Skimmer, the Fallon created and Nerd built social-media aggregator, won a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions international advertising festival, according to AdAge.
Woohoo! Congratulations to everyone involved. Nice work, people.
If you weren’t able to attend Minh and Chris’s Flashbelt presentation, we have the next best thing — the slide deck! Take a look to learn why they chose AIR to develop Skimmer, working with SQLite, and tips and tricks for developing applications using these technologies. When you’re done, make sure to check out Andrew’s Flashbelt recaps.
I’ve just finished up day one of the Flashbelt conference here in Minneapolis. Flashbelt is one of the premier conferences in the country oriented around Adobe’s Flash player. The conference is aimed at animators, designers, developers, project managers, ad agencies and so on; pretty much anyone who is involved with creating content for the ubiquitous Flash player.
Flashbelt attracts a lot of well known speakers, many of the “heavy hitters” in the Flash scene – guys like Seb Lee-Delisle, Dr. Woohoo, Minneapolis’ own Danny Patterson, and so on. These names probably don’t mean much to the uninitiated, but if you’re into the geekiness like us, these people can almost be rock stars. I’m one of the Flash developers at the Nerdery, so myself and a few others from the Nerdery are at the conference checking things out.
The day started with a keynote by Richard Galvin and Paul Burnett from Adobe. These guys have intimate knowledge about Flash; they mange the Flash product lines. They talked about where the Flash platform is at currently and where it’s going.
Perhaps the most interesting point was how Adobe really wants to move the current Flash player to more devices than just computers, like TVs and mobile phones (Flash for iPhone anyone? We Flash devs can dream). Getting Flash onto these devices is the logical next step, and would be a boon for getting interactive content to more people.
The rest of my day was spent in sessions dealing with the more nerdy development side of the Flash world. I’ve gotta make sure to give mad props to our own Chris Black and Minh Vu, who gave a presentation about their experiences developing Skimmer, Fallon’s “lifestreaming” application. Chris and Minh did a great job presenting, and demonstrated that they really know their stuff.
The day ended with a session by Joel Gethin Lewis, who I’m not even sure does Flash development. Instead, Joel works for a firm in the UK that puts together real-world “interactive experiences,” things like using laser pointers to “paint” projected artwork onto buildings or making interactive stage lighting for the band Massive Attack.
It may seem odd to have a session that isn’t directly connected to the Flash platform, but apparently this is what they always do at Flashbelt. It shows that Flashbelt is about more than just coding or content production. It’s about being inspired and seeing what’s possible.
And I think if I had to sum up this first day of Flashbelt, it would be just that: be inspired. There was plenty of technical mumbo-jumbo to go around at Flashbelt, but the fact is that Flash transcends its technical backing (which has come a long way, I might add). For many years now, Flash has been arguably the most ubiquitous platform for serving up interactive experiences.
Think of this: Flash is the technology enabling YouTube and all other video sharing websites, which is changing the way we consume long entrenched forms of mass-media. Or imagine you’re an artist with an interest in the interactive-type things. You can make something for Flash, and suddenly your art can potentially be seen by millions of people who have the container waiting to show your art. The install base for Flash player is in billions of machines – that’s quite a canvas!
So it’s a good thing for all developers to remember as we come up with solutions for our clients: be inspired, think big, think of unique things, think of what people are going to want to use. Flash is one of the technologies we can use to bring the content and experiences that people are looking for.
Oh, and the worst part of Flashbelt so far? Having to endure the hokey smooth jazz that is always playing over the restroom speakers.
Ad Week’s Tweet Freak blog is trying to discern which agency Twitter project is the best. Not that we’re biased or anything (okay yeah, we’re totally biased) but clearly Skimmer is the obvious choice.
You don’t have to register or give anyone your e-mail address, just go click a button and then click Vote. Totally easy. Go do it now!
Psst, pass it on.
Those are some might fine nerds over there, aren’t they? That’s Minh Vu, Chris Black, and Mike Woods from a Finance and Commerce article about the growth of The Nerdery. Most of the article covers our work on Skimmer and our unprecedented growth when a lot of companies are facing layoffs.
If you read carefully, you’ll notice that the reporter hints at some semi-secret stuff going down at Nerdery.com. Stay tuned, because it’s gonna be awesome.
In still other news, we got a PDF of a Minnesota Business piece that ran back in November. This article provides a nice glimpse at our history and how we’ve grown from integrating legacy systems with the web to partnering with ad, design, and marketing agencies to bring their ideas to life online.
When Chris Wiggins, Creative Director at Fallon, set out to create Skimmer he put a lot of thought into the design of the application. Working with freelance designer Andy Gugel, Wiggins said they were specifically going for something that sort of flew in the face of the Web 2.0 “not designed design.”
“We intentionally didn’t approach the design of Skimmer the way typical software developers do,” Wiggins said. “For this we put experience over data, experience over functions.”
There’s be a long-standing precedent of user-experience testing that results in design by committee, he said. “In my opinion, that’s not the best way to go anymore.”
Wiggins pointed to Apple’s steady decline of usability tests and how their products continually win acclaim for their usability and design.
“You just need to take products to a certain point before you even consider getting feedback,” he said. “You can’t always trust people to know what they want until they’ve seen something. Users would never had asked for the iPod, because it would have never crossed their minds to ask for something like that. At some point you have to have a vision and make something that you are confident about.”
Often times, Wiggins said, “design is considered superfluous eye candy that you don’t need for these kind of service.”
So part of their goal with the design of Skimmer was to see what people would think if this kind of application was presented in a beautiful and elegant way. The response to Skimmer as a whole (not just the design but the way it consolidates all social media networks) has been what Brenda Fogg, Interactive Producer, called “almost effervescent.”
“We were warned by our PR person not to get too excited,” Wiggins said. “The app was much more quickly well received than we anticipated. It blew away all our expectations.”
A few of the sites that picked up the Skimmer story right away include: Cool Hunting, AdWeek, TechCrunch, AdFreak, and Mashable.
Wiggins said it was a little hard not to get drunk on the positive buzz.
“Our clients are calling it a spectacular move, a bold move,” he said. “It’s exactly the kind of buzz an ad agency can use right now. One of the biggest fears of most traditional agencies is having the competence in the social web sphere because so many clients are clamoring for it.
“It shows that we’re about finding ways to get your brands out there and to make people do things they already want to do, better,” he said. “We’re a place where you can reliably turn to for this kind of thing.”
Friday afternoon I had a chance to sit down with Fallon’s Chris Wiggins, Creative Director and Brenda Fogg, Interactive Producer and talk about Skimmer. While I skim through the copious notes about advertising and design, I just had to share a few choice quotes from the interview. Besides, it’s Monday and I know I could use some motivation.
Anyway, it’s kind of nice when you can get partners to offer up these kinds of soundbites just by asking them, “So what was it like to work with the nerds?”
“Oh,” Fogg said. “I have a huge nerd crush now.”
“Obviously we couldn’t have done this without Sierra Bravo,” Wiggins said and turned to Mike Woods, who worked as the SDM on the Skimmer project. “I just want to run up and hug you. I can’t say enough about the team that came together to make this happen.”
One of the things Wiggins was most impressed by was the care taken with Skimmer’s design.
“From the very first briefing, every person had an understanding about how important the design of Skimmer was to us,” he said. “Not a single time was there ever a frustration on our end that you were falling short there. You could very easily tell how hard they [the nerds] were working on staying true to the integrity of the design and creative side of it.”
