Moxy Productions Inc.

What an exciting time to be in our business! Over the past few years we (Moxy and  Wild Imaginations Inc.) have been very fortunate to work with some great clients, learn a ton about communications and brand development, and be a part of some exciting developments in business—both our own business growth and our clients’.

But there’s even better things on the horizon, and we’re just waking up to it now. It’s best to bring this discussion in the first person: not “we” Moxy Productions Inc. / MOXY Webworks, but me, Jesse Collins, owner-operator, chief-cook-and-bottle-washer, and author of this post. That’s because this discussion is as much about the distillation of business communications as it is about increasing reach and building community around what we do, or what we sell, or what service we provide.

First, the idea of doing any of this stems from believing in what we do. As a provider of a product or service, we start by being evangelists for what we create. Everything I’ve ever done in my life has come from absolute belief in being happy, from the belief that I would rather be a success at something I love than a failure at something I hate. From leaving the University of Toronto to become an actor, which led me into the most engaging and satisfying performance career I could’ve hoped for, from wanting to learn about directing—again, a passion that I still enjoy—to wanting to build a business (read: make my living from) working with the communications and the internet.  So here I am. Engaged in learning every day, all because I left an institution of learning to pursue something that people thought was unattainable. That’s ironic.

So believing in what we do becomes the foundation for how we successfully use this vast, evolving mass of tools and techniques that are being generated every second of every day on the internet. Of late, Social Media has become so important that it can no longer be ignored by companies that believe in what they do. It’s not a passing fancy, it’s not a diversion for people playing little games on their computer. It is a legitimate place where people expect to share information and engage in conversation with their friends, with strangers and with brands. Yes, engage in conversation with brands.

Perhaps the best example of this is Twitter. Twitter is a service that allows users to send updates or “tweets”: text-based posts, up to 140 characters long to the Twitter website quickly and easily, from the web, from Facebook, or even from your phone.

Updates are instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them (people who “follow” you) as well as to the public stream. Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application.

I joined Twitter a little over a year ago. Admittedly, at first I didn’t get it. It felt like a distraction I didn’t need. I should be writing and talking and building and working, I thought, not watching this stream of people’s tweets go by.

But gradually, I started connecting with and following people in the same business as us, and people with the same interests. I started to notice that folks were using these short posts to communicate valuable ideas, share links to important blog posts, and even just to make each other feel better in an increasingly hostile and mean-spirited world (i.e. American Idol and society’s new craving for harsh criticism of people who do things out of joy). And I wasn’t the only one.

Twitter has grown exponentially, to the point that it can barely handle it. They are currently trying to shore up the system to handle the millions of users that have flocked to it. And it’s being used creatively, engagingly, and successfully, by people and businesses alike.

But the internet shows this better than I can. In this interview of Amy Worley from H&R Block By Rodney Rumford of www.Facereviews.com, see how a massive company uses it to engage with its customers.

Again, I’m referencing the Goethe quotation “Architecture is frozen music”, only this time it’s spot on. We’ve been giving a hand to my wife’s cousin Terry Corbett to create a site that provides some insight into his stone fireplace business, and how it emanated from his work as a sculptor. I’m going to cross-post this at jessecollins.com (my personal blog, sub-titled “A blog for those who’d rather be at the cottage”) because there is a story regarding Terry’s love for sculpting that is most appropo for that venue…

But here at the Moxy blog, it’s important to note why we wanted to come on board to do some design for Terry. Web presence is about findability, as Aarron Walter describes brilliantly in this month’s issue of A List Apart. And we noted that with Terry’s existing site that was basically a catalogue built on non-standards-aware code, findability was being impeded by the site. I believe really strongly that the beauty of his work with stone fireplaces is the direct result of his talents as an artist; and that folks who want that kind of high-end detail in a big investment for their home, should be able to find his story on the web.

So have a look at stone-fireplace.ca for more info about Terry, his team and their work!

We still have much to do there (like add proper contact forms and begin to showcase some actual fireplace mantel models) but that will come in time. The main thing is we’ve given findability a chance through standards and design.

Well, it’s a sin that I’ve been so busy that we’ve neglected our blog. But wait a minute—that’s a good thing!

The fact is, I’ve been scurrying back and forth between client work, March Breakage, and a ton of voice work. Carol left today for a mini-tour of the Southern USA with clarinet-phenom Dave Bennett.

But there’s some wonderful things in store down the road. We’re going to begin developing our first web-based app, Involvid, a new twist on video training and certification; we’re going to get Carol rolling with some Singing Instruction and Technique; and we’re lending a hand to our brilliant cousin Terry Corbett over at Northern Stoneworks, embarking on a new stone fireplace site.

So watch this space - lots more coming soon!

