Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. We post our favorite picture from each week and share its story here.

Projectline conquers mountains, deserts, and yes even oceans to keep our reach far and wide. But even obstacles that grand can’t keep us apart. Colleen and her friend, Annette, found time during their adventures abroad to sit down for wine and tapas with our very own Spain-based Natalia. ¡Salud!

Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. We post our favorite picture from each week and share its story here.

Work days can get pretty busy, and eventually everyone needs a moment of zen. Downtown Seattle isn’t exactly overflowing with great meditation locations, but Projectline is lucky to have this jewel just around the corner. When the stress gets to be too much, I follow the call to a peaceful place. Waterfall Park, an urban oasis…

A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.

-Robert Frost

Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. We post our favorite picture from each week and share its story here.

Here at Projectline, we always strive to deliver client satisfaction…it’s just what we do. However, that doesn’t mean that we don’t like to receive super special recognition from time to time. Actually, we love it! Samantha Lopez, lovingly known in our Philly office as “SLopez”, was recently recognized by her client for keeping a cool head, jumping into “a tough situation…and working through it with strength and finesse, while continuing to laugh and roll with the punches”. Congratulations Samantha, on a job well done. You rock!

Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. We post our favorite picture from each week and share its story here.

Ah the excitement of urban living! And now that we have such a great view from our Smith Tower digs, Projectliners can often be seen peering out the windows to find out what the hullaballoo down below is all about.

Greeting Earthlings– Happy Earth Day!

Today, worldwide events demonstrate support for environmental awareness and protection. Projectline endeavors to make every day Earth Day by creating an eco-friendly environment. This includes purchasing products from companies that monitor their environmental impact, serving organic and locally sourced foods, encouraging green commuting, leasing office space that is energy efficient, and sponsoring a Green Team.

Every year, in honor of Earth Day, we also join the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance’s Lake Washington Kayak Cleanup.

In addition to the support of my Projectline family, as a Senior Marketing and Communications Project Manager at Microsoft Research, I have the privilege to work on different projects that help address some of the world’s most urgent challenges. Microsoft Research collaborates with the world’s top academic researchers and institutions to develop technologies that fuel data-intensive scientific research. One area of focus is earth, energy and environment.

Some Microsoft Research projects that help accelerate insight in the environmental and earth sciences include eco-testing a building before it’s built and using technology to help fight forest fires. That’s just a few examples of technology doing good (green) work.

In light of Earth Day, I wanted to share my excitement about a new tool that’s intended to better understand Latin America’s ecology and help protect threatened species. That new tool is LiveANDES (Advanced Network for the Distribution of Endangered Species). It’s developed by a partnership among researchers at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, the LACCIR (Latin American and Caribbean Collaborative ICT Research) Virtual Institute, and Microsoft Research.

LiveANDES is designed to collect, house, and analyze data about Latin America’s wildlife—data that could prove vital to the preservation of the region’s rich but increasingly threatened biodiversity, which has suffered grievously from loss of habitat and climate change. The platform is designed to store and parse data points about Latin America’s wildlife, including photographs, audio and video recordings, and location and sighting data. Researchers use the data stored in the tool to identify species living in Latin America, where they live today, and elements that may be threatening their future.

Ignacio Casas, Executive Director of LACCIR, explains that LiveANDES integrates with the fourth paradigm, a foundational concept of eScience, in which data-intensive computing facilitates scientific discovery. LiveANDES is designed to make parsing the huge volumes of data recorded manageable for researchers. In addition, LiveANDES can help red-list assessment for endangered species and improve information for illegal trafficking of wildlife species. LiveANDES can be developed for every ecological region or country around the world in a bottom up way.

For more information, check out the LiveANDES project page or visit the Microsoft Research Connections Blog. And to get involved with Projectline’s support of the Lake Washington clean-up or other volunteer events, email ivolunteer@projectlineinc.com.

Good content travels well. That’s one way to sum up the conversation from a recent Content Strategy Seattle meetup, which Projectline hosted at its offices in Smith Tower.

In her book titled Content Everywhere, which fed our group’s discussion, author Sara Wachter-Boettcher lays out a methodology for shaping and paring down content so that it is more modular and flexible.

More flexible content is the starting point for a better user experience, regardless of how it’s viewed. Your readers expect to be able to enjoy your content on their tablet, their smartphone, their PC—whatever’s in reach when you catch their attention. Taking a flexible approach to content means you don’t have to anticipate every device your content may acquire in its travels. Instead, it’s built from the ground up to respond to the device it lands on.

Wachter-Boettcher asserts that content modeling is an essential first step in this process. Its purpose is to unpack the core elements of any piece of content, analyze them, and make decisions about their relative importance in delivering the intended message. The output of this exercise is what Wachter-Boettcher calls modular content, “chunks” that are ready to travel.

It turns out that converting blocks of text and images built for a single medium into intelligible bits ready for display on any device is no small task. Immediately, it raises all sorts of challenging questions about what to save and what to scrap. And then, of course, there’s the task of getting this appropriately designated content into a software system where it can be searched, sorted, coded, and sent off to wherever it needs to go.

If all of this sounds like work—it is. So it seems perfectly valid to pose the question, as several people in our discussion group did: what is the return on this investment? Is it really worth the effort to prepare content for every conceivable format?

