You can follow along with John's results here http://www.sportstats.ca/searchResults.xhtml?firstname=John&lastname=Hodges.

Our expectations for the Canadiens this year were pretty low – most people were predicting them to be at the bottom of the league and at best maybe just make the playoffs. However, with a mix of solid rookies, good goaltending, and one player blossoming into one of the best defenders in the game, the Canadiens will finish off the season in the top 3rd of the division. Even though they ended the season with a string of frustrating losses, there is a good chance they will go far in the playoffs.

Now, let’s recap all the games we got to attend and see if Plank showered any luck on the team.

Plank Stats

Looks like we had a positive effect on the Habs, with a Plank record of 7-2 for the season. Like the team, we didn’t end well but we did get to see some very good hockey. Even better we are locked in for two games per round of the playoffs and we’re really looking forward to seeing some more games over the coming weeks. Go Habs!

If we got the opportunity, would we do this again? The answer is a resounding yes although, for me, I’d rather have the chance of season tickets to Nos Amours, The Montreal Expos. Let’s hope we can get them back soon.

Hot Docs

Next week Warren will be heading to Toronto to attend the Hot Docs festival for his 3rd time. Hot Docs, now in its 20th year, has developed into one of the most important documentary film festivals in the world.

Plank is a big supporter of the documentary industry and we’re proud of all the projects we’ve been involved with over the last 14 years. From working with Michael Moore to the upcoming launch of an iPhone app for the film Last Woman Standing (set to premiere at Hot Docs on April 26), we love non-fiction filmmaking.

Go Beyond Pixels

At the beginning of June three members of the team will be going to the Go Beyond Pixels Conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The conference is focussed on modern front-end web & mobile development with some of the industry’s best speakers, such as Jeffrey Zeldman & Jonathan Stark, attending.

And on top of everything we’ll learn at the conference, we’ll get the chance to go see Plank alumnus Nancy Beaton and her new baby, and spend time in our second favourite province.

Licensing Expo

Later in June, our business development team will be heading to the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas. For over 30 years, it has been the place for big names and properties to meet and greet. We’re hoping to meet some interesting companies and brands and show off some of our newest ideas.

One last thing...

There’s one more trip that may be happening at the end of June but we don’t yet have all the details. I just heard that it involves someone playing golf.

If you’re going to be in Toronto, St. John’s or Las Vegas for any of these events, drop us a line – we’d love to see you!

We decided to check in first with our buddy Lawrence Tenuta who recently co-founded digital print company Static Pixels. Lawrence started as an intern at Plank when he was in CEGEP and ended up working with us as a developer from 2004 to 2008. Friendly, positive and talented, whenever we are interviewing for a new developer, I always think to myself “are they a Lolo?”.

I caught up with Lawrence to find out more about his new venture.

Whether you're completely self-taught or have a degree in Computational Arts, Computer Science or something similar, we're only concerned that you have the skills needed to perform the job and can hit the ground running. You'll be working on mostly entertainment, technology and social action web and mobile projects.

Your tasks will include:

• Building website templates;
• Simple graphic production;
• Website maintenance.

Our Expectations:

We’re looking for someone fun! But seriously, you should have the following:

• 0-2 years of related experience;
• Willingness to work locally in our Montreal office;
• Knowledge of HTML5 and CSS3;
• Experience with Responsive design techniques will be an asset;
• Experience with PHP, and Javascript frameworks (especially jQuery), will be an asset;
• Experience with SASS/LESS will be an asset;
• Experience with WordPress and WPML will be an asset;
• Proficiency with Photoshop & Illustrator;
• Be passionate about all things digital

We want you to be part of our team for a long time to come. We offer a competitive salary, normal business hours, a comprehensive health and dental plan, commute perks, generous paid vacation time, seasonal hack days, wide choice of modern tools and systems, and a great work environment. We encourage all applicants to browse our site, our social feeds, and our client work to get a good sense of who we are before applying.

If you think you would like to be part of the Plank team, please email your CV and a personal note to warren@plankdesign.com.

We hope you'll join us.

Please note only those candidates we have selected to interview will be contacted.

