May 2007

Talking to people around the office, it always amazes me how much people know about the inner-workings of other departments. A great many of our employees have worked for several completely different departments and performed well in all of them. I would even go as far as to say that our employees’ versatility is one of our greatest strengths as a company.

When I applied at PlattForm, I was originally trying for a position in Proofing. (I have a degree in English, so that’s actually a pretty good fit.) By the time I applied, the Proofing position had already been filled, so they interviewed me for a position in Web Design instead. (My résumé has web design written all over it.) Since then, I’ve filled in as a proofer, content writer and a programmer in addition to my duties as a web designer/web engineer. I’m also a part-time rock star. CDs are $5. E-mail me for details.

Most others around here are exactly the same. Last fall, a coworker and I taught a web design class for people in the company, and people from all kinds of departments showed up—upper management, media, print, and, yes, proofing were all represented. On a few occasions, I’ve actually had proofers open up the source code of the web site they’re proofing and look for details in there. Some members of upper management are able to discuss technical details with clients and relay the information back to us. The common knowledge has been extremely beneficial to all teams involved.

Another case in point: our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) team has taken it upon themselves to be our technical quality assurance for web sites. Proofers are able to catch grammatical and spelling errors, discontinuities, and misspellings of file names; but our SEO department checks to see whether our 404 error pages are returning the correct header response to browsers and search engines. (I don’t even know what that means, but they check it.) They’ve brought the technical quality of our web sites up to a new standard, and they’re constantly finding ways to improve on our methods and processes.

One more example: when clients request revisions to their web sites, the web engineers are the ones who make those revisions. But the web engineers are only a cog in the massive machine that creates our web sites. Recently, a client requested some rather sizeable content revisions to their web site. I briefly looked over the content revisions, and, thanks to my experience with the SEO team, I realized they were trying to undo most of the search engine optimization that our SEO team had put in place (which the client had paid for). I was able to narrowly avert disaster thanks to what the SEO team had taught me. (Alright, it’s not really that dramatic, but you get the picture.)

It’s somewhat comforting to be a part of such a well-oiled or well-greased machine. (I’m not really sure if it’s oil or grease that makes a machine run smoothly. If it’s actually something else entirely, just substitute that.) All that oil or grease or whatever helps provide our clients with better products, and at the end of the day, that’s more important than mere personal enrichment on our part.

By Rick Kitchell

How do you get someone to open a piece of mail? We all get a ton of junk mail every day from credit card companies and video rental places and home remodeling stores. What is it that makes you open something? If it looks official, like it’s from the government, or if it looks like a bill, does that make you open it? What if it has an offer for some useless product or service that you could get for free? Would you open that? What if it was just a really cool-looking design or had a photo of a tropical island or some hot-bodied, scantily clad model on it? What if the envelope was completely blank, or maybe hand written and addressed directly to you by first name only?

What is it that makes you open mail? What is it about the envelope that drives you to be sure you aren’t missing something important by just throwing it away?

As a designer of advertising and mail promotions, these are questions whose answers are as illusive as the giant squid. But the answers are out there. You all prove that by opening your mail every day. So I now throw this age-old question to you, the brave and fearless masses who either love getting new mail or hate me for sending it to you.

What makes you open your mail?

By John M. Weaver

Have you ever noticed a different phrase in place of your title tag in the Google search results? How is that possible? I thought that the title tag is always the clickable link in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It is true that the title tag is supposed to play that roll in the SERPs; however, this is not always the case. Let me take a minute to explain this little SEO mystery that many people are not aware of.

This situation is most commonly found when users search for a company name. For example, I ran a Google search for “Search Engine Guide” and the title tag was not displayed. The SERPs displayed “Search Engine Guide,” but if you clicked the link you saw that their title tag is “A Small Business Guide to Website Promotion and Increased Search Engine Traffic.” So why doesn’t it display the title tag? The answer is the Dmoz.org directory.

Google uses Dmoz as their open directory, and occasionally they pull replacements for title tags or descriptions for their SERPs. This is exactly why many SEO specialists, including myself, will suggest you choose your words very carefully when submitting your site to Dmoz. The chances of having your Dmoz listing displayed in the results page when someone searches for your company name, as you now can see, are pretty good.

If you are not already listed in the Dmoz directory, I suggest you submit your site for review. I’m sure you have read many of the horror stories about being on the review list for three years, etc. The bottom line is that it is worth your time to submit a well-written listing to Dmoz.org. Good luck!

