Latest Entries

In our last installment on mobile handsets, we looked at the past and how we rapidly went from toaster-sized handsets that required a wheelbarrow to tote around, to the world of 2G, miniature communication devices, and the lightning-fast adoption of SMS and other interactions we now think of as second nature.

In today’s world our handsets have in many cases, become our lifeline – with smart phones providing us with our daily calendar, our social network news, traffic, weather, news, music, video, entertainment, games, directions, flashlights, stop watches, cameras, video cameras, home entertainment controllers, contacts, reminders and communication via voice, text, IM and video chat  - thee list goes on as illustrated by the hundreds of thousands of apps out there.

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Nick Helm: "I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."

Have a GREAT weekend, World!

Your friends @ FGI.

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You know you’re old when you tell people you remember in your not-too-distant past when cell phones weren’t a part of our lives. I tell my kids this and they just give me this look like, ‘you’re a relic, dude’.

Then I go into a diatribe about my world as a kid – no videos, no video games, no personal computers, no voice mail, not even a touch tone phone. Yes, maybe I am a relic, but I’m holding it together through a regular diet of healthy eating, exercise and progressive house music – but I digress.

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I’m sure we’re all familiar with tagging photos. Through the likes of Facebook and Flickr, it’s become something that even the techno-neophyte can master in a matter of seconds. User-generated tagging has become critical to the growth and systematic categorization of the massive amount of content that now makes up our digital world. And crowd sourced tagging goes well beyond social media channels – it’s critical to organizing our entire digital world – from movies to music to shopping to research – keywords have become core to finding the proverbial digital needle in the haystack.

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FGI CEO, Nate McLaughlin, decided to go out, grab a bunch of food and have a BBQ for his rockstar employees today at lunch. See the photos below. We had BBQ chicken, potato salad, a variety of locally grown fruits and salad.  A nutritious and delicious break from the normal Monday work. 

Next time you're in the neighborhood, come by. Nate is always looking for the opportunity to show off his culinary skills for clients, partners and employees. 

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The Top 5 Reasons Why WordPress is taking the CMS Lead…

1. Free!  As an open source software platform, WordPress is free because it’s been developed by a worldwide community of developers, who do it as a hobby and because they love the open source spirit. Yes coders can be a little crazy but just as lovable! Not only WordPress itself is free but also most of its themes and plugins are free, which means that you can build and scale your WordPress website easily and inexpensively as your needs expand.
 

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We hear the word thrown around in business all the time. “We’re innovators; Innovation is key to our growth; innovation is what our business is all about.” The list goes on. I wonder how many companies out there have innovation as part of their mission statement, positioning statement or core corporate mantra? My guess is it’s a LOT!

In today’s rapidly changing world, innovation is key to being competitive. Without innovation, companies and their products quickly become relics of the past – the world keeps turning folks and with it a world of change with every spin.
Despite the never-ending need to innovate on the product side and a robust investment in product innovation and research and development, many companies neglect the innovation on the talent side and with it, leaders are hesitant to innovate from the inside out.

Fear of change results in a state of paralysis and again…if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. Technology, culture, capital, people, and the way they all work together are constantly changing, so if your team isn’t innovating on both a personal and cultural level, you can be assured others are, and in the process, leaving your place in the market, in the dust.

Innovation begins at the personal level - call it your spirit, your heart, your soul or whatever else works for you – but change needs to happen from within before it can be rolled out to a department, an organization, or an industry. And sometimes the most dramatic innovations that positively affect companies aren’t on the product or service side at all, but are aspects addressing the more intangible, such as talent, marketing, process, or culture.


As human beings we must adapt to change – it’s an inherent force of nature – as our environment changes, so must we in order to best thrive in our surroundings. Change isn’t always pleasant, nor is it always a fearless process of flawless execution. Quite often it’s scary, dubious, unsettling and packed full of ‘what-ifs’. But then isn’t that core to all challenges in life? Imagine a life without challenge and without personal growth and innovation…pretty boring stuff.

What all this comes down to is defining innovation and how it fits into your personal world and your company’s culture. Think about innovation differently. Innovate on the very definition of the word and through this process you’ll find personal and professional windows of opportunity for innovation that set you and your company apart from the pack.

Change – it’s a good thing. Well Martha said that until she found herself in a jail cell.

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What Markets Are You?

It is a natural thing for marketers to look around a room and assess the marketing opportunities that each person represents.  Around the FGI office, we are constantly talking about user personas, demographics, use cases, market segments and other topics that relate to positioning a digital experience to a desired solution. 

It’s easy to think further into the idea that people possess obvious and hidden characteristics that place them into different market segments, since people obviously don’t only fall into one market.  We’re just far too complex beings to be situated into single markets.  This is what makes marketing such a difficult and constantly moving art form. 

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I’m not afraid to date myself. And I’m not talking about taking myself out to dinner and movie, but I am talking about putting the incredible rate of technological change into context. So, let’s talk video.

Seriously, I remember our family’s first color TV. Granted I was barely in grade school, but the set was the size of most compact cars today, its depth equal to its diameter and the video quality…I don’t think the word quality factored into the product description.

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