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Bob Allen's Dad

Written by Bob Allen.
IDEAS was hatched in the most amazing creative incubator imaginable- Walt Disney World. We love our Disney heritage and treasure our Disney clients and friends. My own connection there goes even deeper. In 1955, a struggling student going to Cal Poly in Long Beach California on the GI bill heard about a new place opening near his home in Anaheim. We stood in line every day and on the last day of hiring, he got a job. His task was to ride on the back of a small train and blow a whistle if anyone looked like they might fall off! Over the course of 33 years, he rose to the position of Vice President of Walt Disney World (there were only a few of those then!). That guy was my dad, Bob Allen (he was Robert C, I’m Robert M and my nephew is Robert C too!).

Dad served Disney till his death at the young age of 55 in 1987 and while he was there, he worked tirelessly to make Disney a truly generous member of the Central Florida Community. Since his death, Walt Disney World has generously given large community service grants in his name every year. This morning, the Hope Community Center in Apopka received $45,000 to continue their extraordinary work with a community of farm workers. My family was there, along with Mickey of course, and I am filled with gratitude to the “kick-butt sisters” at Hope Community Center, to Walt Disney World and to my dad for practicing unrestrained generosity.

Florida Film & Entertainment Tax Credit

This past Friday was a monumental day for the Film & Entertainment industry in Florida. For the first time in many years, a bill passed in Tallahassee that will put the industry back on the worldwide map when it comes to work. I moved to Central Florida in April 1998. About a month after I started working for this company (at that time we were part of Disney), until Thanksgiving of 2001, we had at least one television project in the building at almost all times. It was Petsburgh, then Donna's Day, then Good Dog U, then season 2 of Petsburgh, then season 2 of Donna's Day, then Dooley & Pals, then Sheena then season 2 of Sheena. I may have actually forgotten one or two in there as well. And that's just what we worked on, not to mention everyone at Universal and other projects that we didn't work on but were at Disney (Instinct, From the Earth to the Moon, Mortal Kombat, etc.). My point is, there was broadcast work coming out of our ears.

Then it all stopped. I'm not sure what year it was when the state of Florida decided to stop offering incentives to the entertainment industry but it was within a year of September 11, 2001. The combination of those two events devastated the industry in Central Florida and I'm assuming the entire state. Since then our industry has been destroyed by the likes of Louisiana, North & South Carolina, New Mexico, Canada and a couple other places. Those places used direct cash rebate programs but the real key to their success was a tax credit program. In that time our business (our company) has changed a lot. We depend on traditional entertainment far less than in those days. But that doesn't mean we don't miss it and want it back. It has taken a number of years and a lot of pain & suffering but Florida is now back in the ballgame by joining the tax credit parade.

Productions can earn up to 30% back based on the criteria, instantly making Florida a choice destination for productions. In this budget-sensitive time that we live in the beauty of tax credit process is that it costs little if anything to the state. My sense is that the bulk of the cost the state is going to incur is going to come from increase in staffing to deal with all the people applying for the tax credits for the many productions that will be coming to Florida.

Since Friday I've read how this budget was cut and that budget was cut in the state. At the same time, through a non-cash commitment, the film & entertainment industry was resurrected. Just in the last couple days the film office here in Orlando has seen a significant increase in inquiries about shooting in Central Florida. Who knows where all of this ends up. A year or two from now Florida may be the hottest place to shoot, just like it was 12 years ago. Or maybe this time next year we'll be sitting around trying to figure out how to get people here. There's no way to really know but if the past is any indication (the 1990's) and the recent interest plays out, we will look back on April 30, 2010 as the first day of the rest of our life in the film & entertainment industry. Thanks to everyone in the industry who helped make it happen and to all of the politicians who pushed it through.

New Photos for Website

A couple years ago we were trying to come up with creative for our then new website. We kept coming back to one thing- while the work we do for clients is important, what we really sell is relationships. Ultimately for a project to be successful there needs to be mutual trust between us and the client. The client needs to trust us enough to do what we do best. And we need to trust the client that they are telling us everything we need to know and openly and respectfully participating in the process. Having that mutual trust is huge in order for us to be successful together.

