Forget what you’ve heard! The infographic is not dead! Oh sure there are bad designers out there doing their best to try and kill it, but the infographic remains the best way to communicate complex information quickly and clearly.

A good infographic can increase traffic to your website.
Since 2008 the number of searches for the term “infographics” has increased exponentially. Infographics can help your company with its social success online. Making your infographic embeddable allows people to share and re-post the image to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It is also helpful to create social sharing buttons in your infographic that will allow your visitors to easily Tweet or share a link to your site.

Infographics are a great way to build brand identity. As more and more people view and share your infographic they will be sure to notice the brand logo you have appropriately placed within the design. It is also best to use relevant data in your infographic, making it more accessible within search engines.

Lastly, a successful infographic creates alot of links by being shared or adopted by other users. It is easier and more engaging to share an infographic rather than a blog post full of text. It is the propensity to be shared that makes the infographic such a powerful SEO and marketing tool and its visual appeal makes it that much more fun to share. We are, after all, visual creatures.

Brothers and sisters the infographic is not dead! Viva la infographic!


Check out Arcstone’s infographic work!

Infographics for Barrett Moving and Storage, Meshbesher & Spence, and Gassen.

I’ve been noticing a trend for larger projects that have been coming to us lately. A surprising number of long term clients as well as new customers want to formally partner and work together to build web applications. I’ve had several conversations turn to creating a joint venture LLC or a cooperative agreement early on. We regularly get 3-4 of these a year but in the last 6 months, I’ve had at least 8 joint venture opportunities of one kind or another pass my desk.

What does this kind of arrangement do?

For our clients a joint venture can:

1. Reduce financial risk by lowering up front development costs – ArcStone bears a proportionate amount of the expense.
2. Give the project a jump start – sometimes we can we inject proprietary software into the partnership.
3. Eliminate the need for our clients to hire any initial, dedicated technical employees.

Joint ventures benefit ArcStone by:

1. Providing an additional revenue stream and an avenue for discovering new consulting opportunities.
2. Enables us to harvest some of the potential upside as the application becomes more successful.
3. Allows us to exercise our entrepreneurial muscles (which is a ton of fun) – having started three other online spin-offs, AssociationsOnline, HOAWeb, and Wonderfile – we love the start-up!

Is this a sign of the times – are other web developers seeing this trend?

Picture this: It is just another day at ArcStone. We grab our morning coffee, chat about this and that, and check our email. Then it is time to get to work. Time to delve into the world of never-been-done-before.

That’s our world.

We Love A Good Challenge

Our latest project coincided with the kick-off of Minnesota hockey season. Atomic School came to us with a unique challenge: They needed an e-commerce website that would allow the parents of Minnetonka, MN hockey players to easily order clothing and accessories. But there was a catch.

There were over 730 youth hockey players in Minnetonka. Each player’s team needed to have its own “store,” meaning its own personalized URL, as well as a simple checkout that ensured their orders were sent to the right places. Timing was tight. Hockey season was only weeks out.

But Minnetonka loves its hockey and we will always love working on web apps, so it was the perfect storm.

Unique Problem? No Problem.

Using Magento, a popular open-source e-commerce platform, we did some intensive customization to to allow the Atomic School staff to setup multiple “stores” with the click of a button.

We were able to improve upon the base Magento functionality, in this case to speed up the setup process. A member of the Atomic School staff uploads the entire inventory to Magento exactly once. They then enter the URLs and shipping details for each team.

Now it takes a customer less than three minutes from start to finish to order a Bauer Team Jacket. That’s the magic touch.

What’s Your Idea?

We love new and fresh ideas and Magento is just one of the many tools that we have at our disposal. And yes, we still offer one of the best guppy consulting services in the Western Hemisphere. What’s your idea? It would be great to hear from you.

VitalWear, makers of the VitalWrap thermal compression medical
device, are number 138 on Inc Magazine’s list of the top 500 fastest growing companies in America. With tens of millions of American’s suffering from chronic pain, it’s no surprise to see VitalWear’s sales explode over the last year.

VitalWear’s Unique Approach
The revolutionary VitalWrap system provides both compression and heat to provide natural relief of chronic pain, quicken injury recovery, provide relief to arthritis sufferers and soothe other medical ailments.

