Summersault worked closely with Susanna to design and deploy a WordPress content management solution. The site features multiple photo galleries displaying Susanna’s beautiful work. It also utilizes a WordPress plugin created specifically for photographers, to display her site in a mobile friendly format.

Susanna is happy with the results, and we are too. You can view the site at www.susannatanner.com

SO…for the month of February 2012, we’re offering a limited number of not-for-profit organizations located in Wayne County, Indiana an opportunity to get a free logo designed by our professional graphic designer.  If you already have a logo, we can work on freshening it up for you, or we can create a new logo concept for a particular program or event offered by your organization.  No obligation, no catch, and no cost to you.

Hurry!

We only have a month and so we’re only able to offer this free service to 25 organizations on a first-come, first-served basis!

Here’s how it works:

1. If you’d like a FREE LOGO from Summersault and your not-for-profit organization is based in Wayne County Indiana, fill out the form below to apply sometime before the end of February 2012.
2. A Summersault staff member will review your application and contact you if more information is needed.
3. If you’re accepted, we’ll set up a meeting between you and our graphic designer so you can share your hopes and ideas for your new free logo
4. Summersault will present several different logo design concepts for you to review, and we’ll make one round of revisions
5. Your new free logo will be delivered to in electronic form, ready to use in your print and online publications!

Applications are Closed

Now that February is over, we’re no longer accepting applications for this program. If you’d like to be kept updated about future similar promotions, please contact us.

Founder and Designer Kirstin Eismin contacted Summersault to help launch an expanded web presence for the business, with a focus on a simple design that featured images of beautiful products.  In addition to some basic informational pages, online commerce functionality was an important part of the new site’s requirements.

Summersault worked with Kirstin and her partner Ian to design and deploy a WordPress content management solution.  The site features online commerce functionality using a WordPress plugin, and theme customized for Funky Artsy’s product display.

Kirstin was happy with the results.  ”Summersault went above and beyond to create a fabulous site for Funky Artsy!” she says.  ”They blended user friendly features with a contemporary edge. I could not be more pleased with my website and that is all thanks to Summersault.”

In 2011, ESC staff contacted Summersault to evaluate possibilities for a redevelopment of their existing site in coordination with some other changes the organization was making to its structure.  A primary focus of the site is to make print materials available to congregations and denominations all around North America, and they knew they needed a more modern web presence and easy to use online commerce tools as a part of that.  They were also looking for easier ways to keep the content of their site up to date, while providing more features for their visitors.

The project was a perfect fit for the Drupal content management system.  With its expandability and flexibility, and some great customizable commerce functionality, we knew we could implement a Drupal solution to help the Ecumenical Stewardship Center build a scalable, modern site that would meet their needs now and in the future.

You can view the site at http://www.stewardshipresources.org/

At Summersault, we’ve got a strong appreciation for the value of making good decisions based on good data.  In building high tech tools or proposing solutions to our clients` technical problems, it can be tempting to make a choice based on a single example case or a speculation about how things work: “I got lots of website traffic on the day I blogged about monkeys, so I will convert my entire blog to be just about monkeys!”  Sometimes these choices can even be the right ones, but sometimes the absence of good data can mean uninformed or even disastrous decisions (“was it really the monkey blog entry, or was that also just the day your site was featured on another website?”).   We know that over time we can make even better choices based on measurable trends and performance indicators.

For many organizations, the challenge of making good decisions based on good data starts with finding out how to get access to the data in a convenient, consolidated way in the first place.  Sure, you can get last quarter’s figures on where your sales leads or website visitors came from, but if you have to ask someone to poke around in a database or read confusing reports to make it happen, are you really going to look at those numbers as often as you should?  Probably not; we can be lazy creatures, and if we have to work too hard to get information, we often won’t bother, even when it would be useful.  Good decision-making tools are the ones that let you dig deep when you need to, but otherwise focus on giving you the “executive summary” view in the form of a dashboard you can take in at a glance.

This is why some of us at Summersault have been yearning for our own highly visible office “dashboard” for a while now.  Ever since seeing Panic, Inc.’s Panic Status Board in 2010 and various derivations of the same concept, we’ve been plotting to make our own a reality.

