Last Friday, I wrapped up almost 3 months as an intern at Arc90. I came into it expecting this (video), but really, I’ve loved every day I’ve spent working at Arc. While there were no one-man swimming pools or beach volleyball courts, I made some great webapps, learned great skills, and met some phenomenally talented people. But the funniest (saddest?) part about it all was realizing how much of my college education I’ve wasted in two years worrying about grades. College is about inspiring new ideas and being creative, and it took me a summer at Arc to learn that.

A Retrospective of My Creativity

I had a pretty awesome childhood. I biked, ran through the woods, scraped my knees – things kids did before the world had 3D games to simulate them. But of everything I dedicated my time to, drawing definitely sucked in the most of my time. I had this massive pad of paper – the sheets covered my entire torso, altogether it must’ve been at least 2 inches thick. I poured my ideas and imagination into it: fantasy mega-planes/trains/cars/trucks, epic beam rays, cataclysmic volcanoes, and other stuff that belong in Michael Bay films. Even when I made the transition from paper to digital canvas in middle school, my supply of ideas remained as fresh as ever. It was like a golden age of creativity for me.

My college education, in stark contrast, has been a depressing cycle of answering problem sets, counting down days to Fridays, and battling nodding off to sleep in class. These things are especially bad at a school where double-majoring is considered the norm, and pulling all-nighters are the punchlines of far too many stories. It’s not that classes are uninteresting or impossibly difficult, it’s that they pile on so much work that I have little to no time for the creativity I practically oozed as a kid. My time split between doing work and having fun to take my mind off doing work. It was pretty disheartening.

We laugh about it ...and then we cry.

As you might’ve guessed, working at Arc was a big shock. I’d be given a project with no rules and practically no limitations (something I’d never get at a corporate internship) – complete creative freedom while doing “work.” And I wouldn’t be given jobs like “find a way to creatively deliver my coffee”; I was expected to develop full web apps based on nothing more than a few interviews and a list of suggested features. Plus, I had no web development experience beyond simple HTML/CSS. AJAX was ammonia cleanser as far as I knew. Despite the fact that I spent a few nights this summer crouched over a CouchDB or jQuery book, I felt a legitimate catharsis of creativity. I’d be building an interface, coding its underpinnings, fixing its bugs, delivering it to production. Not only was I learning more in 2 months than in 2 years, I was getting paid for it, not paying $54K for the privilege.

Attention to Ideas, not Grades

When I said earlier that I’d “wasted two years”, I meant that I’ve wasted two years completing requirements and maintaining grades instead of being actively creative and kindling innovation (complete coincidence I interned at a company whose speciality is just this). Today, creativity and ideas are the tech world’s measure of talent. And it’s an exciting world to be a part of: there are innumerable venture capitalists, angel investors, tech communities (TechCrunch, VentureBeat) that are always looking to fund and support the next big visionary idea. Ideas are what get tech followers hot and bothered – advances in programming to an extent, but not in the numbers say, a new phone OS or social networking site does. And when you look at the increasing trend of outsourcing basic programming and menial tasks to India and China cheaply, ideas and innovation really start to shine as differentiators in the American tech landscape.

Don't have academic tunnelvision - expand beyond your major.

But I don’t belittle the work of my professors. They’re among the most dedicated people I know. Nor would I drop out of college to pursue ideas (you need an idea first). College is a fertile place to kickstart a life as an innovator. Upwards of 10,000 briliant engineers and entrepreneurs are clustered at Carnegie Mellon, some of whom will be on the front page of NYT or TechCrunch someday. I’ve got access to hundreds of knowledgeable professors who can link me to investors. And this school offers a lot more than a tech education. For two years I’ve been siloed in programming and tech classes, rarely straying beyond requirements. This semester, I’ll be taking psychology, philosophy, entrepreneurship classes to support and develop new ideas, not hover on the ones I already have. Alex Mann wrote this enlightening post about college entrepreneurship where he writes, “[college] can provide a four-year experimentation platform with less risk than the real-world to test ideas in an intelligent feedback mechanism.” It’s all about making the best of your education.

This second-grader, with just an idea, outsourced the production of his iPad game to an offshore firm. When programming becomes America’s next “outsourced resource”, it’s the ideas that are going to really define a technologist’s talent. If I’ve got any lasting advice for college students in the tech field, it’s to spend your time networking and growing ideas instead of focusing too much on getting through classes. And be bored.

Long story short: Interning at Arc has been awesome.

They’re all part of a talk that Tim Meaney and I are giving at SXSW Interactive: The Revenge of Editorials. It’s scheduled for Friday, May 12 at 5pm. You can find all the details on the SXSW site.