I recently spoke at the Chinese New Year Banquet of the British Computer Society in Upper Canada. A small but enthusiastic group of revelers waited patiently through my presentation, “Bridging the Disconnect between Art and technology: From Wild Imaginations to Web Experiences” before an absolutely extraordinary banquet prepared by Empire Legendary Oriental Cuisine. If I’d known the food was going to be so fantastic, I would’ve cut the presentation down to the title and “Happy New Year.”

It was great chatting afterwards with some of the guests. It’s a little unorthodox to wax poetic about web development (and in particular, web standards), and how a lifetime of working with actors, designers and directors led me to them—but there is a connection. That connection should just be made more quickly when there’s good food waiting.

Our thanks to Shane O’Neill from Hitachi Canada for the invite. It was a great night.

…if we do say so ourselves.! This redesign for Bilingual Recruiters Inc. has been a pleasure from start to finish.

More than just bringing a contemporary look-and-feel on top of standards-savvy xhtml, we created some templates so the staff at Bilingual Recruiters Inc. can update the site themselves.

There’s a little AJAX sprinkled here and there, and be sure to checkout the table sort options on the Career Opportunities page, available simply by clicking on the headers. These are thanks to some brilliant javascript by the good folks kryogenix.org. There’s quite a number of cool little touches throughout the site–and as usual, it’s a bag of semantic goodness.

Again, here was a client that provided timely content, great design guidance and was a pleasure to work with. Maybe that’s why the site ended up looking so good!

We’re pretty lucky to have some great clients around here, but this relaunch is for one of our originals. Maurine first worked with us when we built a CMS for People First, an Organizational Development consulting firm in Toronto.

As she expanded her horizons into Business Relationship consulting, she was kind enough to bring us along.

And appropriately so – our business relationship with Maurine’s company is one of the best that we have…

Congratulations, Maurine, on the relaunch of maurine.ca!

We have a new client who is a friend of a friend. We’ve been going through the Requirement Gathering phase of their site, and have discussed with them our commitment to Web Standards, and our belief that it’s best to start with content and build from there. We’ve basically focussed on the best practices that we’ve learned from reading the advice of everyone from Zeldman to Cederholm to Clarke, to mention but a few.

This client recently sent us a document that they had received from an SEO firm. It was basically a checklist of points about building a site that was Search Engine Friendly, a sort of compendium of advice about on-site SEO. I shuddered while I waited for my mac’s Preview app to open the doc–I’ve seen more than a few SEO’s that used a lot of mumbo jumbo to scare clients into working with them–but I was pleasantly surprised:

Not only was the list pretty much on-the-money, but we do virtually everything it listed as part of a standard build of any static site. No wonder our clients see a Search Engine bump after we redesign for them.

Got the new design roughed in very quickly - only to discover yet another Internet Explorer bug. For you non-programming types, these little bugs are a collection of things that make IE (albeit the most popular browser in the world) behave strangely when it reads perfectly formed code. The reasons for this are long and boring, but suffice it to say that to make a web site that stands a better chance of working in virtualy every other type of output device (phones, tv’s, real browsers, visual-assist screen readers for the disabled - you name it) it is best to adhere to Web Standards. But IE tends to choke on them because Microsoft wanted to create a number of it’s own unique and special bells-and-whistles. Or for some other reason that I don’t know about.

So to make that broken browser work, we have to send it some special pieces of code that we call “hacks”. They make it behave like a real standards-compliant browser should. And just when you think you’ve learned all the hacks you’ll ever need, say hello to our new friend, hasLayout.

Fortunately hasLayout.net came to the rescue. And it’s fixed.

And we’ve just moved into a Rock Opera.

It may be only a few miles down the road, but it feels like light years away–MOXY has taken residence in it’s new digs in Clarkson!

Ominously located over the recently defunct Momentum Fitness, once venue for the short-lived The Rock fitness/climbing club, and originally a cold storage warehouse, the place comes complete with a Seizure Order on the door for whatever venture starts on the main and second floors. But up on the third, it’s another world.

The studio space above boasts a couple of design firms and technology companies, and notably a very cool company called Think that has been creating great print and marketing for a number of years here in South Mississauga. Owned and operated by Jeff Stephens, it’s a company with a lot in common with MOXY, as well as some key complementary differences. With some changes underway they were able to make room for us in their space, and this is where it gets great…

Getting to the office requires humping up three flights of concrete stairs but, as always, a bit of leg work pays off. Overlooking parkland and green space, the environment exudes creativity. The ceilings are high, the windows are huge and the view is nothing but acres of ball diamonds, soccer fields and trees. And then every so often, like a reminder of commerce to the day-dreaming designer, a commuter train wends it’s way through the tableau. It’s like something from a dream.

Recently, the building has sold. No one knows what’s going to happen next or how long this reverie will last. But we’ll basque in it while it does.

It also seemed to be an appropriate time to launch the redesign of MOXY. We call this Clarkson. Hope you like it.