Pemaquid Communications

About ten years ago, just as I was starting my own company, there were several Web firms vying for the attention of anxious business owners who in many cases were looking for their very first site.

One shop in particular was a darling of the local business community. They had a glittering office space in a conspicuous location on Congress Street, a dozen employees and a bright, shiny Web site.

The company principal bedazzled members of the business community with polished presentations laden with of buzzwords like “New Economy” and “splash page”. Surely he must be endowed with special knowledge!

But as is so often the case, the beauty was only skin deep. When it came time for this Web shop’s sites to perform, they were about as effective as a supermodel trying to run a hundred dash in high heels: they quickly collapsed.

I recall one site in particular built by this firm that had a so-called online registration system built for an annual conference event held in Portland. I say so-called because some companies who registered groups of conference attendees online arrived to find that they only had one set of credentials.

This was all very embarrassing to the conference organizer who had been left holding the bag after they had paid their Web shop for a site that had failed to deliver.

That firm eventually fell from grace, but the in many ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. “Social media” and “we do mobile!” are phrases you hear today. Why? Because it’s what people want to hear, of course.

But talking the talk is one thing, doing the hard work is another. And when every agency in town is talking about how they are experts in [---insert random skill here---], by definition they can’t all be right.

And that’s fine with me. Because while they’re all racing to say they can make the flavor of the month, they aren’t doing a single thing to differentiate themselves and cultivate the savvy that will truly set them apart.

At Pemaquid, we focus on being first, being best, being no nonsense, being practical and focusing on a common sense approach to interaction design that works (and yes, we do social media and mobile – that’s the easy part). We don’t help our Clients to simply fish for a day. We teach them how to fish, while we manage the fisheries.

It’s working. 2011 is shaping up to be our best year ever.

And that other firm, the one that made the buggy registration system? They’re gone.

It might seem strange to you, but I cringe whenever someone describes me or my team as “geeks”. The moniker makes me uncomfortable because I don’t think it promotes a healthy perspective on what we at Pemaquid do for our Clients.

To me, a geek, is a person who loves technology for its own sake. Someone who becomes enraptured by the thought of another great CSS3 (text-shadow FTW!) or HTML5 technique (Oh. Sweet. Modernizr!)

It can set up a certain elitist way of looking at the world. I’ve been privy to many a conversation where Web designers labeled themselves as geeks as a way of telling themselves that they and their pals knew something that the other mere mortals did not. If you’re not careful, you can become quite a snob (I’ll be honest: I’ve been there and back a few times), and that’s an unhealthy way to look at Clients and your community.

Don’t get me wrong. I think you have to love what you do, you should feel good about what makes you special, and you should be curious and fascinated by what you do for a living. But I think it’s more important to focus on how cutting edge technology can help solve problems for people and make the Web a less confusing, cluttered place.

So call us geeks if you like, but we won’t look at things that way. We’re really just people like you – your friendly neighborhood Web-slingers – who have a superpower or two that you might need when it comes to the Web.

The year 2010 will be to some extent about recasting Pemaquid, or at least my perspective. The Web has changed a lot I first went into business in 2002. Then, people used Dreamweaver to edit the Web and Netscape Navigator 4 to browse it. Now they use WordPress and… IE6 (if you know what I mean).

So this seems like a good time to rededicate this blog to two individuals who have been influential in bringing it into being.

The first is Jeffrey Zeldman. As the author of Designing with Web Standards, publisher of A List Apart and one of the most important voices on best practices in Web design, I’d been an admirer for some time. Then I had the opportunity to meet him at South By Southwest in March 2007. I mentioned how I felt my business was ‘stuck in neutral’ and seemed to be adrift after some early success.

“Do you have a blog?” Zeldman asked me.

“No,” I replied, “I’m not sure I have anything original to say.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he told me. “Just say what you think needs to be said. And, after all, it’s searchable.”