I’m happy to announce that the flagship version of the Summersault Status Board (a.k.a. the “panic board”) is now up and running:

 The status board shows us – in a prominent, easily digestible way – things like:

• Number of technical support tickets in various states of needing attention
• How we’re doing in meeting our work goals for the month
• The mood in the office (a happy-sad meter powered by staff quick-surveying throughout the day)
• Upcoming office meetings and events
• Tweets by staff members
• Trends in visitor traffic to our company website as well as social media engagement
• Number of open sales prospects
• Number of active client projects
• Recent acknowledgements of above-and-beyond individual performance
• Local news headlines
• How many days until features need to be finished to be included in an upcoming code launch
• Recent programmer contributions to the source code tree for a client project
• A pie-chart breakdown of how we’re spending our time on a given client project
• How long since a bug has made it into the production version of a website for a given project

Every organization is going to have different “key performance indicators” and other information they want to track, these are just some of the things that we thought might be useful for our staff to be aware of as they wander around the office. Some folks here are already reporting that an increased awareness of some of these statistics are helping inform their daily work in new and useful ways.

Sure, you could ask everyone to read a report on a web page, or sure, you could send it out in a daily e-mail, but it’s a lot more fun to put it up on a big screen!  (And it shows our office visitors that we’re not just sitting around checking Facebook all day.)

Here are the tools we used to create the Summersault status board:

The data being aggregated comes from a lot of different systems, some on our network, some at third party websites.  We created an internal central database where the information can be stored in summary form for re-use in the status board.  In most cases we have custom Perl scripts that regularly update that central database from wherever the data originates, adding new information as it changes.

To visualize the data, we’re using Geckoboard, a great web application that has really taken off in 2011.  It has a wide variety of built-in “widgets” (numbers, percentages, charts, green-amber-red indicators, RSS feed readers, Google Analytics, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and with add-on tools like Geckofuel, you can extend the functionality even more.  Many of our widgets are just a number with a label, but we have started to make more creative use of some of the other visualizing options.  We currently use two “dashboards” that automatically rotate, one for general-purpose company data and one for a specific client project.

Geckoboard polls a custom Perl CGI script that talks to our internal database and returns our data in the JSON or XML format that Geckoboard wants.  (They’ve done a good job of thinking through API key access options for such things, so your data isn’t available to just anyone.)  Geckoboard has a few bugs to work out, but their support team has been responsive and helpful.

To display the data in the office environment itself, we’re using a Sony NSX-32GT1 32-Inch TV that has the Google TV system already installed on it.  This allows us to have a display and computer/web browser all in one low-power device (estimated at $30/year in energy usage).  It really did just work right out of the box, with a little configuration to tell the included Chrome browser to load our Geckoboard URL at boot time.  We mounted the TV on a Peerless flat panel display stand.  (From what we can tell, at under $800 in total startup expenses this is a much more flexible and lower cost solution than some of the other display boards out there, where the cost of the display itself is over $1,500, and that’s before you attach a computer with a fancy graphics card to it.)  We may eventually add more display locations, but staff also have the option of visiting the Geckoboard display on their own workstation computers.

That’s the Summersault status board.  If you create your own status board, let us know what tools and hardware you end up using, and post a link to the result!

You might also enjoy these related links:

• The Ultimate Wall Board Contest - lots of high- and low-tech examples
• Leftronic - another data display tool like Geckoboard
• Streamer - another realtime dashboard tool
• Using a digital photo frame to build a display board

We know that updating and maintaining a website over time is not always easy, especially when there’s a list of competing “high priority items” for building your business or organization that never seems to get any shorter (believe us, we’ve been there!).

But we also know that having a website that’s relevant and modern can make all the difference in whether it’s seen as a credible resource or something for users to sneer at as they click on to the next link in their web search.  It some cases, outdated content or site construction can mean not connecting with a new paying customer or donor who might have otherwise been ready to get in touch.

In that vein, we offer…

10 Signs Your Website Needs a Makeover:

10. When people try to pull up your content on their smartphone, you have to remind them that mobile devices weren’t around when you built the site

9. The front page of your site has a public service announcement about the upcoming Y2K bug issue

8.When people who use Mac- or Linux-based computers try to visit your site, they’re told they need to install a plugin just to see the page

7. The most interactive part of your site is a banner ad where users are invited to “catch the monkey to win cash!”

6. When you go to update your website, you launch a program called “HotDog Pro” or “Wordpad”

5. Your site has a photo of your employee of the month… from 2002

4. Your site uses the <blink> and <marquee> tags to really make it “pop”

3. When you demo your site at conferences, you have to make sure the sound output is hooked up so that the “Chariots of Fire” WAV file on the front page can be heard

2. You haven’t changed the images on your site since you first got them from the Microsoft Office 95 clip art file

1. When you hear CMS, you think of the Chicago Manual of Style

Joking aside, if any of these ring even a little bit true, it might be time to update your website.  (You don’t want all the other websites to laugh, do you?) Whether it’s a few tweaks here and there or a complete makeover, get in touch with Summersault to see how we can help you make it happen.