At our annual company meeting, we take time to get updates from all the departments at PlattForm to learn what the previous year brought and what lies ahead. Different departments approach the dissemination of information in various ways. Sometimes it’s a PowerPoint slide show. Sometimes it’s a simple lecture.

Last year, the Media department put on a sketch featuring Tommy Chong, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Sean Connery facing off with Alex Trebek in a round of Celebrity Jeopardy. I think there were supposed to be some facts about the previous year presented, but I have no idea what they were. This is because instead of actually focusing on the facts, we spent 10 minutes having Sean Connery lob extremely inappropriate mother comments at Alex Trebek (none of which I can reprint here).

We thought it might be a safe bet to have our sketch pre-recorded, just so there was no way we could accidentally blurt out some inappropriate nonsequiter. (We just filmed them this time.) In the course of filming, we learned the following:

1. Working with kids can be tough. Getting a 2-year-old child to say “SharePoint sucks!” is a lot harder then you may think. I found it was best to bribe the child with promises of toys. And because I’m not a jerk, I followed through on that promise and made time to play with toys, while important reports sat on my desk, waiting to be reviewed. I’m that dedicated.
2. Cameras are heavy. My de facto excuse for not hitting the gym this week was that I was too busy shooting this movie. However, I didn’t feel much guilt after lugging around the camera for hours on end. I must have dropped at least five pounds in water weight alone from the sweat pouring off me. And that was gross for the people around me. I may have shorted out my keyboard from typing while sweaty.
3. Chihuahuas are funny. I don’t think I need to expand on that.
4. The PlattForm Production Team works hard. I don’t think I’d ever given much consideration to what the Video Production Department at PlattForm does. I knew they had cameras, and they did things with those cameras. They also have a prop room with an awesome afro wig that is fun to wear for no good reason. What I didn’t know is how much effort goes into even a :30 commercial. The Productioneers spend hours setting up the right lighting, adjusting the camera angles, and perfecting the shot to get the best results. Where I am inclined to take the Ed Wood route and assume the first shot is the best, let’s print it and move on, I’ve learned the Production teams pours over every detail to get the best footage possible. Maybe that’s why they have all those awards.

“Life is no way to treat an animal.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
American novelist, 1922-2007

In the spring of 1995, a friend handed me a paperback copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s trippy anti-war novel Slaughter House Five. The cover was torn, the binding weak and the pages jaundiced. I was a sophomore in college, and while I had always enjoyed the craft of writing, I thought the literary scene was as stale and lifeless as this shell of book I held. But inside I found this dark, occasionally humorous satire of World War II and innocence being lost on a world-sized scale.

Slaughter House Five also carries a lesser-known alternate title, The Children’s Crusade. Last month, I found it a strange coincidence that Vonnegut died at 84 from injuries suffered in a fall just days before the Virginia Tech shooting rampage occurred.

Vonnegut’s death had already been overshadowed by the firing of talk show host Don Imus. That situation was born from stupidity. Racism is, at the most basic level, intolerance of others. Vonnegut addressed similar topics in many of his novels. In Cat’s Cradle in particular, he suggested that society assign numbers to names, which in essence would create a commonality between people who otherwise would be strangers. Kevin 9608 might have something to talk about with another 9608 while re-licensing his car at the DMV.

His ideas were steeped in peace – there wasn’t a clear villain in any of his novels – and his work exuded a real sympathy for the naïve human race he often likened to adolescents.

Children are responsible for the worst school shooting rampages in US history, first at Columbine and now Virginia Tech. In the rush of images and the playback of gunfire that was recorded not only by television cameras, but also by cell phones, it’s easy to lose sight of who the killer actually is.

We think of killers as brooding, dark figures, typically strangers, who kill for a reason. They are usually not the person sitting next to you in a creative writing course. Though disturbed and mentally ill, the Virginia Tech gunman was still a child who pulled the trigger with as little remorse as he would playing a shooter video game.

Children, barely more than 18, were wrapping torn strips of clothing around parts of their bodies to stop bleeding, leaping from windows, perhaps never to heal completely from the psychological trauma of seeing classmates lying lifeless.

I suppose it’s fitting Vonnegut’s death came to pass quietly. I know as a parent I sometimes fall silent when my child refuses to listen and fails time and again. All of us children continue to make the same errors in judgment in the strange coincidence he often accused life to be. I wonder if the Virginia Tech shooter read Vonnegut and, if so, what he thought of those words? He must have been so lost, as broken as that first copy of Slaughter House Five that eventually tore, separating from its spine. And so it goes.