranded,” starring Erica Durance from “Smallville”. The second movie, “Vanished”, starred A.J. Cook from “Criminal Minds” while “Break-In”, the third film in the trilogy, featured Kelly Carlson from “Nip/Tuck” fame. All three movies featured Carlos Ponce as police inspector Raddimus.

The post audio process included Foley, sound design, dialogue editing, pre-mixing, final mix and layback. Also included was post audio supervision and domestic delivery in high definition and standard definition to Lifetime and international delivery in high definition to Power, a leading independent worldwide producer and distributor.

"Stranded" achieved a 2.1 rating and a 33 VPVH (viewers per viewing household) exceeding the normal Lifetime Monday Night Movie viewership by more than 11 percent and did better than the series premiere that was on immediately following the movie. “Vanished” did better on a Sunday with a 2.1 rating and a 39 VPVH. “Break-In” also did well with a 2.1 rating and a 37 VPVH.

The following year we worked on Christmas in Paradise for Dolphin Entertainment. The movie featured Colin Ferguson from “Eureka” and Charlotte Ross, who stared in “NYPD Blue”.

For Christmas in Paradise we were responsible for the final high definition edit and post production audio. The video process included HD conform and final color correction while the post audio process included Foley, sound design, dialogue editing, pre-mixing, final mix, and layback. As was the case the year before we were responsible for post supervision and domestic delivery in high definition and standard definition to Lifetime and international delivery in high definition of the two hour movie.

FYI, we love our partnership with Dolphin Entertainment. They are a great bunch of people that we enjoy having around when they are here.

National Museum of Crime & Punishment

2009-08-06T09:25:00.001-04:00

A couple weeks ago I posted something on Facebook about our work on the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in Washington, D.C. and got a couple e-mails asking what we did on the project. So here's the story, about 2 years ago we received a call from people from Idletime Network, the prime on the contract working for the owner, John Morgan (for Orlando people, yes, that John Morgan - For the People!). We met with Idletime and understood our scope to be the audio/visual portion of the project and possibly the interactive elements. We had done work for John Morgan before on another venue of his, WonderWorks, so we felt confident in our chances to get the job. After a couple months, literally, of back and fourth between us an Idletime and us and John Morgan and us and anyone else who could give us info about the project, and about 10 proposals and budgets later, we finally settled on what our scope would be and the amount we would be paid to do it.

It was one of those projects that was big but I honestly didn't know how big the project was until we really got in to it. Before it was all said and done, we executed over 60 media elements for the museum. It was the exact type of project that we believe we add the most value for. We were involved in the creative behind certain portions of the museum, then we wrote scripts for the videos we were producing. After that we shot the elements we needed for the videos. Beyond shooting we had to coordinate hours and hours of stock footage and images. From there we created the entire look and feel for the interactive elements and then created, designed and executed close to 20 touch screen interactive games.

We also created a fingerprint station that you could get your fingerprint scanned and then printed out with a fictitious accused crime on a card to take home. For one of the activities we needed to do a line up with the assailant in one of the videos to see if people could recognize the person at a later time. If you're going to do a line up you need stand ins. So, we dressed up a couple members of our staff as thugs and made them part of the line up. If you go to the Museum you can see a couple members of our staff in the line up. Who knew our staff made such good thugs.

On the video side we had numerous elements to create, some vertical some horizontal (aspect ratio), some video based, some graphic based, some SD some HD. The videos were all over the map. Then on the audio side we sweetened the videos, recorded background voices, created sound effects beds, and supplied various sound effects elements. The thing about the visual elements is that they had to be unique to the area of the museum they were in but they still had to have an overall consistent look and feel that was the National Museum of Crime & Punishment.

From start to finish, we had close to 20 people touch the project. We started at the end of September of 2007 and it opened in May 2008. David Bain was the project manager for the project. David and a couple others went up to Washington, D.C. to the location of the museum a couple times throughout the project.

The attraction takes visitors through early Medieval times, the swashbuckling Pirate era, the gun-slinging Old West, the gangster/depression era leading into modern crime, assassinations & conspiracies, serial killers and mass murders, the crime fighting technologies of today, and conclude with an entire area devoted to "America’s Most Wanted", the nation's top crime fighting television show. America's Most Wanted currently tapes their show from the Museum.

The difficulty in telling people about this project is that it doesn't translate in to writing very well. So while I'm trying to explain what we did, it would be better if you just went to the museum in person. To say we did some videos, interactives, audio elements doesn't do the volume of work justice. You walk in to the 3 story museum and see it, then you get it.

Audio Webisode

2009-08-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

The end of last week was productive when it comes to getting a new webisode up on our new home website. It's been a while since we posted one because we've been here for a while and not much is new. However, as we move towards the beginning of the physical build out of our Audio A mixing suite and our insert/Foley stage, there's something worth editing. We are just about done with part one of the Audio webisode(s). It will be at least two websiodes and possibly three before we're all done with it. Part one should be up some time this week.

We also got the last of the bids for the project so we'll be making a decision this week as to who will be our general contractor. Once things get going there will be lots to write about so I'll keep you posted.