So, as we were coming up with what the website should look like, we believed that someone viewing it needed to be able to get to know us personally instead of just reading about us on a flat text website. Building the relationship with the client needed to start from their first look at the website. The result is the images of each employee on the website. One image has us dressed and looking in our normal everyday work attire. And the second image of each of us has us in our personal off-hours attire. Those are the photos that people really had fun with. Most brought extra cloths, a lot used props, some even brought their pets. It started out as a little thing and quickly got out of control, in a good way. In the end, the result was one of the most popular elements of our current website.

In the next couple weeks we'll be rolling out a new and improved website so we thought we'd give everyone the opportunity to update their photos if they wanted to. Today was the update day. We had a number of people that brought in changes of clothes, props, children (I think belonging to them), and a couple dogs. When we did it the last time it was over a couple days and it was a lot of fun and today was a lot of the same. Keep an eye out for the new website and you'll see some of the results from today.

Bob Allen Honored at Modeling and Simulation Event

Written by Bob Allen
Last night there was a quiet celebration. The Simulation Interoperability and Standards Organization and the Society for Computer Simulation International teamed up to host “CELEBRATE Central Florida Modeling and Simulation”. Now, that’s a mouthful of organizations and pretty geeky looking till you look deeper. 11 of the honorees represented work right here in Orlando. That has assured that our military is better able to face the rigors of the battlefield, our hospitals are beginning to be able to “rehearse” the most pressing kinds of emergency care and that commercial aviation is safer than its ever been- not to mention how we get human beings safely to space and home again.

What struck me the most in the array of future projects was the incredible potential of this set of largely misunderstood disciplines offers. Orlando has the most potent critical mass for the next generation of solutions for mission and life-critical human immersion in the world. Why? Its because of what I characterize as our four “power vectors”: UCF and its centers of academic excellence, Research Park and its corporate and organizational reach into a world of technological excellence, Medical City with its “greenfield advantage” in research and applied medicine and Creative Village- the nascent downtown nexus of creative digital media and entertainment professionals. As was noted last night, the puffery of “who’s the biggest” in any segment is empty compared to the real issue of who is actually innovating.

I like to think that’s where we get in the game at IDEAS. The 12th honoree was me and I’m really grateful that Priscilla Elfrey, the undisputed QUEEN of MS&T, saw fit to include me. We are an Innovation Studio. Our definition of innovation is “The applied confluence of creativity, artistry and intentional action over time for a specific purpose.” What we’ve been able to synthesize from our early efforts creating Battle Stations 21 for the Navy and Essentials of Modeling and Simulation for the ADL Co-Lab, have carried our work into online virtual worlds, our TeacherStudio™ collaborative professional online community for educators, new cultural attractions and redefined patient experiences in both military and community healthcare. As my old friend Chris Stapleton said last night, its invention until someone actually does something- then it can be innovation. I’m grateful not only for the kind recognition from SISO and SCS but moreover for being part of what is happening in Orlando. This is the right place for the next 20 years.

TeacherStudio Roll-Out In Indianapolis

Last week we met in Indianapolis with a group of teachers from the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township to help them brainstorm about the best way to get started using the TeacherStudio. Rolling out a new product in a school district (especially one that requires a great deal of buy-in from those who will use it most – teachers) is a delicate yet exciting process.

We had the great privilege of meeting with a group of 30 teachers who took the first steps in implementing TeacherStudio in their school district. Since TeacherStudio is designed to help districts promote and share best practices, our first step was to give the group an opportunity to think about and list the instructional goals that were most important to them. Once they had this list in front of them, we thought it would be much easier to visualize how they could bring these initiatives to life inside the product. This group of instructional technology educators did an amazing job of listing the programs that are most important in their district right now – they were such self starters and really jumped right in. We then shared with the group what TeacherStudio was and the features (and possibilities) that the product offers. It was our hope that during the demonstration they could begin to get an idea of how they could move forward inside the TeacherStudio.

