Celebrating Anniversaries

In addition to Rare Bird celebrating its seventh anniversary this month, Ashley Sutton, who joined Rare Bird as in intern in the spring of 2004, has recently celebrated her one-year anniversary as a full-time graphic designer. Sutton, who graduated from the University of Southern Indiana with an art degree, has found her focus on electronic communications challenging and rewarding.

"I didn't have any classes or experience with Flash or HTML, so most of the techniques have been new," Sutton says. "But the rules of good design still apply, so the transition has mainly been with the tools I'm using."

It doesn't hurt that she's a quick study.

Sutton has worked on projects for Duke Realty, Boatman Geller, Artistic Spirit, Techlite Corp., and others.

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Duke Realty Launches Re-designed Web Site

On my wedding day, my nephew (who was about five at the time) had the role of ring bearer. During the ceremony, he was tasked with walking alone down the long center aisle of the church. When he reached the altar, I leaned over and said, "Way to go, Jim! Nice work!" He looked up at me and replied, "It wasn't easy, but I did it."

Every once in a while a project crosses our path that fits this same description. It seems that no matter how much planning you do ahead of time or how closely you monitor progress, niggling items keep popping up that make things a little more difficult than intended.

This happened recently with the new web redesign for Duke Realty. Meticulously planned, painstakingly tracked, relentlessly attacked, this project proved determined to give me gray hair. In the end, however, everything came together beautifully.

Working together with their Marketing and IT staffs, we delivered a fresh design that helps communicate their market leadership and corporate style. The site was created to take full advantage of cascading style sheets (CSS), allowing us to maintain a consistent look across platforms and browsers and enchance search engine placement. The underpinnings rely on the latest web programming technology, providing a solid foundation for future development. Finally, by utilizing their test environment, the entire site was created, tested, and refined before going live.

The result, I think, speaks for itself: visit the site at www.dukerealty.com.

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Time Slipping Away? We Have a Solution.

One of the biggest challenges facing businesses in the service industry is ensuring that employee time is being tracked accurately and efficiently. Whether you're looking for time sheet solution or a more robust project tracking system (or possibly aren't even aware that you have a problem), we have been building an application that might help.

Initially created for our own use, we've found that other advertising agencies, IT departments, consultants, accountants, lawyers, marketing departments – even businesses that need to track hourly employees – can benefit from this unique, scalable solution. By using a web-based environment, the system is customizable, cross-platform, and accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection. Employees login to see all of their current jobs, access detailed project summary sheets, view and add notes, and track their time with a unlimited number of job codes, projects, and billing types.

But time entry and tracking is just the beginning of the power of project-based time tracking. The real beauty of this system is in the reporting capabilities. With distributed time records, you can get real-time answers to questions like:

• How much time has an employee worked?
• How much time has been invested in this project?
• How much room is left in the budget for this project?
• What have other projects of this same type cost in the past?

Suddenly, questions that – at best – could only be answered in hindsight can now be addressed immediately, affording you the opportunity to make better, informed decisions regarding the direction of your business.

Can a system like this benefit your company? For more information, call Jim at 317/251-6744 or send me e-mail at jim@rarebirdinc.com.

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Target Your Messages For Impact

The adage "if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door" was never really true. It would be more accurate to say "if you build a better mousetrap, the segment of the market that has a problem with mice is more likely to eventually be dragged somewhere near your door, probably kicking and screaming."

This applies to the Internet, as well. Most people traditionally think of the Internet — if "traditionally" is a word you can use for something this young — as being a medium of one-to-many. But the notion of one-to-many communication is flawed, especially when it comes to the Internet. Where the Internet truly excels is in the mode of one-to-few or even one-to-one. I'm repeatedly telling people the first step in building a successful business, Internet or otherwise, is to find a niche and fill it.

[Complete Article]

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Customer Satisfaction Survey

As usual, there's a lot going on here at Rare Bird and we're excited about the coming months and years. New services and clients — Whew! — it's a lot to keep up with. We're also hyper-sensitive to the needs of our existing clients (you!) and want to be certain that we're doing all we can to keep you happy. To help us with this, please take a few minutes to complete a quick customer satisfaction survey.

Thanks for your help; and thanks for your business!

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Katrina Relief Has Local Impact

The victims of hurricane Katrina are in need of any support we can provide; very likely for weeks and months to come. My brother-in-law, Kurt Vetters, drove a truckload of medical supplies down last week from Greenfield. Upon his return, they organized a trucking convoy and have since sent another three trucks to two shelters in Louisiana. Kurt received word Tuesday morning that additional evacuees have shown up and they've had to open another shelter is this small town.

If you'd like to help, you can send packages via any of the major shippers. Items most needed include clothing (especially shoes), bathroom kits, small games, magazines, books, etc. Please label the box with the contents, who it's intended for (man, woman, child) and the sizes of clothing to help with distribution. Shipments can be sent to:

Evacuee packages
c/o Barbara Obear
Red Cross Coordinator
32265 Dock Dean Street
White Castle, Louisiana 70788

Additionally, we currently have 70 evacuees living at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, with room for up to 500. Donations for these folks should be coordinated through the local Red Cross:

American Red Cross
American Red Cross of Greater Indianapolis
441 E 10th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202
P: 317-684-1441
arc@redcross-indy.org
http://www.redcross-indy.org

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