Audio A Build Out

2009-07-30T08:45:00.000-04:00

About 2 weeks ago I posted that we were expecting the last of our 4 bids for the build out of our post production audio mixing suite. Well, 2 weeks later I'm still waiting for our final bid but it's not the 4th but rather the 6th. As things turned out, we got a few companies get in the game a bit late. One was a referral from our acoustic designer and the other was a referral because they have built this type of place before. Anyway, a couple phone calls, e-mails and site visits later, we should have the final bids today. Then the fun starts. We expect all of the bids to be over our budget so we need to figure out what's making up the numbers for each, determine how we can change the design of the room without adversely affecting the acoustics of the room, determine who's the best qualified for the job, then get going. This whole process has taken longer than we hoped but in some cases it's the most important room in our whole place so paying attention to detail is more important that getting it done fast. Fast and crappy won't cut it. Thank goodness we have Audio B fully functional so we can still record, audio edit and do some basic mix work.

Kids Get A Plan Kick Off Meeting

2009-07-28T14:09:00.004-04:00

Today we held the kick off meeting for the next phase of a project we are very proud of. In 2004 we created, wrote and illustrated books for children in grades 1-3 for the Florida Division of Emergency Management. The storybook for first graders, The Adventures of Rabbit, Possum, and Squirrel in The 30/30 Rule, teaches young children how they can protect themselves from lightning strikes. Professor Tinkermeister and the Wacky, Whiz-Bang, Weather-Watching Wonder, shows second grade readers how to protect themselves from thunderstorms. And The Oak Tree Club helps third graders learn about how they can create a Disaster Supply Kit for their families to prepare for a hurricane.

For the 2009 Hazardous Weather Week earlier this year, the Florida Division of Emergency Management partnered with us to create http://www.kidsgetaplan.com/. A 3D cartoon featuring “Professor Tinkermeister” and other characters from the books greets all Floridians on the home page of the site. Kids can choose from online interactive stories where they can have the story read to them or read on their own with just-in-time help if they get stuck. There are reading cues to help improve their comprehension and a glossary to help increase their vocabulary. Instructional activities include games that reinforce the learning from the books, including an activity that allows them to build a disaster supply kit for their own family. Downloadable coloring pages, character profiles and fully produced and sound designed depictions of the books are also available.

The kick off meeting today was for the next phase of the program which is for a 4th book and further enhancements to the website. This is a project that is near and dear to us since it helps children. All of us living in Florida know the variety of weather we get- lightning, hurricanes, fires, etc.- so to be part of such a great initiative is something we take great pride in.

Internships

2009-07-24T10:39:00.003-04:00

Today we were visited by someone in the placement office at Valencia. We currently have an intern from Valencia and he was here to check in on his progress and how Valencia can help us more in the future. We welcome people from any local school to come in to see how we run our internships as we're proud of what we do. Over our 8 year existence we have had interns in just about every area of the company, probably close to 50 interns. People who want to be editors, audio mixers, instructional designers, writers and Flash programmers have all interned here. We have worked very hard over the years to make sure our intern program is fair. Our internships are generally unpaid so it's important that we provide them with the experience they deserve. That's the tradeoff. We don't work our interns 30, 40, 50 hours per week, we don't just put them at our front desk all day every day, we don't stick them in a closet every time clients show up. We try to teach the interns what they need to know to get a job in the industry when they leave. As most people I know will attest to, college gets you book ready for your career but it doesn't always prepare you for the real world. We hope after 3 or 4 months of an internship a couple days per week our interns are ready for the real world, either with us or elsewhere.

Client Relationships

2009-07-22T20:52:00.002-04:00

It is refreshing when you have a client that really respects you. I know that sounds pretty simple but anyone that works for clients knows that having a client respect you doesn't always happen. Here's the story: we have a client, we'll just say it's one of our top accounts. Today we set up a meeting with a completely different division of his company largely because of his referral. This client goes out of his way to tell others about us and the work we do for him. Now this client gets angry at us sometimes and we get angry at him sometimes too. But at the end of the day, we are very lucky to have him as a client and judging by how he tries to help us out he respects us as well. On the other hand, it's tough to hear that other clients, no matter how much effort you put in to their projects, always seem to be trying to find a way to NOT come back. But today, rather than dwell on the clients that we can never please, we choose to focus on the ones that we can.

WIFT Meeting & Follow Up Meetings

2009-07-21T08:06:00.002-04:00

Last night we hosted the Women In Film & Television 2nd Quarter General Meeting. My unofficial unsophisticated count was 108 guests and I know I missed at least 5-10 people. By far, the most people we have had in our new building. The turn out was one of the largest WIFT meetings in recent memory. We're assuming 99% of that was people wanting to hear State of Florida Film Commissioner Lucia Fishburne speak and 1% was to see our new building but that's ok, we're happy to ride anyone's coat tales if it means a full house at our place. We've have wanted to host a WIFT meeting for about a year and a half now but it made no sense to have the meeting at our old place before we moved so we've been putting it off each quarter so it was good to finally have it work out. This was second large function we have had since we moved, the first was the event with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer on May 21. Each time we have groups in the building we learn a little more about traffic flow in the building and where people like to congregate. We take notes so we can properly prepare for our big client party in the fall.

Remember the group Bob, Phil & Shirley went to Boca last week to meet with. They called on Saturday and wanted to come up here to see our place and meet our team. Obviously that's a great sign but man did it make for a long eventful day. We started prepping for them around 10am and left last night at 9:30pm and we were pretty much "on" the whole time. Hopefully more to come from this group.

If a Tree Falls...

2009-07-16T13:58:00.003-04:00

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it really make a sound? If we have a busy day but no one is around, did we really accomplish that much? I sure hope so because our team was scattered all over the state of Florida today so the office was really quiet but we all accomplished a lot.