We’re a Web shop, so it sort of goes without saying that we love the Web and we believe in the power of the Web. While the Web is borne out of technology, it is – in so many ways – a product of humans. It’s got it all. Intellectual discourse and low-brow ramblings. Pornography and pornography addiction support groups. We play games, do business, meet people, make friends and (virtually) kill enemies.

That said, many people don’t think very much of the Web. The constant buzz. The noisy layouts. The general lack of care into so much of what’s produced. It’s a messy place.

One of our biggest fears, and a key motivator for this talk, is that this frustration will lead people to move away from the Web. These other "places" (whether an App Store or some new-fangled digital magazine) are inviting, but they run counter to what’s made the Web so captivating today.

Our talk will focus on elevating experiences on the Web, rather than bussing people off to some sanitized "other place." We’ll view the Web through the lens of history and look ahead to how we – as content creators, designers and technologists – can do a better job of elevating the Web.

We know the Web will always have its darker corners. We just need to make sure that we create great new experiences inside the Web.

We hope you can join us. It’ll be Arc90’s first showing at SXSW and we’re really excited to be there. Our talk is part of a series on content strategy.

Now when you view a Readabilitied page, you’ll see a new “Help Haiti” link on the left that will take you to Google’s Haiti Crisis Response page where you can donate, volunteer, or provide or seek information on missing people.

Please understand that we don’t take this step lightly. Strictly speaking, we promised that Readability would remove extraneous junk from web pages, and now we’re violating that promise to suit our whims, however benevolent they might be.

We hope that you will forgive the betrayal. We’re keeping the link small and unobtrusive, and we have no relationship with the organizations listed other than deep appreciation for their work. We simply feel that, even in a difficult world, this disaster stands out in its scope and human cost, and we’d rather make Readability a little bit worse if we can make the situation in Haiti the tiniest bit better.

We’ve heard variations of this story time and again from our Kindling customers and tonight’s Kindling release of Campaigns directly addresses this need. A campaign is a time-sensitive call for ideas about a particular topic or goal. As some of our users know, motivation can be a real challenge for any organization. Campaigns are extremely useful tools that help you continue generating new ideas in an on-going manner.

Campaigns are easy for any decision-maker to create. Choose the Room that the campaign belongs in, then add a title, description and the dates that the campaign will be active. Though you may be tempted to run a longer campaign, we recommend an aggressive deadline to increase motivation even further.

Kindling now also offers the ability to attach a reward to your campaign. This additional incentive can drive even more activity to your campaign.

Once the campaign has ended, the ideas that have not been approved or declined remain in the Room. Sometimes the ideas generated for a campaign deserve more time for debate and discussion.

Campaign activity is also accessible via Kindling reporting, so decision-makers have access to the full set of information regarding the campaign at any time.

We know first-hand that motivation can be a real challenge for any organization and we’re hopeful that campaigns will make it easier for decision-makers to kick start their employee’s imaginations. Campaigns is the first of many exciting features that we’re planning for Kindling in 2010 to keep members of your organization engaged with the innovation process.

We can’t wait to hear the success stories that campaigns inspire for our clients!

If you’re not yet using Kindling, sign up at http://www.kindlingapp.com.

The word is probably a front-runner for Most Abused Marketing Term. Is there any phrase more inane than “business innovation”? The term is so badly overused (and misused) that it’s taken on that wrong kind of buzz.

Rather than talking the talk about being innovative, the best way to be innovative is to do something innovative. We’ve tried to create that culture here at Arc90. While we can yammer on all day about how innovative we are, our Lab is our attempt to actually walk the walk.

To feed our own curiosity, we’re always looking around us for inspiration and motivation on how we can better innovate, but more importantly establish a culture where innovation can thrive. In that spirit, we’ve created a place where we’ll be sharing innovative ideas, products, articles, thoughts…just about anything that can inspire and motivate us.

It’s called the Cult of Innovation. It’s mainly a place where we’ll point the way to all things innovative. Yes, the “cult” part of the name is a little, well, cult-ish. Don’t let that scare you away. This is the good kind of cult.

Wikipedia defines “cult” as “a group whose beliefs or practices could be considered strange or sinister.” Let’s lop off the “sinister” part of the definition. Anyone that innovates breaks new ground and challenges the status quo. So “strange” may not be that off-base. It’s all about the undiscovered. The “out of left field” stuff. We hope you’ll enjoy the Cult as much as we’ve enjoyed seeking out and sharing the innovative things we’ve found.

If you’ve got anything you think is worth sharing on the Cult, don’t hesitate to share it with us. You can also follow the Cult on Twitter at @c_o_i.

You’d never know it based on our [now previous] website, but Arc90 has a long history of consulting success. Companies we’re currently working with or have worked with in the past include Insight, Knovel, McGraw-Hill, GradeGuru, AppFirst, The New York Times, and Wolters Kluwer, among others. So is Arc90 a consulting firm, focusing on strategic consulting, design, and Web development?