We spent the remainder of our time together creating a list of video clips (they felt they could capture) that aligned to the initiatives they had identified. It was quite an experience to look at the product we’ve been building over the past year through a new set of eyes. They had such insight and wonderful feedback about the product. So many of them saw potential and were already asking about next steps. We look forward to seeing this group evolve inside the TeacherStudio, as well as be a part of their collaboration with other districts.

For more about TeacherStudio go to www.TeacherStudio.com and for more about IDEAS Learning go to www.ideaslearning.com

Has Technology Helped or Hurt the Olympics?

As I watched the Olympics over the last two weeks I kept arguing with myself- has technology helped or hurt the Olympics? The truth is, I still haven't won or lost the argument. With this being the 30 year anniversary of the Miracle on Ice hockey game I watched a lot of retrospectives on the event. Besides the actual winning of the game, one thing that kept resonating with me was remembering that the game actually occured during the day and was shown tape delay that night. Because there was barely cable TV and it was long before the internet or 24 hour news/sports channels on cable, nobody knew the US had actually won until the game aired that night. Over the last 30 years, specifically, over the last 15 years, TV ratings for the Olympics have declined, except for the years in which the Olympics were held in time zones where most events could be shown live. Declining ratings, in my opinion, can be directly attributed to the internet and 24 hour news/sports coverage. Die hard viewers will always watch, but those who are more peripheral enthusiasts are less likely to watch an event if they already know the results. Over the last two weeks if I wanted to watch something at night that happened during the day it was a lot of effort to not hear the results before watching that night. Because less and less events are shown live, NBC has to resort to stringing you along for 3 hours before they finally show the winning US person in their 2 minute performance. And that's also why we get the never ending tear jerker personal profiles. The primetime telecast of the Olympics is less about the actual events and more about doing anything possible to keep viewers. With that said, the Olympics that just finished got great ratings.

On the other hand, 30 years ago if an event wasn't on the main network it wasn't shown. These past Olympics besides the daily and nightly coverage on NBC we also had MSNBC and USA. If we didn't have 3x the coverage we definitely had twice the coverage than if we just had NBC. The increased coverage is 100% credited with the infatuation people have with Curling now. People started getting in to Curling when it was shown as an after thought on those networks 4 and 8 years ago during the Olympics. More coverage means more exposure for the secondary Olympic sports which I think it good. Also, there is something really cool about watching downhill skiing and ski jumping at 500+ frames per second. Seeing details in extreme slow motion gives you a completely different sense of the action. All the different slow-mos and all the different camera angles really give you a different view of the events.

So there you have it. Don't know where I really stand. Maybe I'll pick up the argument in 2 years after the Summer Olympics or 4 years after the next Winter Olympics.

How the Future Works.... by Bob Allen

It's about 36 degrees and raining outside and the sky looks like an impenetrable roof. That would be Albany, the Capital of New York, at the need of February. I’ve come on our third Radical Platypus mission. You may remember that my pal Jim Brazell, a futurist, scientist and general passionista for all-things Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math; teamed up with me this year and formed Radical Platypus. We brought our very divergent backgrounds along with a couple of other colleagues together to form a new kind of speaking and workshop team. Radical, because we are intentionally iconoclastic on what we present on how the world might be likely to change and Platypus because we are an unusual but potent combination of attributes.

Tomorrow Jim and I will give a PlayShop to the New York State Association of Career and Technical Education Administrators called “How the Future Works Today: yourWORLD, yourSTORY, yourCALLING”. We’ll be combining some speaking (Jim focused on how the world of Tech-Prep education is changing and me on Story and Innovation practices) with some facilitation to help our audience create the future state of their discipline. When we rolled this work out in Atlanta a while back, we got good feedback, We've added and hybridized since then so hopefully we’ll get the same here. Now, if only I can avoid going outside...