A couple people were down in Boca Raton having a meeting with a potential client/partner. The meeting went very well so that is exciting. Then I met with a person that might help in our sales department. It's a person we have known for about a year and we think she can help us so it's exciting to see where that might go. Then we had another team of contractors come by to see the proposed audio space so they can put together a quote/bid for us. The bidding process is taking a bit longer than we would have liked but it's more important to do it right than fast. And finally, a team of people were out at Spacecoast Executive Airport shooting an experiment with F-104s and former NASA astronaut Sam Durrance for our upcoming TV series Starfighters Supersonic Science. Nothing like an F-104 flyby at the speed of sound 100 yards away form you.

So there was lots of activity from South Florida up the Space Coast and back to Central Florida. But since we were spread out all over the state today it seemed like a quiet day until you thought about everything that was accomplished.

Duplication Discount & Changes to Studio Website

2009-07-14T16:23:00.002-04:00

A couple years ago we did a promotion offering a discount on duplication involving HDCam when we got our second deck. It seemed to be well-received so we thought we'd do another one now to celebrate our new home. It's a good way to get people here to see the place (when they drop off tapes) and it also allows us to offer a cost savings with most people looking for deals these days. The e-mail blast went out today along with posting on Facebook and Twitter. It's 20% off all duplication involving HDCam, HDV and Digital Beta. Contact Carlo Simone at 407-601-7878 x5325 or csimone@ideasorlando.com for more details or to place an order.

Last week we had an internal meeting about updating our website. Some adding, more subtracting and some modifying. The Studio website (www.ideasmediastudio.com) was the easiest one to modify so we did that first to see if we like it. Basically, we wanted to reduce some text and get the samples front and center. We're finding people want to see our work, wither as video or stills so we put the samples up front and added stills to the other pages. If you have feedback please let me know.

Audio A & Sales

2009-07-13T17:22:00.002-04:00

First blog with it no longer just being about the new home and of course, the topic is new home related. We received bid #3 of 4 this past Friday for the build out of our new Audio A. We spent some time today with the submitting company so they could explain their bid and we could ask questions. I thought the session went well, except their number was higher than we were hoping, although the number was what we were expecting. You can't blame us for hoping, right? We should get the final bid tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday. At that point, we make decisions- value engineering of the room itself as well as who will build it.

We're also anxiously awaiting some meetings this week about some great projects. Hopefully we'll remain in contention and maybe even get some of them. Bob's traveling pitching a couple people/places and Shirley continues working some new angles. We also have a little sales initiative coming out this week. Be sure to check your e-mail or Facebook for the announcement. Just a little thing to incent people to come see the new place.

Changing Blog Topic

2009-07-10T17:02:00.003-04:00

We started this blog 6 months ago to help people follow the process of us moving to our new home. Now, we've been in our new home for 3+ months and there's only so much to talk about when it comes to the new home. However, we do have a lot to talk about when it comes to the day-to-day activities at IDEAS. So, beginning today, the topic of our blog will no longer be specifically about our new home and will be the general IDEAS blog.

We will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for short & sweet updates but we will keep blogging about what we're doing at IDEAS. Thanks to everyone who has followed us thus far and we hope to keep you informed and entertained going forward.

Final Cut & Cable TV

2009-07-07T21:15:00.003-04:00

A while ago I mentioned that our Final Cut was not behaving nicely. After receiving a time out, and some new inners, everything is back up and running as of last week. It's hard to tell whether what fixed it was really the problem or a second problem caused by our first repair guy beating the crap out of the cards as he was taking them out and putting them back in. Either way, it's fixed, up and running and already back in sessions.

We're also making progress getting our cable TV connections up around the building. Obviously it's not a high priority thing but it is nice being able to check in on things on CNN or ESPN during the day. What's also nice is that we'll have "real" cable as opposed to our old Disney cable. We also have HD. I'm going out this week to use my Best Buy Rewards Points and buying myself a nice HD LCD TV with built in DVD player.

Our 1st Birthday in the New Building

2009-07-02T08:13:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was our 8th birthday as a company. Our first day as an independently owned and operated company was July 1, 2001. It's hard to believe it's been 8 years. A lot has happened since then, for the company, for the world and for all of us personally. But while yesterday was our 8th birthday, it was our first celebrated in the new building. Each year on our birthday we bring in a special lunch for the staff. In the old building we'd set up the food in the main hallway, cover the pool table and fit as many people in the lounge as possible. Inevitably we wouldn't be able to fit everyone so the stragglers would go in the conference room. What that means was we couldn't have a "family" meal all together on a special occasion. In the new building however, it's easy to set up food in the Story Lab and get everyone around the table in the conference room. We can easily get 20 people around our conference table and if we squeeze and work at it we can get up to 26 people around the table. It was really nice to have everyone in one room enjoying our birthday. Here's to at least 8 more years together.

Dry Erase Boards

2009-06-29T14:42:00.003-04:00

The dry erase boards are in and installed outside just about everyone's door. It took a while to figure out how to mount them so they are removable so people can take them down to write on them or change their picture but they also need to stay up. We're in that middle area where if they get bumped too hard or if someone pulls it off the wall too hard they will come down so we'll see how they hold up. If too many fall we'll use stronger mounting tape which will keep them up but will also make the backing more permanent on the wall. It's nice though we already have a few of our kid pictures up and people are already using them to write messages.