During our discussion, someone offered the example of a mobile application built for a fairly narrow use-case. The app was intended to help attendees view real-time availability of various conference sessions—while helping them navigate the sprawling venue where the conference was being held. The features were limited and the content was designed primarily with smartphone screens in mind. Relatively little consideration was given to how this information might be friendlier to other screen resolutions and more useful to a broader user population long after the conference was over.

In fact, one member of the group pointed out that this approach to design flouted a bedrock principle of content strategy: that good content is designed to be flexible and future-proof. Still, the person familiar with the conference app defended its practical value. “The UI and the content met the needs of the target audience. It was developed quickly. It was a success, right?”

These two viewpoints seem to be diametrically opposed. But they are actually aligned on one of the most important principles of content strategy. Not every organization has the resources to retool their entire content production infrastructure. Fewer still have an information architect available to lend a hand. But every organization can start by taking a more deliberate approach to content design, one that puts the audience at the center. While the scope and architecture of the conference app precluded engagement with a wider audience, it reflected a clear focus on the immediate needs of end users. Achieving this goal requires the kind of attentive filtering and prioritizing that Wachter-Boettcher discusses in Content Everywhere.

After all, the first step in readying content to be more fluid and transportable is to spend more time considering how it will be used and shared. Practices like content auditing, modeling, and tagging derive from an acceptance that people outside of your organization (your readers, your customers, etc.) are the true owners of the information you distribute. You define the message and the format, but they decide the journey it will take. So prepare your content to travel well. And remember that the time and effort you invest now in making your content more adaptable and responsive is a worthy investment in the future.

Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. We post our favorite picture from each week and share its story here.

If you work at Projectline, you probably already know these folks. If not, you should make a point of it. “Charming”, “friendly”, and “talented” are just a few of the words often used to describe Brady and Kim (affectionately known as “Kimfer”). Among many other responsibilities, Brady is the guy who edits my captions every week and turns them into the kind of fun, readable snippet that you see before you. Kimfer is the heart of our creative team, providing fun and playfulness on top of the amazing work she does for our clients. A picture of them together, aren’t you lucky?

Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. We post our favorite picture from each week and share its story here.

Ever since our move to the Smith Tower we’ve been hosting a noticeably larger number of guests, both individually and in groups. Sure, the fabulous offices are a big draw, but we’d like to think it’s more about the magnetic pull of all these awesome marketing minds located in one unified place. Last week, a large group of Business and Marketing students from Humboldt State College came for a tour and to meet with some of our leadership. Thanks for visiting, Humboldt! Maybe we’ll see some of you again real soon.

You have probably heard the term crowdsourcing, but maybe you’re still not sure of what it is or who is using it. At this year’s PSAMA MarketMix, we got a tour of the crowdsourcing landscape from Mike Reeder, VP of Account Planning & Strategy at Possible, Seattle, and Jennifer Chiu, the author of Roll with Jen, voted 2011 Best Food Blog of Western Washington by Evening Magazine.

If you’re not familiar with crowdsourcing, think of it as a way to invite customers to participate in your company, whether it be providing feedback, ideas, or straight-up cash funding.

Now you’d probably think crowdsourcing is a great resource for individuals or small companies looking for funding or just a little extra support. But big and small companies alike are using crowdsourcing. Companies as traditional as an electrical supply company in Ohio and as innovative as the X Prize Foundation, for example, have used crowdsourcing to fuel product development.

Think about it—if you are instrumental in shaping a company or influencing a company’s product, you feel connected and invested in their success. Why? Because you helped make it happen.

Reeder shared the Lay’s Do Us a Flavor crowdsourced campaign. Lay’s challenged consumers to create new potato chip flavors using three ingredients. Contest winners got their flavors produced and then were tasked with helping promote their product. The chip creators pushed out their products through their social networks and participated in Lay’s promotional spots. The winning flavors include Chicken & Waffles, Cheesy Garlic Bread, and Sriracha. Lay’s not only gained a deeper engagement with their customers, but they also gained insight on what their customers like.

On the smaller business side, Chiu shared her own story on how she used crowdsourcing to take Roll with Jen to the next level. Chiu wanted to expand her blog to TV and had her sights set on Japan as the perfect place to shoot her pilot. She decided to use Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing funding platform for creative projects, to finance her food tour of Japan.

Chiu created a fun video that asked her community if, like her, they ever wished “Anthony Bourdain or Samantha Brown were a small Asian woman.” Her video was humorous, engaging, and spoke to her audience, hip 30-somethings who enjoy discovering the latest haunts, travel, and style. Jen met her funding goal and now she’s on her way to becoming the next Anthony Bourdain—all thanks to the power of crowdsourcing.

Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. We post our favorite picture from each week and share its story here.

We get a whole bunch of visitors at the Projectline offices in Seattle. Whether they’re clients, prospective employees, or family members just visiting a loved one in a beautiful setting, we’re happy to have folks drop by. What excites us more than any other visitors, though, is when an employee from one of our other worldwide locations stop in. Last week we had the great pleasure of hosting Sean Hagan, from our Philadelphia contingent, and the Projectline Welcoming Committee was ready for action. Thanks for coming, Sean, and we miss you already!