Ringling College 2010 Design Summit by Bob Allen

Last week I got to spend two days in Sarasota as a participant in the Ringling College 2010 Design Summit. It was energizing to be immersed in a group of business and governmental leaders for two days exploring the idea of Design and Business. What I heard and experienced was gratifying for us at IDEAS because the resounding message was that the design-thinking we apply in our Innovation work is deeply needed in business. Moreover, our StoryJam protocols are a viable system of applied design! I learned all this by listening to people from across the country explain it. It was at times all I could do to now leap up and yell “Yes, Right On! That’s us! We DO THAT!” OK...I DID leap up and say it but only once.

Friday our long time creative collaborator, designer and composer Tim Duffy, joined me in presenting a 2 hour seminar to 50 or so students. We got to share our own tales to The Creative Journey and listen to theirs. It's so powerful to see how much fresh talent and energy is being unleashed. Our pal Dr. Wanda Chavez teaches here and she got us connected. Friday afternoon I was able to give a talk on the Power of Story as a design tool to the conference audience and it went well. I think these kinds of events really stretch my head about who we should be working with and how we can help clients in new ways. Later this month, I get to go to Albany NY and do a similar workshop for educators. I’ll let you know how that goes.

To learn more about StoryJam and IDEAS Innovation visit http://www.ideasorlando.com/innovation/index.php You'll find additional information about StoryJam under Story Development.

Avid & Final Cut, Can't We All Just Get Along?

A couple weeks ago we hosted a round table discussion involving Kirk Arnold, COO of Avid, Michael Phillips, Principal Product Designer at Avid and about 20 of Central Florida's most highly regarded post production specialists. The evening was put together by the Orlando Post Pros group and we were very happy to play host as well as have our two staff editors involved. The purpose of the evening was for Kirk Arnold & Michael Phillips to tell all of us what they are working on and what's ahead for Avid and also to listen to everyone in the room about what they like, don't like and need from the future Avid products.

I thought it was a good night, time well spent. How often do you get the opportunity to visit with two high ranking people from the company who's product is very important to your business? Inevitably any discussion about Avid these days turns in to a discussion about Final Cut Pro as well. Often times those discussions end up being an us against them or a this is better than that conversation. And my question is can we all just get along?

Our philosophy here at IDEAS is that there is a time, place and budget for both Avid and Final Cut Pro. It doesn't have to be a conversation about whether one is better than the other. It should be a conversation about what's the best product for the project you're working on. We take great pride in the fact that we have both Avid and Final Cut Pro in our facility. Currently we have a Final Cut Pro with all the bells and whistles (Color, Motion, etc.), a Media Composer Nitris DX and a Symphony Nitris DX. All of the systems work almost exclusively in HD off both files and tape.

We have been working with Avid products since they became mainstream back in the 90s. We have been using Final Cut Pro for about two years now so we admittedly have much more knowledge and are more comfortable on Avid. But that doesn't change the fact that we realize the pros and cons of both. Cost will always be something that hurts Avid. Stability will always be something that hurts Final Cut. Avid has the hardware and software parts down to a science. Final Cut is only software so while it will always be on a MAC, there are a variety of media drive choices as well as video cards depending on what you're doing. The Avid DS, which we had for 6 years, is the best tool out of all of them for compositing and effects. But DS is more expensive which means there's less out there which means (as we found out) there are less people out there who know how to operate it.

The bottom line is that some projects are better done on an Avid while some are better done on a Final Cut. Anyone who tells you that every project is best suited on one or the other is, in my opinion, incorrect. We talk to our clients, see what materials they have, what they are trying to accomplish, figure out the best way to produce the best possible final product, then decide whether it should be done on an Avid or a Final Cut. And as far as price goes, we don't really have a rate card for our services on either system. We have done editing for $75 per hour because it's pretty low maintenance (cuts & dissolves only) but we've done editing for $200 per hour because it was intense and it required a lot of resources (color correcting, plug-ins, etc.). And those rates have been charged on Final Cut or Avid so price isn't driven by which system. And of course, the $75 & $100 per hour rates are offered, regardless of the system for higher volume, longer term clients and projects.