Audio Progress, Bay 4 & Previous Clients

2009-06-25T13:20:00.003-04:00

We continue moving forward with the design of our new audio mixing suite. While we have certainly hit bumps in the road we think the makings are there for a really great room. As was the case with the original part of the build out, we get to a point where we have everything we could possibly want in the room and then the financial realities set in and we need to regroup. That's where we are right now. We have our initial budget numbers and we are over where we need to be. The next phase of the process is determining how to value engineer the room while NOT altering the acoustics at all. Aesthetics and "wants" will be addressed so the "needs" of the room are not sacrificed. The great thing we have realized since we've been here is our Audio B room can do a lot more audio work than we originally thought so we really haven't skipped a beat in audio.

This week Dennis mounted one of our plasma screens in Bay 4, our Final Cut Pro edit suite. Now we have the LCDs in Bay 1 & 2 and the Lobby and a plasma in the Machine Room and Bay 4. We're still figuring out the best allocation for the two DLPs and the remaining two plasmas.

And finally, we thoroughly enjoy having clients in that spent time at the old place and are now seeing our new home. It's nice to get the client's perspective when it comes to how much more welcoming our new home is. We've been here for 2 1/2 months now so we're pretty used to it so we like seeing the reactions of people who are seeing our new home for the first time.

Way Finding, Lobby LCD & Parking

2009-06-22T20:35:00.003-04:00

Today was a very productive day. In between watching the final round of the US Open in HD on a 46" LCD screen in Bay 2, we put up all of our new way finding signage. Now there's no excuse if you can't find a bathroom on either side of the building. The signage looks good, the colors fit well and we'll see how well people find their way around.

Dennis also hung up the LCD screen in the lobby. Showing samples of our work as guests & clients come in the building is always a nice way to welcome people. Having cable TV, something we didn't have at the old place, will also be nice to catch up on the hurricane coverage starting in about a month. Hopefully we won't use it for that too much.

Unfortunately, we came to the realization today that there is one thing some of us really miss from the old building, parking in a covered parking garage. Getting in to a car parked in direct sun light after 8 hours of sitting in 110 degree heat index is not a fun thing. Oh well, we'll survive.

Parking Sign & Bay 4

2009-06-19T17:15:00.004-04:00

As I have mentioned before, we have a problem with clients & guests coming to our building, parking and then walking to our back door instead of our front door. So we had to get a sign made directing people to the front door rather than the back (locked) doors. The sign was installed today so hopefully that will cut down on people banging on our back doors. Pictures of the sign are on our new home website www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome. Click on the photos tab then look on 6-19-09.

We also finished the redesign of Bay 4 today so the three edit suites we were redesigning, Bay 1, Bay 2 & Bay 4 are completed. The rooms look great and they will be much more client friendly.

Bay 2 & Dry Erase Boards

2009-06-19T08:49:00.002-04:00

We received the remaining piece of furniture for the redesign of Bay 2 yesterday so the room is completed and feels great, just like Bay 1 when we finished it last week. Speaking of Bay 1, yesterday we had our first outside client in the room since we did the redesign. The great thing about this is that the client was also in the room before the redesign so they could do the comparison. I walked in during their session and asked how they liked it and both of the clients said it was very comfortable and user friendly. One client was sitting up next to Sam and the other was at the back client desk. Both had papers all over and had plenty of room to work. Mission accomplished in Bay 1 and we think the same for Bay 2. We have the furinture for Bay 4 also so we'll be changing that out today or Monday as well.

The long await for our clear dry erase boards is now over. They arrived yesterday, 40 of them. We are doing a couple tests to see what the best way to mount them is. We want to have them removable from the wall if people want to change a picture, put something else up, or if it's just easier for them to write on them. But, we also need them to be stable enough hanging so they don't fall down with a stiff breeze and we also don't want them tearing up the walls. We think we may have found a way to achieve all those goals, we should know by the end of the day. If that's the case, we'll start putting them up Monday.

Another Good Day

2009-06-18T07:56:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a good day. The second of our LCD screens was mounted in Bay 2. Now Bay 1 & Bay 2 have matching Samsung LCD screens. We already have one of our plasma screens mounted in the machine room so we have mounting to do in the lobby, lounge and Bay 4 left. While Dennis was mounting in Bay 2 yesterday he also did a massive clean up of the cables for the edit suite so the room looks really polished now. All we need is the last piece of furniture and that room is totally completed.

Our interior way finding signage also also arrived yesterday. It's currently flattening on our pool table, then Millo wants to do some trimming of a few of them then they'll be ready for install. Hopefully Monday we'll start putting them up. But they look cool and in a company full of creative people with lots of opinions, it's great that everyone was very complimentary about all of the signs.

We also had another good day of people seeing the building for the first time. Hearing people talk about how much they like the building when they see it for the first time never gets old.

Final Cut Pro & Fabric Panels

2009-06-16T12:51:00.005-04:00

Since the move, our Final Cut Pro system has been, we'll call it temperamental. Dennis has been working almost daily for the last 2 weeks figuring out what the problems was. First was determining whether it was the Mac or whether it was Final Cut. Considering Final Cut wouldn't even load for a bit Dennis started with the computer. After finding a couple things out of whack the computer overall seemed to be working right so it was on to dealing with Final Cut. After seeing issues with the software we went back & fourth whether the problem was the computer or the software. It appears, and I emphasize appears until we see it for sure, that the problem may be the mother board. A new one will be in Thursday and we'll see what happens.