After working with Summersault to develop an earlier version of the Crowe Shredding website, owner Rhet Crowe knew who to call when he was ready to update the company’s online presence.

The new site includes more information about the company’s services and service areas, more images of the shredding process employed by Crowe, conversion to the WordPress content management system for easier site maintenance, and the use of updated search engine optimization techniques.

You can view the site at http://www.croweshredding.com/

I am fascinated by creativity, the generative force that brings something into existence–an idea, a song, a cheesecake, a website.  There is something so powerful in the act of creating that I find myself drawn again and again to art museums, improvisational jazz, design awards, comic books, thoughtful technology, and movie theatres, to name only a few.  I think much of what draws me to these examples of creativity is wanting to experience the varied manifestations of the human spirit. It is my seemingly insatiable desire to fill up at the table of talented individuals expressing themselves.  However, when I think about my own creativity, I am quickly cowed by worry and fear of failure.

To be honest, I am also fascinated by failure, but it’s more akin to my fascination with spiders, cooked beets and velour. I’m interested, but I’d rather not partake in any of those please.  I got all the typical messages growing up, and I internalized preferring the affirmation for being right to the disappointment for being wrong, preferring the ice cream I got for good grades to the awkward family dinners spent reading less than stellar report cards.  However, in recent years I have come to realize failure is normal; it’s a necessary part of learning, and is central to the scientific process.  But the socialized fear of failure is often what stifles creativity, is what pulls the mental plug even before the process of making something begins.

So what happens when failure and creativity sit down together for a latte? All too often, failure cheats.  It brings along a whole cheering section to taunt creativity and turns what should be dignified conversation at the local cafe into a 3-on-1 tag-team smackdown with failure’s luchadores friends Fear and Judgment.

So my question is what happens when we figure out a way to make this fair?  If we are able to ignore the roiling crowd, keep Fear and Judgment on the sidelines and help creativity and failure get back to their coffee conversation? If we can ignore the fear and disconnect from the judging censor in our heads that tells us it’s silly to even try, we may find that failure and creativity have a lot of things to talk about.  Before long we might find them quietly talking to other another, laughing, and putting their heads together to work on something new.  Below are four ways failure and creativity can play nice together, in which failure can assist creativity’s good work.

1) Failure as teacher

Have you ever tried to ice skate? Separate an egg? Tie a bowline knot?  Put topspin on a ball?  When we’re learning new skills it’s easy to remember that we learn through failing, by remembering how not to fall off the bicycle as we hone our ability to keep our balance. I worry that this brutal fact gets lost the older we get.  Starting a new job recently, I had to remind myself nearly every day that these are skills and situations I have not found myself in before and I should expect to get things wrong a lot.  The learning comes as I create and manage an ever lengthening checklist of ways not to do my job.  As I find patterns in my failures, I am able to see paths toward successes as well.

2) Failure as progression

This flows from point 1, but adds in a sense of experimentation as well.  If point 1 is about having had no experience and learning from scratch, then this is where my creativity begins to look for connections and linkages in my previous experiences.  This is where I begin transferring skills from one area of life to another.  For example, I know how to work with people in supportive and encouraging ways.  How can I apply this knowledge to my current work of supporting clients as they move through our sales processes here at Summersault?  What does support look like in the midst of a website build-out? It is in applying past skills to new contexts, and seeing how well things do and do not fit, that creativity learns from missteps and errors.

3) Failure as redirection

I believe most of us have heard some version of that often used phrase “when life closes a door, it opens a window”.   The reason this phrase is often used is because it captures, in a greeting card kind of way, a truism to most people’s experiences.  It is true that failure has a way of changing our direction, of seemingly decreasing options and causing us to look in unexpected places.  It also has a way of building up our persistence and stick-to-it-tiveness.  Creativity has the ability to bob and weave when presented with challenges and roadblocks, its energy and need to innovate moving us forward–maybe not along the paths we had envisioned.

