Audio A Build Out

About 2 weeks ago I posted that we were expecting the last of our 4 bids for the build out of our post production audio mixing suite. Well, 2 weeks later I'm still waiting for our final bid but it's not the 4th but rather the 6th. As things turned out, we got a few companies get in the game a bit late. One was a referral from our acoustic designer and the other was a referral because they have built this type of place before. Anyway, a couple phone calls, e-mails and site visits later, we should have the final bids today. Then the fun starts. We expect all of the bids to be over our budget so we need to figure out what's making up the numbers for each, determine how we can change the design of the room without adversely affecting the acoustics of the room, determine who's the best qualified for the job, then get going. This whole process has taken longer than we hoped but in some cases it's the most important room in our whole place so paying attention to detail is more important that getting it done fast. Fast and crappy won't cut it. Thank goodness we have Audio B fully functional so we can still record, audio edit and do some basic mix work.

Kids Get A Plan Kick Off Meeting

Today we held the kick off meeting for the next phase of a project we are very proud of. In 2004 we created, wrote and illustrated books for children in grades 1-3 for the Florida Division of Emergency Management. The storybook for first graders, The Adventures of Rabbit, Possum, and Squirrel in The 30/30 Rule, teaches young children how they can protect themselves from lightning strikes. Professor Tinkermeister and the Wacky, Whiz-Bang, Weather-Watching Wonder, shows second grade readers how to protect themselves from thunderstorms. And The Oak Tree Club helps third graders learn about how they can create a Disaster Supply Kit for their families to prepare for a hurricane.

For the 2009 Hazardous Weather Week earlier this year, the Florida Division of Emergency Management partnered with us to create http://www.kidsgetaplan.com/. A 3D cartoon featuring “Professor Tinkermeister” and other characters from the books greets all Floridians on the home page of the site. Kids can choose from online interactive stories where they can have the story read to them or read on their own with just-in-time help if they get stuck. There are reading cues to help improve their comprehension and a glossary to help increase their vocabulary. Instructional activities include games that reinforce the learning from the books, including an activity that allows them to build a disaster supply kit for their own family. Downloadable coloring pages, character profiles and fully produced and sound designed depictions of the books are also available.

The kick off meeting today was for the next phase of the program which is for a 4th book and further enhancements to the website. This is a project that is near and dear to us since it helps children. All of us living in Florida know the variety of weather we get- lightning, hurricanes, fires, etc.- so to be part of such a great initiative is something we take great pride in.

Internships

Today we were visited by someone in the placement office at Valencia. We currently have an intern from Valencia and he was here to check in on his progress and how Valencia can help us more in the future. We welcome people from any local school to come in to see how we run our internships as we're proud of what we do. Over our 8 year existence we have had interns in just about every area of the company, probably close to 50 interns. People who want to be editors, audio mixers, instructional designers, writers and Flash programmers have all interned here. We have worked very hard over the years to make sure our intern program is fair. Our internships are generally unpaid so it's important that we provide them with the experience they deserve. That's the tradeoff. We don't work our interns 30, 40, 50 hours per week, we don't just put them at our front desk all day every day, we don't stick them in a closet every time clients show up. We try to teach the interns what they need to know to get a job in the industry when they leave. As most people I know will attest to, college gets you book ready for your career but it doesn't always prepare you for the real world. We hope after 3 or 4 months of an internship a couple days per week our interns are ready for the real world, either with us or elsewhere.

Client Relationships

It is refreshing when you have a client that really respects you. I know that sounds pretty simple but anyone that works for clients knows that having a client respect you doesn't always happen. Here's the story: we have a client, we'll just say it's one of our top accounts. Today we set up a meeting with a completely different division of his company largely because of his referral. This client goes out of his way to tell others about us and the work we do for him. Now this client gets angry at us sometimes and we get angry at him sometimes too. But at the end of the day, we are very lucky to have him as a client and judging by how he tries to help us out he respects us as well. On the other hand, it's tough to hear that other clients, no matter how much effort you put in to their projects, always seem to be trying to find a way to NOT come back. But today, rather than dwell on the clients that we can never please, we choose to focus on the ones that we can.

WIFT Meeting & Follow Up Meetings

Last night we hosted the Women In Film & Television 2nd Quarter General Meeting. My unofficial unsophisticated count was 108 guests and I know I missed at least 5-10 people. By far, the most people we have had in our new building. The turn out was one of the largest WIFT meetings in recent memory. We're assuming 99% of that was people wanting to hear State of Florida Film Commissioner Lucia Fishburne speak and 1% was to see our new building but that's ok, we're happy to ride anyone's coat tales if it means a full house at our place. We've have wanted to host a WIFT meeting for about a year and a half now but it made no sense to have the meeting at our old place before we moved so we've been putting it off each quarter so it was good to finally have it work out. This was second large function we have had since we moved, the first was the event with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer on May 21. Each time we have groups in the building we learn a little more about traffic flow in the building and where people like to congregate. We take notes so we can properly prepare for our big client party in the fall.

