02.09.10
Posted by Tim Frick in Books
Return on Engagement was delivered to Focal Press about six minutes before 5:00 pm on Thursday, February 4, 2010 (but who's counting?). Just a few hundred words shy of 100,000, this digital marketing tome is due out on May 15, 2010 and will be available from Amazon and other online booksellers. Here's the product info Focal Press posted to the book's Amazon page:
"Achieve the return on engagement that you seek with integrated strategies for honing and maintaining online relationships through personal interaction and engaging digital content. You get specific techniques for web page optimization, credibility-based design, keyword targeting, guerilla video, content dissemination through RSS feeds, and more. Integral tools such as content management systems, blog software, analytics, browser extensions and API's are also covered in great detail. Arranged into three sections—Strategy, On-Site and Off-Site—the book is a comprehensive resource for integrating these methods into your business and marketing workflow for concrete results."
Return on Engagement features include:
• Detailed real-world examples of companies and organizations who have implemented these techniques and reaped the benefits.
• Hands-on tutorials with screen grabs that cover how to use many of the digital marketing tools outlined in the book.
• Companion website that includes code snippets, links, resources, RSS feeds, profiles, community interaction, and more.
Pre-order your copy now from Amazon's Return on Engagement page. >>
01.12.10
Posted by Tim Frick in News
It's free: get a cameo in a video podcast, meet cool people in new media, learn a few things, and TASTE SOME BEER. Join us for our 3rd "Let's Create New Media in Chicago!" party.
Learn by doing, while drinking. How many opportunities are there to learn about video podcasts by being in one while sampling beer from the sponsors? Be a member of the interactive audience of the live taping of HopCast, a Chicago based video podcast dedicated to the craft of beer brewing. In each episode, hosts Brad and Ken taste different beers and share their knowledge of brewing process, ingredients, and packaging with viewers.
When: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 from 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM (CT)
Where: Blue Frog Bar & Grill, 676 N La Salle Dr., Chicago IL
Mingle with and learn from new media producers and other creative people. Connect in a fun, interactive environment. New media can be a great tool for small businesses, entrepenuers, agency folks, and creative people of all kinds. There will be a cash bar with $2.50 domestic specials and the Blue Frog kitchen will be open also.
Don't believe how much fun this is going to be? See past video from Let's Create New Media! networking parties.
RSVP for this event >>
11.11.09
Posted by Stacy in Press Releases
“ARTS ENGAGEMENT EXCHANGE” PROVIDES CHICAGO ART COMMUNITY NEW ONLINE AUDIENCE BUILDING RESOURCES
Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago Community Trust & Mightybytes, Inc. Create Web Destination for Sharing Sales & Marketing Best Practices
CHICAGO (NOVEMBER 10, 2009) - Chicago arts and cultural organizations now have an online resource to share and obtain sales and marketing tips, tricks, and strategies to help increase demand for the arts, deepen audience participation and reach diverse audiences. This Web site - http://www.artsengagementexchange.org/ - is a new component of the Arts Engagement Exchange (AEE), formerly the Chicago Wallace Audience Engagement Network, which was established in 2006 with a grant from the Wallace Foundation to The Chicago Community Trust in partnership with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
“We were offering opportunities to share best practices through face-to-face events, but given the growth of social media applications, we recognized we could help more organizations in less time by engaging them through a targeted online resource,” said Eva Silverman, director of collaborative programs for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.
The free AEE site allows members to interact and easily share best practices information for building audience engagement and participation. It alerts members to upcoming knowledge sharing events, offers perspectives written by marketing industry and arts organization professionals, provides discussion opportunities through blogs and forums and makes resources available from past presentations. Topics range from using new social media tools for building audiences to tracking audience involvement through contact databases to discounting ticket prices as a means to increase sales. Highlights of the site include:
· AEE Blog - Will Rogers, content developer and interim director of marketing at Victory Gardens Theater, provides weekly entries while guest bloggers from the arts and cultural community and sales and marketing experts offer perspectives on a broad array of topics surrounding audience engagement.
· AEE Forum - Offers opportunities to continue conversations after AEE events, such as Learning Circles and Open Forums, as colleagues can ask and answer specific questions about best practices and their experiences in the field.
· AEE Resources - Feature specific articles, links and videos to deepen users’ knowledge of specific areas of interest that will also closely relate to topics covered throughout the four years of the project.
“An important aspect of our work, supported by the Wallace Foundation, was to create a learning network and opportunities for knowledge sharing. We also needed to respond to the overwhelming feedback from our event participants for opportunities to continue conversations and dig deeper with colleagues on topics and chances for peer-to-peer problem solving. A Web site seemed like the perfect solution,” says Anita Alexander, program officer for The Chicago Community Trust.