Anyway, just my $.02. Both Avid and Final Cut are good systems. There's no need to bash one over the other, they both have their place in our industry.

My Trip to Seattle by Bob Allen

In the age of the “social network” it's more than ever about who you know. But, before there was ever a Facebook or Twitter, there was hanging out at the gym. A few years back (OK, double digits), I met up with a guy in Orlando through my old boss at Disney. He and his wife ran a personal training business and he took me on as a client. After about a year of working out under Jeff’s watchful eye (he once came in my house and actually dragged me out of bed to work out) I got in tremendous shape and Jeff and I and his lovely wife Michelle (who we still call Mike to this day) ended up running two marathons together one of which was the first ever at Walt Disney World. Well, as luck would have it, Jeff surfaced recently at a trade show in Orlando and came to see me. He is now a new business development executive with a company that makes the most advanced fitness equipment in the world. It turns out these guys have wangled a way to include a pretty cool screen and interface with a lot more capacity to provide content for those long and lonely (and in my case sweaty and breathless) hours (or minutes) on the treadmill or the elliptical trainer. Just a long way of explaining why I flew corner to corner from Orlando to Seattle for a creative session tomorrow about just what kind of content might be cool in this new media. What do you want to see on your treadmill screen? Let us know!

The Power of Story

Last week was a nice reminder to us of what we call The Power of Story. It's not some mystical or “magic bullet” concept (and there is a lot of that going around about story these days). We conducted one of our signature StoryJams for a client who is developing a new resort-one that has both challenges and opportunities that are unlike any other and at a time in history when conditions are unprecedented.

There were 35 people in the group and they ranged in beliefs from “Let’s Go!” to “You gotta be kidding!”. Many, we were warned, were not into being “warm and fuzzy”. Cut to the bottom line, by noon the group was deliberately and creatively crafting this new resort. Effortlessly changing their own paradigms and willingly donning the guise of their guests as they took the plan to a new level. Some of the biggest and most thoughtful contributors? All of the people who we were told “might not get into it”.

In the other case, we got a chance to help an institution harvest and collect some of the core stories of their origins. This is, to us, sacred tribal knowledge and when the holders of it move on, retire or pass away, organizations can be forever disconnected from the stories that define their purpose. Not so in this case. Two great days of dialogue and sharing of stories from the people who made history for our client resulted in a cache of real treasure-now preserved and useful for generations. Two great stories we think!

Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) Recap

The Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) was held last week here in Orlando, Florida. It is fascinating to see the number of technology offerings available to those in the education industry. From SMART boards to classroom response systems, companies continue to gear up to meet the needs of teachers and their students. Although seeing all of this technology was “cool,” the more important question that people were asking at the conference was, “How are teachers using this technology to improve their craft?” And, “Does all of this technology actually enhance the way teachers teach and students learn?” It seems to relate in many ways to the same debate that Richard Clark and Robert Kozma had in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The debate revolved around whether or not the media (or technology) you use to deliver content improved one’s learning. There have been many arguments made on both sides of this discussion, but at the end of the day most would agree that the technology you choose has to make sense for the content you are teaching and the instructional strategies you are using. The two go hand-in-hand.

Of particular interest to us last week was to see how educators are using technology to improve their own professional development. Since the creation of our TeacherStudio product (http://www.teacherstudio.com/), we have participated in many conversations that revolve around this topic. Several sessions were focused on this subject and we enjoyed learning about how others are approaching this very important task. It’s no surprise that teachers are doing more with less, and it is important that they still have time for their own professional growth. Some school districts are partnering across state lines to share best practices. Others are looking to “free” online tools, such as Moodle and Ning, to provide their teachers with online support. The reason we put “free” in quotes is because although these tools do not cost any hard dollars, per se, it does require someone’s time within a school or district to get these sites set up and organized. Great progress has definitely been made in this arena and it is exciting to see.