Duncan, bless his heart, put up 6 gray fabric panels in the edit suites yesterday. The acoustics in the new edit suites are surprisingly good already so the panels should only improve it more. And with the precision needed to do the job, Duncan was pretty much the only person for it. The first one is always the hardest but once it got up the rest went up much quicker and in the end, only a little touch up paint is necessary.

Way Finding

2009-06-13T15:29:00.004-04:00

Last week our way finding was ordered and it is scheduled to be delivered to us this Wednesday. In addition to the inside way finding we used the same design to make the sign that will go on the side of the building directing guests to the front entrance instead of the back. The goal of the way finding was two fold: 1. Make sure it works. No matter what it is, if people get lost or can't find their way to where they want to go, the way finding failed. 2. Make it cool. The last thing we wanted to do is have signage that is boring, it's just not us. I think you'll find that we definitely achieved goal #2, it remains to be seen if #1 was achieved. We posted samples of the way finding on the new home website www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome. Click on the pictures tab and look for 06-12-2009.

Audio Progress & Parking Signage

2009-06-12T12:58:00.003-04:00

The build out of the new Audio A mix room has been challenging. There's not enough space on this blog to tell you all the stories but trust me when I say as easy as the main building build out went, the audio build out has been that difficult, and we haven't even broken ground on the 6-8 week construction yet. However, we got the next set of prints this week and have a meeting scheduled with our contractor and architect for Monday. Based on the input of our contractor (Scott Greer, Greer Contracting Company), we can move to the next stage with our architect and him. What that means is that we can start narrowing in on total cost and make the necessary value engineering decisions as necessary. Our goal would obviously be to make any aesthetic alterations before we will modify the structural portion which could effect the soundness of the acoustics. Hopefully more progress next week.

The next thing we are making progress with is with the design, order and install of a sign on the side of our building that directs our guests/visitors/clients towards the front of the building to enter. It has been shocking how many people park on the side of the building and then walk towards the back of the building to get in. It has lead to a lot of awkward moments with clients knocking on the back door because it's locked unless you have a key card. Sign should be installed in about a week.

Edit Suite Redesign

2009-06-10T21:56:00.002-04:00

We decided last week that the layout of our edit suites just wasn't working. So we worked the last week to redesign them on paper so they would work for the editor and clients. A couple days ago we started with Bay 1 and today we finished. We still have some finishing touches to do but the big part is done and the room works great. We can fit 7 people comfortably in the room and it just feels right. We've always said that we did not ever want to be the type of place that just puts down an edit system on a table in a room and says "here's our edit suite". Just because you have an edit system in a room that doesn't make it an edit suite. We have edit suites. Next up will be Bay 2. We started today and it's coming together nicely. The room is a little smaller than Bay 1 but I think the end that room is going to have a great feel also.

LCD & Plasma Screens

2009-06-09T10:51:00.003-04:00

Yesterday the first of our plasma screens was mounted on the wall in the Machine Room and today the first LCD was mounted in Bay 1. It's amazing how much that adds to a room. Having the ability to see a large image of something you're working on really gives you a sense of how it looks. It makes me wonder how we ever survived without 42 or 46 inch monitors in the past. Next up will be the lobby, lounge, Bay 2 & Bay 4. Pictures are on the new home website: www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

In addition, tomorrow will be a big day or furniture assembly. We'll finish the redesign of Bay 1 then move on to Bays 2, 3 and 4. We'll also have the desk for our guest office on the Studio side of the building. One thing we really tried hard to do is have space for clients/guests when they come in the building to get some privacy. There's nothing worse than being a guest somewhere and feeling like the only place you can go to make a phone call is outside. So we went to great lengths to have a couple spaces that could be used for that purpose. Up until now though, the guest office on the Studio was empty so it will be good to be able to put a desk and chair in there tomorrow.

Biomorph Desks For Sale

2009-06-07T18:53:00.003-04:00

As a result of our redesigning the layout of the edit suites, we find ourselves with a couple extra high end biomorph desks. Ours are an older model but the link to the current model of ours is here: http://www.biomorphdesk.com/1-888-302-DESK/pro/overview.html. If anyone is interested, contact John Lux at 407-601-7882 or jlux@ideasorlando.com.

Edit Suite Layout Part 2

2009-06-05T15:55:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we made about 80% of the changes to the workspace in Bay 1. We didn't have the middle piece of the desk but we put the 2 ends together and we can tell it's going to work. It allows for much better collaboration between client and editor. We also finalized our thinking for Bay 2 and Bay 4 so next week we'll do a little shopping and be able to make the rooms better. More details and photos to come.

Edit Suite Layout

2009-06-04T21:52:00.002-04:00

We've been in the new building for about 2 months and the edit suites have been functional for about a month. So we have a decent amount of information regarding how the rooms feel for the editor and clients. We've come to the decision that the original set up probably isn't going to work. It's just not user friendly enough for the clients which makes it uncomfortable for the editor. So yesterday we started redesigning the rooms on paper. Today we took the first temporary step in Bay 1 and while it's not pretty and is not the way it's going to stay, we liked how it worked. Over the next couple days & weeks we're going to work with our designs and make sure they will work for the editor, clients and engineering. When we're done with the redesign I think the rooms are really going to work. And best of all, we'll be able to do it without ever taking the rooms down.

New Webisodes & Photos

2009-06-03T21:02:00.002-04:00

Today Sam finished the next webisode: "Moving Day". This video focuses on the the events of April 3, 2009, the main moving day from the old place to the new place. It actually came together nicely. I was worried that making an episode about a single day would be tough since the other episodes were about a topic/subject, but we had plenty of material.