Mightybytes, Inc., a Chicago-based digital design firm and social media engagement expert, was commissioned to develop the AEE site. Mightybytes previously redesigned the Web site for the Department of Cultural Affairs Theater, creating a fresh look and adding new functionality. Mightybytes also collaborated with the Chicago Office of Tourism to create an interactive kids tour of the city called “Chicago For Kids” and “The Neighborhood Express”, an online game for Explore Chicago, the city’s official tourism site.
“Arts and cultural organizations are trying to engage their audiences through several marketing disciplines, including experimenting with the myriad of social media tools currently available,” said Tim Frick, Mightybytes’ founder. “The Arts Engagement Exchange encourages them to work collectively to figure out what strategically works best and to share it for the benefit of Chicago’s arts community.”
Frick added, “The Arts Engagement Exchange epitomizes our philosophy of helping arts and cultural organizations adopt and use new digital technologies as communication tools.”
About The Chicago Community Trust
For 94 years, The Chicago Community Trust, our region’s community foundation, has connected the generosity of donors with community needs by making grants to organizations working to improve metropolitan Chicago. In 2008, the Trust, together with its donors, granted more than $100 million to nonprofit organizations. From strengthening schools to assisting local art programs, from building health centers to helping lives affected by violence, the Trust continues to enhance our region. To learn more, please visit the Trust online at http://www.cct.org.
About The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) is dedicated to promoting on ongoing celebration of the arts, serving the individuals and institutions who create and sustain them, and marketing the city’s cultural resources to a worldwide audience. Under the leadership of Commissioner Lois Weisberg since 1989, DCA offers more than 2,000 high-quality free exhibitions, performances and programs each year at the Chicago Cultural Center, Millennium Park and other venues throughout the city, and is widely regarded as national model for effective municipal support of the arts.
About Mightybytes, Inc.
Mightybytes, Inc. offers high-quality creative media and digital marketing services in a unique environment that blends artistic talent and technical expertise with a client-focused work ethic. The company creates design-driven media solutions for a wide variety of corporate, educational and not-for-profit clients including the Chicago History Museum, John G. Shedd Aquarium, Rand McNally, CareerBuilder and Project WET. Visit www.mightybytes.com for more information.
11.03.09
Posted by Tim Frick in Awards, News
Our animation demo reel received a 2009 Davey Award from the International Academy of the Visual Arts. The Davey Awards focus exclusively on “honoring the creative excellence of smaller agencies and companies worldwide." This is our thirteenth award in 2009 and the fourth award for our demo reel. Our work was selected from an international pool of over 4,000 entries. The 2009 Davey Awards received entries from ad agencies, interactive agencies, production firms, in-house creative professionals, graphic designers, design firms, and public relations firms.
10.16.09
Posted by Tim Frick in Awards, News
The International Academy of Visual Arts recently saw fit to honor Mightybytes with two 2009 W3 Awards. The awards, which, according to their tagline, are "recognizing the power of web creativity", were chosen from a pool of nearly 3,000 entries. The winning entries were our animation demo reel and 'Picture Yourself in Chicago', the avatar creation activity we built for the Chicago Office of Tourism for Explore Chicago, the official tourism site for the city. These were our eleventh and twelfth awards respectively in 2009 and the third award for our demo reel.
10.06.09
Posted by Tim Frick in News
Videography magazine, which covers industry-related news on HD content creation, recently included a story on our animation exhibit for the Shedd Aquarium. The article gives a brief description of the project and touches on some of its inherent challenges.
Read the article >>
Videography is part of the New Bay Media family of publications, which also includes DV, 2-Pop, Cinematographer and VFXPro.
09.28.09
Posted by Tim Frick in News
Journalist Claire Swedberg recently covered one of our Shedd Aquarium projects for RFID Journal. The article, titled 'Aquarium puts RFID on Its Ocean Floor', outlines the challenges and creation process for one of the kiosks inside the Shedd Explorer submarine exhibit. The kiosk uses RFID technology to drive animated content within the submarine. Kids use a mechanical arm to pick up items such as shells and rocks off a simulated ocean floor. Radio frequency ID tags embedded in each object send signals to the kiosk, which then displays animated content for that item inside the sub. Details of working with the RFID reader, embedding tags and the challenges of getting Flash content to recognize tag IDs are described in interviews with Tim Frick and our client at Shedd, Tynnetta Qaiyim.
RFID Journal was the world's first independent media company devoted solely to radio frequency identification and its many business applications. Now in its sixth year, RFID Journal is by far the world's leading source of RFID news and insights.