We attended Diane Lewis’ presentation where she talked about how her district, Seminole County (Florida) Public Schools, is using a palette of professional development options to meet the diverse needs of their teachers. From face-to-face training to an educational world in SecondLife they offer a wide array of options. However even with all they were providing – there was still a gap. They needed a way to give their teachers just in time training and a way to see exemplary teachers in action. Our TeacherStudio product is proving to be an answer to that question. It gives districts a way to offer an affordable online professional learning community for their teachers. It makes sharing of best practices easy which lets districts maximize face-to-face time with their teachers, as well as dollars. Although this is just one solution, it definitely offers online tools that teachers and administrators can use.

For more about IDEAS go to http://www.ideasorlando.com/ and for more about IDEAS Learning go to www.ideaslearning.com/

IDEAS Healthcare Practice- Part 3

The final installment on our Healthcare Practice. Once our 4-step approach is followed (talked about in our previous entries), we believe an organization's staff can now learn concrete steps to improve patient satisfaction based on our groundbreaking qualitative research and experience design expertise. We help teach an organization what we have learned about the patient’s perspective, and how nurses, physicians, and non-clinical staff can make a tangible difference in the non-clinical aspects of patient care that are integral to the HCAHPS performance.

We teach 6 New Ways to Improve Patient Satisfaction
1. How to Identify Patient Satisfaction Drivers: The organization must attend to the 6 core drivers of the patient experience to guarantee positive patient satisfaction. We explore these drivers work, and show how to make them work for the organization to make a difference for patients.

2. How to Bridge the Gap between Patient & Caregiver: Clinicians and patients live in two separate worlds and speak two different lead to huge disconnects for patients, how staff can learn to see the world through the patient’s eyes, and what they can do to bridge the gap.

3. How Physicians Can Become 10-Second Heroes: Physicians often miss the mark with patients, and consistently receive the worst satisfaction ratings of all clinical staff. We’ll teach how they can improve the way patients perceive their care in six easy steps that won’t require any significant time commitment.

4. How to Protect and Nurture the Caregiver’s Circle™: We’ve learned in great detail how caregivers and family members are frequently pulled out of what we call the Caregiver Circle. We’ll show what the organization can do to optimize how staff enters that circle, decrease patient isolation, and improve patients’ perception of care and support.

5. How to Utilize the Patient Journey to Develop New Service Offerings: Patients are on a distinctive journey in which their clinical care is just one facet. We’ll show new ways to view the patient journey through the patient’s eyes and help discover unique opportunities for improvement.

6. How to Escalate the Perception of Care: Clinicians communicate with patients on a continuum that can directly impact patients’ HCAHPS evaluations. We’ll show how to move clinical staff from “clinical” to “informative” to “empathic” care, and how the latter is the most valued and remembered by patients.

IDEAS Healthcare Practice- Part 2

In a previous post I talked about our 4-step process for improving the patient experience in hospitals and health care organizations. Through the patient’s eyes, we have developed a proven custom program to enhance and transform their experience and satisfaction ratings, throughout an entire hospital system. Here's the 4-step model for improvement:

Step 1: Culture Mapping
We begin with “Culture Mapping” the stories of patients, their families, and both clinical and non-clinical staff. Out of this time “living” in every corner of the institution—interviewing,
talking, listening, and watching — comes a matrix of stories and observations. Then, using StoryAnalytics, we distill this material into focused and actionable conclusions that become the seedbed for understanding the cultural drivers and the gaps that exist between the current patient experience and the optimal experience the institution is striving for. As a bonus, the staff is invigorated by inclusion in the process.

Step 2: StoryJam
Does the organization have a vision and mission that the staff is passionate about? Can the organization articulate the kind of experience they want to deliver to their patients? Through our years of creating entertainment experiences, we have crafted a rigorous story development process that can be applied to real life business issues in practical ways. In StoryJam, we make a safe and creative environment for 25 to 40 people from the organization. Over two days of iterative story making as part of our creative team, we draw out a clearly articulated vision of the patient experience within the organization. This is not traditional brainstorming. It harnesses the power of storytelling to engage the imagination of participants on the deepest level, and reinvigorates their vision of their work and future. We’ve used it to help organizations as diverse as Novant Health, Roche Molecular, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the United States Air Force Research Labs.