4) Failure as slapstick

Think of this as the whimsical side of point 2.  One only has to imagine the curiosity and child-like wonder that goes into thinking, “I wonder how high I’ll go if I jump out of this swing?”, “I wonder if permanent markers really are permanent.”, “What happens if I put dried jalapeño flakes in the coffeemaker instead of coffee?”  While it’s easy to imagine the many more ways in which these queries can go wrong than can go right, it is the curiosity and ingenuity that is to be praised.  This is the “how does this work” side of creativity that is so present in children, and so easily forgotten on the way to adulthood.  Give this study a read and think about how you can unlock your inner 7-year old, how you can fail magnificently and be excited about the new data, instead of piling on the shame.

To wrap up, I do not mean to give the impression that this is easy, or that failure is great fun–it can be disorienting, uncomfortable, even disastrous. But, within the context of our creativity and failure working together, I do believe that there are a number of possibilities for positive outcomes and potential for growth and renewed direction. And you don’t need to try that jalapeño in the coffee thing–it burned more than I could have imagined!

We had a fair amount of interest from local and online colleagues about how this system would work, so I thought I would share some reflections and results one year later.

In general, it seems safe to say that the experiment was a success.  We surveyed the entire staff and most everyone agreed that having fewer barriers to taking paid time off was a good thing.  People cited lower stress levels, improved mental and physical health, and improved attractiveness of a position at Summersault in our hiring efforts as ways the program had a positive impact on the company.

When we discussed the program at the end of the year, the primary concern was that it was almost too flexible.  In the previous system, there was a firm sense that “I have X days of paid time off to use in a year, so I should use those.” In the new system, the lack of an artificial ceiling on days used meant there was less incentive to plan out their use, and so some employees found they’d gotten to the end of the year and used fewer paid days off than they might have otherwise.

Moving from a system where each employee had a designated amount of vacation time available based primary on their tenure at the company to a system that applied the benefits evenly for everyone regardless of tenure was at first a little uncomfortable, but everyone quickly got used to it.  We also had to do some work early on to clarify the distinction between and different scenarios for paid time off and unpaid time off, and to make sure the process of requesting paid time off still appropriately considered client deadlines, other employees` schedules, etc. – these items were fairly easily ironed out along the way.

From a management perspective, we certainly did spend much more in that year on employee time off than we have in other years past – this was partly due to an increase in our staff size, and partly due to increased use of the benefit itself.  While it might be tempting to fret over how much the program is “costing” us, after seeing what’s brought to our overall value we bring to clients and the wider community, it feels like a pretty good value.  We’re also glad that it puts us closer to realizing what other countries around the world have identified as a common sense goal: employees who can balance their work with the rest of their lives in a way that allows for being well rested and recharged instead of overworked and burned out.

We tweaked a few things about the program as we move into our second year of experimenting with it:

• We lowered the minimum term of employment before this benefit kicks in
• We’ve asked that each employee take a minimum of 2 weeks of paid time off per year
• We’ve reduced the amount of time in advance needed to make requests for scheduled paid time off

With these changes, we’ll see how year two of this exciting approach to time off benefits goes.  If you have any questions or comments on the program, or how you’ve implemented similar programs at your organization, let us know!

As a CarbonFree® small business, Summersault is offsetting its CO2 emissions through the financial support of Carbonfund.org’s renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation projects. This step follows Summersault’s existing efforts to reduce its green house emissions through the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs, composting, recycling and a concerted effort by employees to bike or walk to work. Through these and other efforts, Summersault hopes to serve as a model for environmental responsibility among Richmond and Wayne County area businesses.

“We know that businesses are responsible for much of the energy usage in our country, and that we have an important role to play in reducing lasting environmental effects.” said Chris Hardie, Summersault’s Principal and co-founder. “Through this partnership, we hope to set a new standard for conscientious business practices in East Central Indiana.  We are also very excited to make this announcement as a part of local Earth Day celebrations.”

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Summersault to help make their business more sustainable,” said Eric Carlson, President, Carbonfund.org. “We applaud Summersault for their decision to take a leadership role in fighting climate change.”

Summersault, LLC is a leader in database driven web solutions. The Richmond, Indiana based firm offers a single point of contact for highly customized web design and application development solutions, as well as professional consulting services and support.