Read the RFID Journal article >>
09.24.09
Posted by Stacy in Press Releases
September 24, 2009
When a museum like the Shedd Aquarium undertakes a $50 million renovation to one of its most popular exhibits—the Oceanarium—there is no such thing as a small detail. And no one knows that better than one of the many partners that helped renovate the space, Chicago's Mightybytes media design firm.
Mightybytes was selected by the aquarium to develop an animated video of a South African penguin habitat that would serve as the background to a new children's playscape area featuring faux glacier ice slides, tunnels and more.
Seen on a 25x15-foot screen, the Mightybytes-designed video features orcas, seagulls, two different kinds of penguins and a storm—all in 12 minutes. The project presented a number of interesting challenges: first, masking a rectangular video to fit within a custom rockscape; and second, ensuring the animation aligned perfectly with the actual, on-site rocks and glaciers.
"When you're working on a project-within-a-project such as this, there are so many variables to work with—it can get really complicated. But that's also what makes it so fun," says Mightybytes founder Tim Frick. "We're proud to have had a part, even a small part, in this exciting renovation."
In addition to the video, Mightybytes designed and developed two interactive kiosks to further engage children in the Oceanarium experience. One kiosk involves a maneuverable claw children can use to pick up items such as shells and stones. When an item is picked up, the claw reads an RFID tag embedded in the object, which triggers animation on the kiosk screen providing further information. The second kiosk, housed within a small submarine, allows children to push a button for different ocean animals, activating a sonar screen that detects the animal and produces a video. Additionally, Mightybytes developed both kiosks within a one-week turnaround deadline.
"A year ago I never would have predicted we'd be studying how a penguin moves or the finer points of nesting behavior," says Frick. "But that's exactly what we love about what we do: there's always something new."
After nine months of renovation, Shedd Aquarium's Oceanarium is now open to the public.
09.14.09
Posted by Tim Frick in Awards, News
Graphic Design USA magazine recently honored Mightybytes with five American Graphic Design Awards for the 2009 edition of the magazine's flagship award contest, now in its fourth decade. Our work was chosen from a pool of 8,000+ entries. Awards were given to four websites and the labels for Mightybrew, our collections of home-brewed ales and lagers:
Chicago Diabetes Project website >>
Court Theatre website >>
Project WET website >>
Woodia la Piccolo website >>
Mightybrew labels >>
Mightybytes has received fourteen awards so far this year, including two American Web Design Awards, two Communicator Awards and three Hermes Creative Awards. While we're certainly very grateful for the industry recognition, we consider ourselves lucky to have fostered relationships with our clients that makes this caliber of work possible in the first place.
08.13.09
Posted by Tim Frick in News
Brad Spirrison, Tech Writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote a very nice article on Mightybytes for his 'Tech Matters' column on Monday, August 10, 2009. The article focused on how we use digital media to create fun, immersive learning experiences and mentioned recent projects we completed for John G. Shedd Aquarium and the Chicago History Museum. We'll forgive him for misspelling our company name because the article was pretty flattering and he summed up our approach to better learning through digital media very nicely. Thanks Brad!
Read 'Making Learning Fun via Digital Enhancement' >>
07.17.09
Posted by Tim Frick in Awards, News
Mightybytes was recently honored with two Awards of Distinction from the 2009 Communicator Awards. Sponsored by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), The Communicator Awards is the leading international creative awards program honoring creative excellence for communication professionals. Our work on the following projects was chosen from a pool of over 7,000 entries:
This is the third award for the DCA Theater site and the second for our demo reel.
07.01.09
Posted by Tim Frick in News
We've got a handful of upcoming workshops and seminars designed to help beef up your skills in social media, design, content development, digital marketing, blogging, and a wealth of topics at various organizations around Chicago in the coming months. Here's the skinny:
Summer School:
Creating and Managing Your Online Presence: The Dynamic Content Approach
July 28, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Located at National-Louis University
Sponsored by the Arts & Business Council of Chicago
More information can be found on the Arts and Business Council of Chicago website >>
How to Market and Grow Your Business with Social Media
July 30, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Located at the U of C's Gleacher Center
University of Chicago Women’s Business Association
More information can be found on the UCWBG website >>
This Fall:
Blogging & Social Media Workshop for Media Makers
September 19, 12:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Chicago Filmmakers
More information can be found on the Chicago Filmmakers website >>
SEO for Success
November 6, 9:00 a.m – 12:00 p.m.
Located at Columbia College Chicago
Community Media Workshop
More information can be found on the Community Media Workshop website >>
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