Step 3: Experience Design
Culture Mapping shows us the “actuals” of your patients’ experience and StoryJam weaves a rich tapestry of the “optimals.” Experience Design creates the operational architecture for bridging these two, with guidelines for the organization's culture, offerings and physical environment to deliver an engaging new patient experience across the organization. It includes global elements as well as distinctive offerings for unique points-of-touch to delight the patients wherever they are in their journey.

Step 4: Enculturation
With the design in hand for improvement and transformation, the our Learning Team, in collaboration with the client's HR professionals, develops a suite of Enculturation tools, media, and supporting programs - online, on screen, or in a classroom- to roll out the new Patient Experience to staff and embed behaviors so they aren’t a brief blip, but consistent, daily and authentic.

More later this week.

IDEAS Healthcare Practice- Part 1

One of the lesser known but very important parts of our business is our work in the healthcare industry. So how do you diagnose, prescribe, and rehabilitate when the one needing treatment is the hospital itself? By seeing through the patient’s eyes, we have developed a proven custom program to enhance and transform their experience and satisfaction ratings, throughout an entire hospital system.

Applying “guestology” know-how derived from our years of designing intentional experiences for theme parks, resorts, and Fortune 500 companies, we offer healthcare organizations a fresh way to understand their patients’ experience, and shine a light on the practical pathway to improvement of HCAHPS scores. Our qualitative approach delivers the actionable results patient surveys are calling for and addresses the “invisible factors” that are often difficult to identify through surveys alone.

We use a 4-step process that provides a complete solution pathway for improving the patient experience – assessing the current state of the organization, envisioning the ideal patient experience the organization would like to deliver, developing the experience architecture for implementing it, and creating the necessary enculturation tools to transform and sustain it within the organization.

More later this week.

Wild First Week of 2010

Everyone starts out a new year with wide eyed optimism. You can go to sleep on December 31 burnt out, disgruntled and generally down in the dumps but then wake up on January 1 a new person full of enthusiasm, optimism and feeling like a million bucks. And our company is no exception.

So this past Monday January 4, 2010, the first work day of the new year, we showed up and besides everyone freezing their butts off, we all were fired up for the start of the new year. When we left before the holidays we had sent out a couple of important proposals and we were looking forward to getting positive feedback on some of those. Monday came and went and we heard nothing. Not completely unexpected since it was the first day back. Tuesday was a different story but not the way we wanted. We found out two proposals would be put on hold and the largest would be, at the very least, delayed, but more than likely gone. The optimism of the new year quickly turned in to a kick in the stomach.

Wednesday was a new day though and Tuesdays disappointments quickly turned in to Wednesdays accomplishments which lead in to Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesday we finalized a handful of new tasks for one of our best clients. For a variety of reasons we have not done much for this client over the past couple months so it was great to get back on the horse. Then we made a great step forward on phase 2 of an important project that we finished about 6 weeks earlier. When you finish a project and you're able to go to phase 2 it's a great piece of positive feedback that the client is satisfied with the work. Then Wednesday night a couple of us had a great dinner with some clients to talk about 2010. I don't think the meeting could have gone any better. On a scale of 1 to 10 the dinner was a 12. We went to dinner hoping we would have the opportunity to do a fair amount of work with this client in 2010 and the volume of possible work for us is far more than we could have hoped.

And then it got even better. Thursday, out of the blue, we got a call for a very important and meaningful opportunity. All of us do things because it's good for business because, quite frankly, every company has to pay the bills and every employee needs to collect a paycheck to live. On the other hand, some projects are far more important than the money and are worth doing because they are good for people, a lot of people. We started the process of working on a project like that Thursday morning. Before the end of day Friday we had three members of our team booked to leave Monday night coming back Wednesday to spend the day Tuesday with this client figuring out to what extent we can help them and how quickly.