The VitalWrap system is much more than a simple cooling or heat therapy wrap. It combines extended periods of heating and cooling with compression. The system is very simple to use, extremely durable, and is specifically designed to fit different body areas.

Support For Growth
ArcStone has been able to help VitalWear grow by providing web design services and the powerful Wonderfile document management system that powers VitalWear’s downloads area. Recently, ArcStone designed VitalWear’s store using the popular open-source, e-commerce platform, Magento, so that customers can order products online.

See the Inc. profile on VitalWear here and visit VitalWear.com for more information on their innovative pain management solutions.

The numbers are in. I’ve thought about this thoroughly and in keeping with ArcStone’s nerdy roots, created an algorithm.  I added up productivity gains subtracted employee gripes and moans and then divided by hours logged.

(Gains – Gripes) / Hours = X

The clear winner for best technology investment in 2008?

Our switch to Google Apps for our company email, calendar and documentation platform.

Google Apps has five elements that you need to know about…

1. User Management – to secure access and set permissions for your team.
2. Email – in this case Gmail, which is Google’s fantastic web mail service.  Users can also use mail clients like Outlook or Thunderbird if they wish.
3. Calendar – An online personal calendar which may be shared with your colleagues.
4. Sites - An easy to edit wiki system.  Need a quick wiki to organize a project, or documentation?  It literally takes a non-technical user 5 minutes to create a new site and start adding content.  You can then restrict content to certain users or publish to the web at large.
5. Docs – an online productivity suite which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and data collection application.   These have become very important tools in the tool box for us at ArcStone.  We use Docs for tracking basic spreadsheet information centrally like employee phone extensions and incoming leads, to collaborating on our 2009 business plan.  Google Docs also includes a slick form generation tool, enabling non-technical users to easily create online forms for surveys and similar data collection projects.  Google is clearly targeting Microsoft Office users, but I have to confess Google Docs still has a ways to go before replacing Office – don’t plan on using it exclusively.

And how much $$ for all these goodies?  If you have fewer than one hundred employees, the price is truly right. You pay them $0.  All it took for us was a DNS update so that Gmail started getting our our email and then some configuration / internal communication / training to make the transition.

Before you ask, no I’m not working for Google.  I just want to share something that’s working well for us.

If you’re an ArcStone client and you’re interested in making the transition to Google Apps, drop me a line.  If there’s enough interest, I’d be happy to schedule a group Webinar demonstrating how we use Google Apps and help you decide whether or not to make the move.

At ArcStone we ring a bell every time we launch a new web site. This little ritual always elicits cheers and smiles, shouts of glee and sometimes even whistles of incredulity.

I think little rituals are important for a company to cultivate. They become part of the culture – people learn them, and by actively participating can more easily become part of the group. These rituals help define the culture and give the participants a framework for interaction. Even unconscious rituals like trips to CSV, stepping out for a smoke with colleagues, or going to lunch on Fridays at Taco Bell collectively bring us together.

One of my favorites is our annual trivia contest. Everyone submits questions to me before our holiday party. I assemble them and read them off (usually punctuated by a lot of laughing, cajoling and tom foolery). We grade the results and the winner gets bragging rights / a fabulous prize. I think the trivia gives our party something that brings the group together – each shared experience make us a little closer. Kudos to Alicia Cermak for bringing home the prize this year.

So I want to start a new one – and I’d like you fellow ArcStonians to participate. Think of any highlights for this last year and let’s add them to the blog. We’ll be able to keep a record moving forward of some of the important/interesting/remarkable/funny things that happened this past year.

I’ve been doing this in my personal life for the last 15 years and it’s amazing what you forget and a lot of fun to review them and reminisce.

So here’s a start, please comment if you have anything to add…. Happy New Year!

(To be read listening to Aqualung’s, Brighter than Sunshine)

1. AMP Development – AMP CAMP

2. Launching Wonderfile

3. Completing ASIL Phase 2

4. Awesome new colleagues – Shawn, Belden, Pam, Dan, Arouna

5. Holiday Party at David and Lisa’s

6. Adding a 401 K benefit – mid year ArcStone Manifesto meeting

7. Welcome the birth of Talia Louwagie

8. Ryan and Angie tie the knot

9. Alicia’s bachelors of computer science and cake decorating degrees

10. Roberto marking Belden’s territory

11. New fridge and wet bar

12. IPhone frenzy

13. SVN, pizza and gin

14. ArcStone beer brewed by Nick and Carrie

One of the things many of us like about ArcStone is the flexible work environment. Flexible means (at least to me) a recognition that to be most productive and effective you need to have a sensible work / life balance. Sometimes people will be more productive at night, want to work in the early morning, need to take a half-day with little warning, take a two-hour lunch to fit in a work out, etc.