So, I jumped on the blogging bandwagon, after arriving fairly late to the game, and though I’m usually skeptical of the intrinsic value of new trends like Twitter and Facebook, I’ve made a more concerted effort to be an early adopter and figure out how new Web technologies will affect how we interact.

My second rededication is for Zack Gaulkin. I worked with Zack at MaineToday.com back in the early naughties when sock puppets ruled the Earth and people still used the phrase “New Economy” to describe what was happening online. The Web was a creative free-for-all, and I would love to brainstorm with Zack, and we’d come up with all kinds of whacky ideas – and could try them out. The whole Web was our laboratory.

I’ve mentioned Zack before on this blog. He’s passed on, and I miss his creative energy and playful spirit.

In many ways, these are two people worth emulating. If I remember to ask myself “WWZD?” (“What Would Zack – or Zeldman – Do?”) I’ll probably be able to stay on the right track.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in life, it’s that digital creatives, like most people, tend to sell themselves short. When complimented, they’ll say something like “…it was nothing, really…” or “…there are some things I could have done better…”

And some of these people are doing amazing things. I mean, they really rawk! So why don’t they realize it?

I have a theory. I call it my Theory of (creative) Relativity.

In Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, your perception of the laws of physics depend on your orientation in the universe. If you’re a passenger on a starship hurtling through deep space and look out the window you’ll think you’re not moving at all – even though you’re streaking along at the speed of light – because you don’t have a frame of reference.

So it is with our perception of our talents. We live with our talents every day, so after a while they start to seem ordinary, commonplace, mundane.

it’s sometimes easy to feel that we as persons are commonplace, mundane or – on a really bad day – worthless.

Don’t fall into this trap!

Everyone has a special talent – a “superpower”, if you will. Don’t brag, but be proud of what you can do, keep getting better and share it with others.

And when someone pays you a compliment, don’t brush it aside; mark it down. It means you’re on the right track.

On Monday night I had the opportunity to meet Eric Meyer, one of the foremost experts on CSS. I asked him just exactly how he came to be “one of the foremost experts on CSS”. Here, according to Eric, are the essential ingredients of his success:

Be at the right place at the right time. Eric was at a conference in the mid-nineties and heard someone give a talk on CSS before anyone knew what CSS was. He developed an interest and wanted to learn all he could about the new technology.

Be first . Eric was one of the first people to do any problem solving around CSS and the varous browsers (and this is back in the day; we’re talking IE3).

Write a book. Eric wrote the books that were just waiting to be written about CSS. Once the books were written, he found he received many more offers to speak at conferences and share his expertise.

Get lucky. Eric will tell you that his success story involves a lot of luck (See “Being at the right place…” above). He said there were other people along the way who had the opportunity to write books, but didn’t, or contribute their expertise and didn’t, or who didn’t meet the “right” person or attend the “right” event to light the spark.

Work hard. Let’s not forget the most important ingredient. It’s a given that you’ll need to work hard to rise to the top in any field. You’ve got to pay your dues to sing the blues.

Eric says for him, it was like Rockefeller, who when asked how he’d cornered the oil market, replied:

Get up early. Go to bed late. And strike oil.

What’s your secret formula for success?

I’ve been trying to catch up on last week’s Pop!Tech 2008 conference in Camden, Maine and came across this podcast of a lecture by Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic.

It has nothing to do with Web design, but I found it very inspirational.

Zander convincingly demonstrates that success is largely a function of our attitude. He tells of two shoe salesmen sent to Africa. The first phones the home office “Situation hopeless! No one here has heard of shoes!”. The second calls and says “Wonderful news! No one here has shoes – yet!”

One looks at limits, the other possibilities.

So very apropos for Pemaquid right now, where we are taking stock to figure out how we’ll measure success having reached our current level of achievement.

So remember, don’t focus on how inadequately talented you may feel, or how much there is to do; focus on how your talents have made a difference for others and you’ll find the fuel to do more great things.