Then Millo came back from his 11 day excursion in France so we made lots of updates to the entire ideasorlando.com website as well as adding new photos to the new home website. It's good to have him back.

Dry Erase Boards & Webisodes

2009-06-01T11:36:00.004-04:00

Don't you love it when you place an order for something, you get an e-mail saying it's on back order for 3 weeks so you cancel the order. Then you order the same thing from another place, you get the confirmation that the order was accepted and shipped only to have 1/4 of the order arrive because the rest is on back order for, you guessed it, 3 weeks. That's what happened to our clear dry erase boards that we're going to use outside our offices for messages, names and our baby pictures.

Sam worked on the next webisode today, "Moving Day". It should be up later this week so I'll post when it's there. We're also going to edit down the event with the Mayor from May 21 so a short clip with be on line as well. Millo's been out on vacation so we haven't updated the photos on the website in the last week but he's back Wednesday so they should be up by the end of the day Wednesday.

End of Another Week

2009-05-30T14:28:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was the end to another busy week. In addition to all the stuff going on that I have already mentioned in blogs, we were really busy with client meetings, pitches and proposals. I just finished going through another one. I tried to look at it yesterday but was to brain fried. So instead of finishing the proposal I had a frozen slushy drink.

We put Margaritas on hold and tried frozen daiquiris. I'm new at those so my first batch wasn't slushy enough but the second one was much better. Nothing like watching Toy Story with a frozen drink.

I ended the week meeting with our architect to hand over the almost finished design plans for the audio space. Hopefully he doesn't find anything glaring and we can get going on the build ASAP. I will probably meet with our GC Monday or Tuesday this week to give him the plans. In the meantime, Audio B is up and running and is a really nice cozy space.

New Members of Team

2009-05-29T13:36:00.002-04:00

David reminded me that I have not told everyone about the new members of our team. A little more than a week ago David found a couple newborn kittens living in a drainpipe in back of our place. He has since helped them get food and they have adopted us as their family. David's plan is to help them get strong enough and eventually bring them to the humane society. It's funny how attached some people on our staff have become. If the kittens aren't there for a day or so everyone gets worried something happened to them.

Blinds

2009-05-28T23:02:00.003-04:00

I forgot to mention this earlier. I think the part of the new building that has made the biggest transformation from when we first saw the building until move in day is the design & programming area. It was a cave, with an UGLY navy blue carpet wall covering 3 pairs of windows and the other 2 pair were covered by drywall. All windows exposed and fresh paint later, it's one of the nicest areas of the new building. However, the pair of windows on the east side and the pair on the west side, while wonderful, can be problematic early in the day on the east side and late in the day on the west side because of the sun. There's nothing like seeing T work at his computer until 10am each day in sunglasses. Or watching Millo hide behind a poster he has in front of the windows the last hour or two of the day. So, we ordered custom sized horizontal blinds that match the rest of the building to cover those windows and they were installed yesterday. The ironic thing is that the guys never had windows in the old place, then we work real hard to get them windows in the new place and we immediately bet blinds to block the sun.

Audio, LCD Screens & Facebook

2009-05-28T16:28:00.003-04:00

It wasn't easy and it definitely didn't go as planned, but largely due to the efforts of Rob Hill, we saw hard copies of the design specs for the new audio mixing room today. I'm not an architect so I don't know what half of it means but it looks impressive. We meet with our architect tomorrow so he can review the plans then our contractor will look everything over early next week and give us a quote to execute what the design is. If the construction phase is as stressful on Rob and me as the design phase has been, I will be quitting.

Our LCD screens for Bay 1 & Bay 3 came in today. Coincidentally, one of our staff bought the exact model a couple weeks ago and absolutely loves it so that is encouraging.

And finally, a lot of us are on Facebook, David does our Twitter page, Bob organized an IDEAS Group on Facebook and of course I'm doing this blog. But we (it was Christine's idea) thought we should create an IDEAS Orlando "person" on Facebook so we could be more connected with our friends and give updates on what's going on here more often. So we did it and we're working on connecting to as many clients and friends as possible so we can stay in touch with as many of them as possible. Our company clients & friends are our livelihood so the more we stay in touch the better. If you search IDEAS Orlando you should find us.

Casting, Audio & Muppets

2009-05-27T21:10:00.003-04:00

Today we held our first production on our new stage. Well, it wasn't a real production but there was talent and a camera. It was a casting session. The stage is far from ready for real production but it was great to have the talent wait in the lounge and then have the casting session on the stage. It showed our set up is going to work and it's always cool having lots of people in and out of the building. I can't wait until the stage is ready, for real.

Speaking of the stage, if the stars finally line up, we're supposed to get the as close to final as they get design plans for the new audio suite. A couple beers and about 3 hours and maybe sometime I'll tell everyone about the design process for audio, it's been an adventure. But for now, let's just say we're all anxious to move on to the construction stage of the project.

A couple people didn't like that I was playing The Muppet Movie in the lounge today. Seriously, who doesn't love the Muppets? I was planning on playing The Muppet Movie followed by the Muppets Take Manhattan then The Great Muppet Caper. But some people in our building don't have the same reverence for Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo that I do apparently.