At the end of day Friday I was exhausted. It's hard enough getting back to a five day work week after 2 weeks of break and partial work weeks because of the holidays. But then when the first week is such a roller coaster it makes it that much more exhausting. I'm ok with the roller coaster as long as by the end of each week the highs are much higher than the lows. I hope to look back at this blog at the end of 2010 and say that this was the first great week of many more in 2010.

2009 Year in Review

A year and two days ago I wrote our first blog. A year later and 144 blog posts later, it's now 2010. So just like everyone else, I thought I'd do a year in review post. Obviously the thing that dominated our 2009 was our move. I looked back at the first blog posting and it was about hoping we'd finalize things with the landlord for the new building. I read some of the early posts and I can't believe it's been a year since some of those things. I also look back at some of our early Making Of webisodes and think the same thing. So January was dominated with finalizing the new lease. Then February was focused on getting the build out going, which began before the end of February. I remember March 1 coming along and thinking "holy crap, we're moving in a month". March was a whirlwind of packing and getting the build out completed. I read through the blog postings and can't believe all of that happened in just one month.

Then April 3 happened, the big moving day. I will never forget it. Started at the old place, it was so calm and quite. Then the movers arrived and it was crazy. Then the rain came and everyone sat around for 2 hours. Once it stopped, movers finished packing the trucks, and got down to the new place and the craziness went from the old building to the new place. A lot of boxes and only some minor damage later, everything was in the new building. What a day.

The rest of the year was a lot of firsts in the new building. First client meeting, first edit session, first margarita Friday, which by the way has become a regular occurrence. We celebrated our 8th birthday this year as IDEAS, our first birthday in our new home. We also had our first Thanksgiving in our new home. We hosted a couple events at our new home. We had an event with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer in which he welcomed us to Downtown Orlando and we presented him with original artwork we created for Orlando's Creative Village, we hosted a Women & Film & Television quarterly meeting with the Film Commissioner of Florida, and we have hosted a number of staff meetings for our friends at Vitamin Water. All of this of course is on top of the hundreds of client meetings we have had since moving in.

Once we were in the new place it was back to 100% focus on the business. Operating business in the new place was different than the old building. We got to meet a lot of great people, from new clients to people from the Mayor's office. From a business perspective it's been an interesting year. Here's some breaking news, the economy has been tough on everyone. We've have clients who have been a regular client go to nothing. We have had clients who typically pay in regular 30 day payable intervals now pay in 45-60 days if not longer. And there have been a lot of clients who want and need our help and we get all the way to contract and they have to pull back.

On the other hand, we have found new clients who have been very creative in how to work us in to their budgets. And we have found ourselves also being more creative in finding new clients and new ways to work with our old clients. In the end, it is what it is and we're optimistic about 2010 when it comes to current clients as well as some great new ones.

We are very proud of the work we accomplished in 2009. If I listed notable projects I'd forget plenty so I don't want to do that but generally speaking, we look back and realize that we worked on a couple broadcast television projects. We worked on a couple projects that entertain kids and a major project to help kids stay safe in weather emergencies. We worked to help returning veterans from Iraq and Afganistan and we're working with other branches of the government and military to help those involved with our military. And we continue working in various areas of the helthcare industry, trying to improve things for workers and patients. We are proud of the work we did in 2009 and look forward to more projects in 2010 that make a difference in the world.

So here we are, the end of 2009/beginning of 2010. A lot has happened since this time last year. But don't we say that at the beginning of every year? Every year we look back at the past year with some good memories and some bad. And we look forward to the possibilities of the new year. This year is no different so we start 2010 with the same optimism and excitement. We look forward to the possibilities of the relationships we have been building over the past few years, especially those we have built since moving to our new home last April. We will work harder in 2010 than ever before. And I'm quite certain at this time next year we'll have some good memories and bad of 2010. But I think there's going to be a lot more good memories than bad.