Tim Neill, CEO

I’m fortunate enough to have a business partner that eats, drinks, and lives data. In a recent confession he told a few of us that he’s a bit addicted to financial news and to thinking about the potential repercussions of the economy generally. 

Most of the data I’ve read suggests that interactive agencies have not taken a terribly big hit, that companies are continuing to make significant investments in their online presence, and that online advertising continues to grow even as spending shrinks in other media. 

I think consumers will push companies to develop more and more sophisticated ways to entice and cater to them, demanding the most in a company’s online presence. Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff makes a compelling case for online marketers to stay active in the digital environment through thick and thin – its an area you have more leverage, influence and lower cost than any other traditional media. http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2008/02/why-social-appl.html. His short report, “Strategies For Interactive Marketing In A Recession” offers some interesting insights:  http://www.forrester.com/Research/PDF/0,5110,45128,00.pdf

Tim Neill, CEO

Cobbler, shoe repairer, it doesn’t make much difference what you call him when you both know your shoe needs resoling. Different names same job. And so it went for several years, with people interchangeably using ‘interactive agency,’ ‘web developer,’ ‘web design firm,’ and every other name for companies that ‘do websites.’ But something happened along the way and today’s interactive firm is a rather different animal than the ‘design shops’ that lived on nearly every corner during the last tech boom. What is an ‘interactive firm’ today, or maybe more important, what will it need to be tomorrow to support where websites and clients are going? That may sound rhetorical for those of us in the industry, but when you consider what clients consistently need for their web projects it’s worth some thought. On the surface, every project needs design. Let’s make that good design since that’s a big differentiator as stickier, more engaging sites using tools like Flash and

Ajax create a higher level of interactivity and graphic richness. And now that pretty site may need to be connected to an ecommerce system with databases to serve up products and information for ordering. And to make it easier for the financial reporting, let’s tie it into the accounting system. And before you know it your cobbler is piecing together all kinds of parts and systems.

Not every client has those exact needs, but I was curious so I looked at 15 projects Q recently did …ranging from start-ups like Excitations which sells ‘experiences,’ to non-profit like the Council of Institutional Investors, to Fortune 500s like Marriott. The common denominators? Every one demanded good quality design. Every project needed a content management system - either an off-the-shelf system or something custom built — for keeping the site easily updated. And every project needed integration to connect the website with 3rd party tools – either backend client-server or web-based systems. Design, Software Development, and Integration. Seems obvious but tomorrow’s agencies can’t do just design, or just software development, or systems integration. They’ll need to do them all well – tying them together to give the client a seamless solution and their customers a seamless experience. The challenge is to find people who understand those idioms; finding creative people that understand what developers need and do; developers that listen to designers, and project and account managers that mediate across all practice areas. In fact, if history is an indicator, what’s happened in the DC region over the past several years has pointed to this trend. More on that in my next post.

To promote Siegfried and Roy’s participation in the Las Vegas Great Santa Run, Q-Industries designed a custom webpage at http://www.siegfriedandroy.com/home/index.php. 

Q-Industries recently took over the account to support and manage the Siegfried and Roy Masters of the Impossible website (www.siegfriedandroy.com) from Razorfish. 

A while back we attended the WWWW Conference in Washington DC.  This one day conference was well attended by creative and technical folks alike.  The organization recently posted pics, video and press related to the show:

 Pics: http://www.worldwidewebwashington.com/photo.shtml

Video: http://www.worldwidewebwashington.com/video.shtml

Press: http://www.worldwidewebwashington.com/press.shtml

 Below is a pic of Q-Industries President and CEO Tim Neill speaking on Interactive Media’s Impact in Washington DC.

 

Interesting take on the concept of “Green Light”ing a project (a la a movie in Hollywood).  Sony’s game development group actually uses the premise of “Red Light”ing a project.  Read on…

How a PlayStation Game Gets Made

By Susan Arendt August 30, 2007 | 11:15:17 AMCategories: Console Games  

There’s an interesting post by Shu Yoshida over at the PlayStation Blog that sketches out the general process of bringing a PlayStation game into being. Shu is the Senior Vice President of Product Development for SCEA, and explains that SCEA doesn’t so much have a “green light” process as it does a “red light” one:

So, rather than just “green light” a project and let it run its course, we would rather reserve the right to “red light” a project if it isn’t going to live up to our high standards. Many ideas and concepts go this route and end up canceled or put on the back burner until the market has shifted to bring it to light.

I think it’s fair to say that Chris would’ve preferred it if someone had shined  that red light on Lair, but I digress. Shu also explained that SCEA “almost never” places an order for a game by saying something like “We need a fantasy game. Go make one.”, instead believing that the best ideas come from the imagination and inspiration of the designers.