Tag Archives: phizzpop

‘Really smart about stuff we’re not smart about’

Matt Hester has posted a kickass interview he did down at SXSW with Christian Erickson from Zeus Jones, and our own Tom O’Neill and Greg Wurm. This video is the bomb, and here’s why, at about 3 minutes or so Christian and Tom have a great conversation about how Zeus Jones and Sierra Bravo work together.

And I love Christian’s quote, “They’re really smart about stuff we’re not smart about or not paying attention to, the deep technical details and new technologies and things like that.”

If you listen closely you can hear songs by the Beastie Boys and Foo Fighters in the background, and if you watch until the end you can laugh when Tom has a bit of a problem spelling.


Visit Matt’s site to catch a video of Social Wendy interviewing the Phizzpop champs.

Zeus Jones wins PhizzPop Design Challenge

Zeus Jones with some help from a Sierra Bravo nerd took home the grand prize at last night’s finals of Microsoft’s PhizzPop Design Challenge at SXSW in Austin, TX. The Zeus Jones/Sierra Bravo team competed against agencies from Miami, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to, “deliver a digital experience or experiences that will engage the Austin, TX community to adopt a sustainable lifestyle.”

While many of last night’s presentations focused on recycling and making your home more energy efficient, Zeus Jones’ presentation took a different approach. They focused on getting the people of Austin to make the most of what they already have. This is a simplified version of the entire concept. You should just watch Christian Erickson’s presentation:

Zeus Jones Phizzpop SXSW Finale from Zeus Jones on Vimeo.

Also, if you’re really curious you can see a demo of the mobile app he talks about at Usemore.us.

Okay, I’m going to get a little marketing wonk on you here. What’s so great about this PhizzPop win for us, is that it so perfectly illustrates exactly what we do at the Nerdery — work with agencies to bring their brilliant, creative ideas to life. So, in case you didn’t know before now you do.

And, if you haven’t quite had your fill of hot ad agency on nerd action, make sure to check out this piece from the gang at Minnov8 featuring our own Tom O’Neill and David Annis from Zeus Jones:

SXSW PhizzPop Finals Viewing Party

Hey, you can go watch Zeus Jones (and one of our nerds) on Monday as they present their final PhizzPop Design Challenge project at SXSW. The Zeus Jones crew has hooked up a live feed that they’ll have going at Cosmos at Graves Hotel. Get the full details and RSVP.

Phizzpop Minneapolis video

Many, many thanks to Christian Erickson from Zeus Jones for alerting us to this recap video of Phizzpop Minneapolis.

UPDATE: Now you can see Zeus Jones’ entire winning presentation.

Zeus Jones rocks Phizzpop (with some help from a nerd)

Remember how we were all pretty pumped about the Phizzpop Design Challenge? Well last night the event went down and rather than give you a wordy horn tooting, incessant bragging post about how we helped Zeus Jones rock the house, we thought we’d let the people do the talking.

UPDATE: Christan Erickson has posted about the event on the Zeus Jones blog and even includes slide shows of the winning presentation.

If you like, you can read the highly amusing tweets from Phizzpop.

Pretty pumped about Phizzpop

Phizzpop is a web design and development competition put on by Microsoft that travels to seven cities throughout the country pitting the best and brightest designers against each other to create some amazing websites and apps using Microsoft’s Expression Studio and Silverlight. This week Phizzpop has landed in Minnesota and the teams are already at work coming up with creative solutions to their challenge.

But that’s not what’s got us so pumped. What we’re really digging is that a couple of our nerds are helping out two of the agencies in town. Afterall, it’s kind of what we do, help out ad agencies when they need it. First, we’re teaming up with Zeus Jones, our longtime friends who we’ve worked with in the past.

Second, Microsoft asked us if we’d be willing to help out a team from Gestalt by providing them with a little programming muscle. We were, of course, more than happy to oblige. Plus, we effectively doubled our chances of being on the winning team. Go nerds!

All the teams are busy working away on their projects, and winners will be announced Thursday. If you are so inclined you can get tickets to the final event which is going to be held at Solara in Minneapolis.