This “flexibility” has been an ongoing experiment. Despite my best intentions and knowing that it benefits everyone from employee to customer – it still occasionally annoys me.

As a manager I frequently need to have short status / update conversations with my fellow ArcStonians. The flexible work schedule sometimes gets in my way and forces me/us to be slower to respond than I would like. I think this is a common feeling for those in management roles over here.

A couple of days ago my frustration level hit a peak and I sent a long, whiney email to the entire office, ranting about needing better communication and consistency so that we can work together more efficiently.

I asked for feedback and help from people and yea, verily yea, I got it.

Over the last few days I’ve been able to reflect, collect, and review the responses from my coworkers. I’ve compiled a partial list below and thought I’d share our efforts with the world. Hopefully they will be of use…

(more…)

Remember the tired, worn adage – “If everyone went and jumped off a cliff would you do it?” Well…. to do what we can to try to stem the flow of the impending tidal wave of global eco-disaster, ArcStone’s officially going green.

Not that we weren’t green before, it’s just that our past policy was implicit and somewhat lazy. It’s past time to make it explicit and clear to everyone who works here or comes in contact with us.

So please forgive me for jumping on the green hybrid bandwagon, but it’s truly too important to remain complacent and do nothing. Imagine if every business did this. With enough critical mass, I’m sure we’d make an impact.

It starts with one household and one business at a time. As Lisa (my bride) so eloquently put it yesterday, “Action creates clarity.” We’ll clearly see results only if we act and adjust accordingly.

It’s time to act now – here’s the public unveiling of ArcStone’s First Greenification Agenda…

(I’ve written this in mostly general terms so others can copy and paste and use it themselves – ArcStone is following these guidelines and we will adjust as required and get feedback.)

1. Buy REC Offsets – Determine the amount of energy used within the last year. Here’s a calculator that can be applied for business (most seem to be for households). ArcStone generates approximately 103,000 pounds of CO2 per year. So we purchased RECs – Renewable Energy Credit) to offset our usage. View our certificate.
2. Consciously Consume – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

   Reduce
   – No paper plates, plastic forks, wax paper cups, etc.
   – Buy in bulk when applicable.
   – Favor local products with less packaging purchased from green suppliers.
   – Print only when necessary.

   Reuse
   – Sell and/or donate old office equipment.
   – Reuse draft paper printed on one side – set-up a station for this by each printer.

   Recycle
   – Black personal cans for trash – green for recyclables.
   – If there’s no recycling pick-up where you are – sponsor it (ArcStone is doing it for our building – good PR).
   – Dispose of waste / electronics properly.

3. Conserve Electricity / Gas – Use common sense. Turn on lights only as needed. Plug everything into power strips and turn off power strips when leaving the office. Program the adjustable thermostat, if you don’t have one, install one.
4. Encourage Sensible Commuting – Allow employees to telecommute as sensible. We typically allow non-support staff to telecommute two – three days a week. Encourage car pooling, mass transit, and muscle power alternatives for the work commute – at ArcStone green commuters (at least 3 / 5 day per week green commuting average) get earth day off and other special treats.
5. Meet Virtually with Clients / Vendors when Possible – Subscribe to an online virtual meeting platform and learn it well. We currently use – Adobe’s Acrobat Connect Pro which doesn’t require a software download for meeting guests. We like it.
6. Use Good Cleaning Supplies – Don’t buy cleaners with nasty chemicals – there’s really no reason for it. I like to ahere to the rule – if you can’t pronounce it, don’t buy it.

I consider this a draft of a living document – please feel free to comment and make suggestions….

ArcStonian Ryan Brown celebrated a productive Monday of programming by letting his coworkers decorate his desk!

Our very own Jess Louwagie and former employee Tim Bramer both made an appearance on Robert Hodgin’s blog – the conference’s closing speaker.

See for yourself here – and be sure to check out some of Robert’s amazing Processing experiments while you’re there. (Thanks for the inspiration Robert – Amazing presentation!)