Around 2005, when the office started to fill up with people, I realized that someone would have to start "running the company". With 10+ people's lives being supported by Plank, someone clearly had to take care of administration, make sure the bank account was filled and that there was new work coming in on a regular basis. I decided that it was my responsibility to step up and do that. There have been many people over the years that have helped me in this process, so I realize that Plank's success has been a team effort as well.

Over the past two years, I have felt like my role at Plank has been at a crossroads. I've been trying to understand what the next step in our evolution should be and what I need to do next. At the end of 2012 I was wondering; should we try to build our own products? Should we stay along the present path? Or, should we try to grow this company?

On November 5, 2012 I got a very timely email and in less than four weeks I was basking in the sun of Palm Springs at the Shop Talk Conference II.  After two days in the company of some of the smartest and most talented digital company owners out there, that I have respected from afar for years, I felt energized and proud to be among peers who just got it. I learned so much from them and I hope I was able to offer something back in return. It was great to get the chance to talk off the record and share so much.

By the time I got back from Shop Talk Conference I had made my decision. It was clear to me what the main challenge for Plank was going to be over the next two years and that was the development of our Sales and Marketing. I feel like we have all other elements of the company covered; we have a great office, filled with talented people who produce excellent work. I completely trust that when a new project is handed over to the team, they will hit it out of the park. So, 2013 began with the hiring of a new Director of Business Development and a re-energized focus on giving my superstars the kind of creative and technical challenges that they deserve.

With my head wrapped around this challenge, I was intrigued to see a post from Joe and a response from Tracey about this exact topic. I appreciated Joe’s openness about Happy Cog’s wins (and losses) in 2012 and his basic data got me thinking about Plank. What is our win-loss ratio? Are we over that magical 50% win ratio? And the question that really struck me was, why have we put out substantially more proposals over the year than the 22 that Happy Cog developed? I’ve always thought that we were selective in who we sent proposals to but I think that the difference in volume (given that we are roughly the same sized teams) says at least one of the following things;

• Are we investing too much of our time writing proposals that aren’t a good match for us?
• Are we bidding on too many projects below our financial threshold?
• Should we be focussing our attention on fewer, more high quality pitches?

Tracey got me thinking a lot about the process of how we decide who we want to work with and how I act as a traffic cop in determining who becomes our clients. I now pride myself on having the confidence and ability to tell if a company, person or project would or wouldn’t be a good match for my team. I have kindly declined many projects over the years if things just didn’t feel right. I am also very happy now to clearly state the size of the projects we like to take on as a team. But, am I saying no often enough? Am I really learning and trying to improve our sales process when we lose something? Are we really trying to make our pitches that much more impressive? These are the questions for me to focus on in the upcoming year.

So thank you Joe and thank you Tracey for making me stop and think a bit about how we are doing. The end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 have been busy, with more opportunities coming our way than ever before. We feel like people have come to recognize the importance of what we do and the value we bring to the table. Now, John and I will have to be sure that we are doing our jobs and working as smartly as the rest of the company.

If we really are going to become the company that we all envision, we need to choose what we want to win.

The Freekey was designed by Erik von Schoultz of by Drosselmeyer Design Group, a Stockholm based firm with a mission to improve and simplify our lives through everyday products. It was nominated for a Consumer Product Award in the 2012 Innovation by Design Awards.

Here’s how you use it: you just press down on the wave section and the keyring opens up for you to add or remove your keys. No broken nails, no chipped nail polish, no expletives. That’s it. And that’s all there needs to be.

Your tasks will include:

• Development of new websites (structure and backend systems), web applications and API's;
• Building on and working with our existing projects of various PHP frameworks;
• Troubleshooting and resolving issues in a deadline-driven environment;
• Documenting, and testing your code;
• Contributing to our technology strategy, developing tools and refining best practices;
• Working closely with the entire team to ensure successful deployments and roll-outs;

Our Expectations:

We're looking for someone fun! But seriously, you should have the following:

• Degree(s) in Computer Science or 2+ years of related experience;
• Strong background in PHP, MySQL and Apache;
• Solid understanding of the MVC design pattern and experience with the modern PHP frameworks;
• Comfortable with the command-line for various Linux server tasks;
• Good understanding of what makes valid HTML markup;
• Efficient problem solver, quick learner, detail oriented, and good communicator;
• A desire to stay up to date, research, and contribute to the expertise of team;
• Willingness to work locally in our Montreal office;
• Fluent in English, Proficient in French

These items aren't required but would be strong pluses towards any potential candidate:

• Experience with CakePHP will be an strong asset;
• Experience with Javascript, and Javascript frameworks (especially jQuery), will be an asset;
• Experience with Git or other modern version control software;
• Mobile development experience will be an asset (iOS and XCode, Responsive website techniques, Mobile API's);
• Experience with WordPress, WordPress MU, and WPML will be an asset;
• Experience with alternative web servers, such as Node.js, lighttpd, nginx, are all assets.

We want you to be part of our team for a long time to come. We offer a competitive salary, normal business hours, a comprehensive health and dental plan, commute perks, generous paid vacation time, seasonal hack days, wide choice of modern tools and systems, and a great work environment. We encourage all applicants to browse our site, our social feeds, and our client work to get a good sense of who we are before applying.

If you think you would like to be part of the Plank team, please email your CV and a personal note to warren@plankdesign.com.

We hope you'll join us.

Please note only those candidates we have selected to interview will be contacted.

John's experience has its roots in over 15 years of production, design and management in mobile and web. He has managed the production process from A to Z which makes him an expert in understanding a client’s needs and providing guidance and fresh ideas without having to leave his chair.

John’s portfolio includes working with FOX’s Family Guy, Maxim Magazine, The NHL, The NFL and Bombardier among other well-known brands.

He is also the 3rd bass player to join Plank and unofficially and undeservedly considers himself to be the best.

Wondering what his 3 stats are? Check out his team page.

John can be reached at:
jbowie@plankdesign.com
(514) 875-0003 ext. 226

That said — our upgrades to traditional single seat licences for CS Premium would been about $6000 for our particular situation (6 licences) plus separately upgrading After Effects (not even sure what that cost was).

After some research, poking around and discussion with Adobe's sales team, we decided to give Creative Cloud a year long try.

If you haven't seen Creative Cloud yet, it's Adobe's subscription based service which lets you access every CS app they sell on an on-demand basis. Each can be downloaded and installed just like the traditional CS software bundle. Creative Cloud matches the offering of the Creative Suite Master collection.

Our total for 6 users came out to about $2700 for 1 year. About 2$ per working day per person. It also gives us access to quite a few more apps than CS Design & Web Premium including After Effects.

We decided to do single CC accounts (as opposed to CC for Teams http://www.adobe.com/ca/products/creativecloud/teams.html) mainly due to not really needing the extra online shared space and the transferable seats. The only thing we had to do before hand was to make sure everyone had valid Adobe ID's. I called up Adobe and they were extremely helpful, even offering us a discounted rate that was supposed to be expired as of Dec 31 , 2012.

Notes:

• I had to do a full machine sweep of any old CS installations, apps and preferences. CS Cleaner Tool (http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html) didn't do a great job, leaving tons of folders and settings files littering my system.
• Manually searching for files with "adobe" in the title let me track down most orphans and carefully delete them,
• Adobe Application Manager is sparse on features but useable - it doesn't notify you of updates so you'll need to periodically launch it and check.
• I had no problems installing on 10.7.x and 10.8.x OS X systems, (full requirements are here: http://www.adobe.com/ca/products/creativecloud/tech-specs.html)
• None of our 6 licences are being used on Windows — but they could be.
• The apps are 64bit when available.
• Handy to remember if we ever see issues, http://status.creativecloud.com
• CC gives you access to any new apps released this year — as well as every update that might happen (major or minor).
• Each seat allows itself to be installed on two machines — which is great for a couple of our team members who work from home on occasion.
• We don't use the video tools much, mainly just After Effects which we've had to buy separately in the past. This helps and saves us even more.
• Adobe has a blog setup to highlight additions and news for CC http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/ and well as a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/creativecloud

Bottom line so far:

Well worth it — but time will tell.