Remember the group Bob, Phil & Shirley went to Boca last week to meet with. They called on Saturday and wanted to come up here to see our place and meet our team. Obviously that's a great sign but man did it make for a long eventful day. We started prepping for them around 10am and left last night at 9:30pm and we were pretty much "on" the whole time. Hopefully more to come from this group.

If a Tree Falls...

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it really make a sound? If we have a busy day but no one is around, did we really accomplish that much? I sure hope so because our team was scattered all over the state of Florida today so the office was really quiet but we all accomplished a lot.

A couple people were down in Boca Raton having a meeting with a potential client/partner. The meeting went very well so that is exciting. Then I met with a person that might help in our sales department. It's a person we have known for about a year and we think she can help us so it's exciting to see where that might go. Then we had another team of contractors come by to see the proposed audio space so they can put together a quote/bid for us. The bidding process is taking a bit longer than we would have liked but it's more important to do it right than fast. And finally, a team of people were out at Spacecoast Executive Airport shooting an experiment with F-104s and former NASA astronaut Sam Durrance for our upcoming TV series Starfighters Supersonic Science. Nothing like an F-104 flyby at the speed of sound 100 yards away form you.

So there was lots of activity from South Florida up the Space Coast and back to Central Florida. But since we were spread out all over the state today it seemed like a quiet day until you thought about everything that was accomplished.

Duplication Discount & Changes to Studio Website

A couple years ago we did a promotion offering a discount on duplication involving HDCam when we got our second deck. It seemed to be well-received so we thought we'd do another one now to celebrate our new home. It's a good way to get people here to see the place (when they drop off tapes) and it also allows us to offer a cost savings with most people looking for deals these days. The e-mail blast went out today along with posting on Facebook and Twitter. It's 20% off all duplication involving HDCam, HDV and Digital Beta. Contact Carlo Simone at 407-601-7878 x5325 or csimone@ideasorlando.com for more details or to place an order.

Last week we had an internal meeting about updating our website. Some adding, more subtracting and some modifying. The Studio website (www.ideasmediastudio.com) was the easiest one to modify so we did that first to see if we like it. Basically, we wanted to reduce some text and get the samples front and center. We're finding people want to see our work, wither as video or stills so we put the samples up front and added stills to the other pages. If you have feedback please let me know.

Audio A & Sales

First blog with it no longer just being about the new home and of course, the topic is new home related. We received bid #3 of 4 this past Friday for the build out of our new Audio A. We spent some time today with the submitting company so they could explain their bid and we could ask questions. I thought the session went well, except their number was higher than we were hoping, although the number was what we were expecting. You can't blame us for hoping, right? We should get the final bid tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday. At that point, we make decisions- value engineering of the room itself as well as who will build it.

We're also anxiously awaiting some meetings this week about some great projects. Hopefully we'll remain in contention and maybe even get some of them. Bob's traveling pitching a couple people/places and Shirley continues working some new angles. We also have a little sales initiative coming out this week. Be sure to check your e-mail or Facebook for the announcement. Just a little thing to incent people to come see the new place.

Changing Blog Topic

We started this blog 6 months ago to help people follow the process of us moving to our new home. Now, we've been in our new home for 3+ months and there's only so much to talk about when it comes to the new home. However, we do have a lot to talk about when it comes to the day-to-day activities at IDEAS. So, beginning today, the topic of our blog will no longer be specifically about our new home and will be the general IDEAS blog.

We will continue to use Facebook and Twitter for short & sweet updates but we will keep blogging about what we're doing at IDEAS. Thanks to everyone who has followed us thus far and we hope to keep you informed and entertained going forward.

Final Cut & Cable TV

A while ago I mentioned that our Final Cut was not behaving nicely. After receiving a time out, and some new inners, everything is back up and running as of last week. It's hard to tell whether what fixed it was really the problem or a second problem caused by our first repair guy beating the crap out of the cards as he was taking them out and putting them back in. Either way, it's fixed, up and running and already back in sessions.

We're also making progress getting our cable TV connections up around the building. Obviously it's not a high priority thing but it is nice being able to check in on things on CNN or ESPN during the day. What's also nice is that we'll have "real" cable as opposed to our old Disney cable. We also have HD. I'm going out this week to use my Best Buy Rewards Points and buying myself a nice HD LCD TV with built in DVD player.

Our 1st Birthday in the New Building

Yesterday was our 8th birthday as a company. Our first day as an independently owned and operated company was July 1, 2001. It's hard to believe it's been 8 years. A lot has happened since then, for the company, for the world and for all of us personally. But while yesterday was our 8th birthday, it was our first celebrated in the new building. Each year on our birthday we bring in a special lunch for the staff. In the old building we'd set up the food in the main hallway, cover the pool table and fit as many people in the lounge as possible. Inevitably we wouldn't be able to fit everyone so the stragglers would go in the conference room. What that means was we couldn't have a "family" meal all together on a special occasion. In the new building however, it's easy to set up food in the Story Lab and get everyone around the table in the conference room. We can easily get 20 people around our conference table and if we squeeze and work at it we can get up to 26 people around the table. It was really nice to have everyone in one room enjoying our birthday. Here's to at least 8 more years together.