Monitors and Way Finding

2009-05-26T11:34:00.003-04:00

At long last, we have made the purchases for LCD screens for the edit suites. Despite my business credit card not cooperating for unexplainable reasons other than it being maxed out, we got everything taken care of. We landed on 2x 46" Samsung 120Hz LCD screens, one for the Symphony and the other for the Media Composer. Then we also got a 32" LCD/DVD combo unit for the lobby to play various demos things while people wait. We already had the wall mounts for the new LCDs, we got full motion mounts so they will be able to move out from the wall, tilt and pan depending on the need. We got regular flat mounts for the lobby monitor as well as the other monitors we already had in house.

Late last week we also locked our way finding design. We're very excited to get the final quotes and make a decision on our supplier. Each sign will have a little icon that is related to the text on the sign. The icons are cute and should add the spice we were looking for so the signs weren't just the same old, same old way finding inside the building.

New Webisode

2009-05-22T15:01:00.004-04:00

Our next installment in the Behind the Scenes webisodes, "Ready to Move In" has been posted to the new home website: www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome and it will be active on iTunes and You Tube tomorrow. The next webisode, "Moving Day" will be up in about 2 weeks, we need to do some client work to pay the bills between now and then.

We got a nice write up on WDBO.com and RealEstateChannel.com and a couple stories on Central Florida News 13 from the event with the Mayor yesterday. We shot the event so after the holiday weekend we'll edit a piece and get it up on the website.

Pre-Grand Opening Event with the Mayor

2009-05-21T13:24:00.002-04:00

We just finished the pre-grand opening event with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer here at our new home. He was here to welcome us to Downtown Orlando. There were a lot of people from the Mayor's office, EDC, Downtown Development and guests. I thought it went really well. The Mayor arrived, Bob Allen spoke for a couple minutes, the Mayor took over and spoke for a few minutes then Bob and the Mayor unveiled a piece of artwork that we designed. A large version will stay here in our lounge and a smaller version will be framed and given to the Mayor for his office. After the short ceremony the Mayor and Bob did a quick tour of the building and answered some questions from the media. Then the guests were taken on tours of the building. Tours were very well received and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and were impressed with the transformation of the building. The Mayor remembered the building from it's earlier years and commented a number of times on how great it looks now. Photos will be on the website later today www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

Rain, Rain Go Away

2009-05-20T22:45:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow we have our press event with the Mayor of Orlando. He's coming to our place to welcome us, we're going to thank him and his staff for their support and we're going to make a presentation on behalf of IDEAS to the Mayor's Creative Village vision. We had rain on April 3 (our moving day) and then we didn't get rain, literally, for 6 weeks. Then someone turned on the rainy season last week and since then it hasn't stopped. So rather than have the event on the front steps outside we'll probably be moving everything inside to the lounge. Things should still be fine but it's a bummer. Pictures will be posted tomorrow or Friday.

We contine to make progress on the way finding and the next webisode should be done before the end of the week.

Way Finding

2009-05-19T20:00:00.002-04:00

I think I've mentioned previously that we're trying to figure out what to do with our way finding. Rather than have standard signage throughout the building we're trying to do something more creative. Have you ever seen a Fat Head? It's a vinyl sticker that can be removed and re stuck multiple times. That's our idea for material for the way finding signs. That way we can design the signage any way we want- color, design, language, artwork, etc. Mary Anne and I gave Millo ideas for what we were looking for and he's been working for the last week on options and we're narrowing in on a final look. Once we're locked we'll post some pictures on the new home website. I think they are going to be really cool.

Landscaping

2009-05-17T12:51:00.002-04:00

It's a hot Sunday afternoon and I'm at work. Fortunately for me, I'm not in charge or the real work being done here today. David and Rick worked really hard and completely upgraded the landscaping around the front door. We had overgrown bushes and after tearing them out but after planting new bushes and flowers we have a really nice entrance to the building now. Landscaping isn't my thing but others have been begging that we do something since we got here and Rick and David did the hard work and now it looks great. The big things were done in the overall build out but each little thing that we do now continues to add to our new home. Pictures will be posted this week www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

Happy Birthday

2009-05-15T17:41:00.002-04:00

Today we had our first birthday party in the new building. Every month we do a cake and celebrate the birthdays of the month. Our April birthdays got screwed with last month being so crazy so we celebrated April & May today.

David took Shirley and I to a dive today for lunch. I can't remember the name but it was a hamburger place off Orange Avenue a little south of ORMC. It was quite a place but really good food. It's so nice eating at so many different places, none of which are chair restaurants, which is all we had near the old place.

We found out yesterday that the Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade was nominated for 3 Daytime Emmy Awards, one of which was for Audio Mixing. That's the second year in a row the audio on the Parade was nominated for an Emmy. We're hoping the Parade will follow us downtown this year for the post production.

New pictures posted on the new home website: www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

Staff Quarterly Update and Webisode Progress

2009-05-14T21:03:00.004-04:00

Today we had our first staff quarterly update in the new building. After each quarter we do an extended staff meeting in which we give the financial and sales update of the company. We also review the past couple months of highlighted projects and operational issues.

This past Tuesday we shot the interviews for the remaining webisodes. Sam had everything loaded in by lunch on Wednesday and a real solid rough cut by the end of the day yesterday. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how we look at it, Sam was booked today & is tomorrow and Monday so we'll probably not get back to it until next week. As soon as it's completed I'll do another e-mail blast to tell people it's up there.

David & I did a couple things today to continue moving the building forward. We set up a projector in the conference room. It's not mounted in the ceiling but it's there and ready to use. David also really wants to hang stuff on the walls, especially in the conference room. We figured out what will go where so we're making progress.

New pictures on the website www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

Webisode Interviews

2009-05-12T20:47:00.002-04:00

Today we shot the remaining interviews for the Behind the Scenes webisodes. We shot Phil, Bob, Shirley, David, Mary Anne, Rob, our general contractor, our real estate agent and me. I think we got great stuff. The original round of interviews were only Bob, Shirley and me and we weren't too far into the packing and moving process so there was only so much to talk about. Now, we're so much further along with things that there's plenty of different perspectives and stories. Sam started digitizing this afternoon and we'll start editing tomorrow. With any luck we'll have the next webisode on line early next week.

We also got two more of the wall mount units for the LCD/plasma screens today. And we got samples for the clear dry erase boards for outside our offices. If we can figure out a way to attach the baby pictures behind them this will be the way to go. It will keep the baby picture, a place for the name and add a dry erase board for messages.

More New Stuff

2009-05-11T16:25:00.002-04:00

Besides the dividers for the design & programming area, we also received a sample for the way finding idea we're exploring, round 2 of business cards for some of the staff, and the 2 full-motion wall mounts for the LCD screens that will go in Bay 1 & Bay 2.

The way finding sample is interesting. Not as flashy as we had hoped but maybe our actual design will make it look better, as opposed to my attempt while playing in Photoshop. The image looks a little flat right now. We're supposed to get at least one more sample from another company so we'll see.

The LCD screen mounts are actually kind of exciting. We wanted to get mounts that come out from the wall, can tilt up and down and can pan right or left. I looked around and was about to buy them at Best Buy when I found the exact same model on-line for almost 1/2 price. Even with shipping it was significantly less expensive to go this route. Speaking of the LCD screens, I spoke with someone from Best Buy Business (who knew it existed) to talk about getting the models that we want since our local store doesn't have them AND getting a Best Buy credit card. If the general public can get no interest for 18 months, why shouldn't we? You would think. Unfortunately Best Buy doesn't really do a credit card for businesses. We'll figure it out, no big deal.

Central Florida Business Article in Orlando Sentinel

2009-05-11T12:18:00.003-04:00

Last week I mentioned being interviewed by a technology reporter from the Orlando Sentinel. The article/profile was in today's Central Florida Business section of the Orlando Sentinel. Here's the link:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/orl-cfbtalking-with-john-lux-051109051109may11,0,3994205.story

They say any press is good but when it actually is good press it makes it that much better.

Today we also received another 4 dividers for the design & programming area. Greg Roux originally had some of them, Robbie bought a couple more so I bought four more. This seems to be what the guys want to use to get some privacy. They're pretty cool, user friendly and cost effective so why not?

More Margaritas

2009-05-08T21:54:00.002-04:00

There was a lot of stuff that came from our old building that we really weren't sure if we needed. It became official this week that most of it was not needed. So today recyclers came with a large box truck to take away unneeded equipment and furniture. We had so much that they couldn't fit everything. Our entire stage was full before they came and by the time they left only about 1/3 of the stage had stuff and there's still some more stuff to go. This opens the door to start the build out for audio in the next couple weeks.

Today was also Margarita Friday #2 in the new building. I bought a Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville frozen concoction machine a couple weeks ago. The first time we used it a couple weeks ago I wasn't too happy with the way the margaritas turned out. I followed the directions but they were still too icy. I got some guidance from a friend that has a machine and this time was much better. I had a couple people say this time they were better so my bar tending skills are improving.

New pictures will be on the website early next week www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome

Spending Money

2009-05-06T17:36:00.002-04:00

Today we finalized which LCD screens we're getting for the lobby, Bay 1 & Bay 2. We also decided and ordered the mounting mechanisms for all of the monitors, LCDs and plasmas. The LCDs in Bay 1 & Bay 2 will be the full motion- can pull away from the wall, tilt up and down and pan right and left. The others will be static wall mounts.

David and I installed the new track lighting fixtures in the machine room and our extra edit suite. Sam & Rob installed the window tinting in Audio B. Dennis pulled out the white boards to firm up the "to-do" list and schedule for the technical work still to be done (see photos on the new home website www.ideasorlando.com/ideasnewhome). We also ordered some clear white boards that might go outside our offices with our baby pictures behind them to serve as a frame for the pictures but also be a functional way to leave messages when people aren't in their offices. We ordered a couple to see how they would work. If they do, we will get the rest. A couple possible suppliers for our way finding are also sending samples for us to see and decide on. I also spent some time in the vault today continuing the organization process.

Week 5 Begins

2009-05-04T21:12:00.002-04:00

Today started week 5 in the new building. And just like last week, lots of meetings and tours with people and the rest of the week will be more of the same. We're locked in for the next round of interviews for the Behind The Scenes webisodes. We're shooting 11 different people including our general contractor and real estate agent. More on that next week.

Carlo, Christine and I are making progress on the organization of the new Media Storage area. I was interviewed by a technology reporter from the Orlando Sentinel. Based on what he was saying it should be in the paper and on line maybe next week. If I like it I'll post the link once it's out, kidding. I had my first meeting in the Story Lab today with the new chairs. What they were talking about was way over my head but man was I comfortable. And over the weekend we received the renderings for the new Audio A. It looks amazing. I know we'll change a couple things aesthetically but overall, if we can build that room and it sounds as good as I think it's going to sound, our old room will be a distant memory. I'll post some of the images later in the week.