And then there’s Kindling, our idea collaboration tool and our first product to market. Kindling is currently being used by organizations large and small: The US Department of Veterans Affairs, LeapFrog, Medtronic, AOL, Symantec, and many more. As far as these customers of Arc90 are concerned, we are a product company responsible for supporting Kindling. So is the future of Arc90 product development – is Arc90 a product company?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

Arc90 is all of the things described above – an R&D shop, a strategic consulting firm, a Web design/ development company, and a product company.

Five years ago, the company was born out of rejection – a rejection of the hostage situation that is often corporate IT, a rejection of the business model of the turn-of-the-century Web company, and a rejection of development-lead software efforts. The company attracts individuals passionate about technology and the Web, those that don’t fit the mold of the 9-5 corporate culture, and those that love what they do and don’t view work as work.

The business has grown steadily over five years, adding clients slowly but consistently, mostly through the scattering model. During this period, we viewed our Web presence as sort of a placeholder; it said nothing about the company and wouldn’t educate the uninformed about our services. A visit to Arc90.com over the last five years left the visitor confused, at best. The site created a fun mystique around the company, but as time went on, we’ve become more visible and this became a problem. It was time to introduce the world to Arc90.

So I’m very happy to announce the relaunch of Arc90.com. Throughout the stages of building the new site, through concept, design, and production, we’ve tried to focus on one specific use-case: a visitor trying to answer the elusive question…Who is Arc90?

To date, our consulting business has grown almost entirely by way of word of mouth. This is a logical and expected outcome for a company that’s done no overt marketing, but it is interesting to see that people who have worked with us in the past tend to work with us again and again. Among that group of people, one consistent theme does emerge: someone works with us, leaves their company and brings us along with them to their new gig. Call it the scattering model of growth. This seems pretty logical for the services business, if people see you as effective in terms of product strategy, design and implementation, they’ll likely join another company with similar needs and will seek partners that have proven their worth. Often, selection of a strategic consulting partner is a very personal decision, and thinking back to the good work that people have done for you is a much stronger connection than an ad in a magazine or the like. In this sense, Arc90 is much like a meme, as my coworker Avi pointed out. Through experience working with us, people get acquainted with the idea of Arc – design-driven development, being passionate about the Web, etc – and carry that forward with them.

So that’s the consulting business, where it’s not uncommon for growth to occur based on pleasing some people at a client where some subset of this group will eventually leave and take your firm with them to their new company. But does this scattering model work for growing a product? I’m convinced that this is a huge potential strength for our idea management and innovation application, Kindling, one that will pay dividends for years to come. Employees working at companies using Kindling is a constantly growing list. Some percentage of those employees, we like to think a pretty high one, will really connect with the product and see the value it creates. Some subset of those people will change jobs in the next year or two, and some subset of those people will pull Kindling along with them into their new company. That group may very well turn out to be our best salespeople.

In thinking about the scattering effect on Arc’s business, I was reminded of an article from a recent issue of Wired, where the economic value-creation of turnover was discussed. Paul Boutin wrote:

“Job-hopping, rather than climbing the career ladder within a corporation, facilitates flows of information and know-how between individuals, firms, and industries. When combined with venture capital, it supports unanticipated recombinations of technologies and skill.” In other words, we have Twitter today because a bunch of engineers who were trained at other companies quit their jobs and brought their expertise to Evan Williams’ side project. It’s like biology: In an ecosystem where microbes are promiscuously swapping genes and traits, evolution speeds up.

That’s exactly the right metaphor – individuals leaving their companies and bringing with them the best parts of their previous role, while leaving behind the frictional parts, is much like the selection process of evolution.

Recently a few people have left Arc after a long time of nearly no turnover. While I’m not happy about it – the people that left are very talented and took a bunch of knowledge out the door with them – I’m an optimist, so I’ll view it as a sign that the job market is loosening-up. An improving job market means more scattering, and more scattering is good for us all.

Note: thanks to flickr user Pensiero for the image.

From a sales perspective, we’re looking for someone that helps both generate new leads through various means and capable of following up and walking prospective clients and customers through the decision-making process. Ideally, this person has experience with helping build partnerships and target customers for Web-based applications and Web consulting services. It’s important that you understand the viral, social and marketing facets of the Web. We also expect you to help us refine and hone our roadmap and marketing message for both ourselves and our products.

Broadly speaking, we’re looking for someone that is passionate, outgoing, energetic, proactive and willing to wear various hats to help us succeed. If you think you’re the right fit for the job and are interested at working with one of the coolest design and technology shops in New York City, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

We’re hard workers over here at Arc and lately, some have been working even harder. For the past 6 months, several Arc-ers have been donating some of their downtime between projects to the effort of completely redesigning the Change for Kids website. 

Change for Kids is a non-profit organization that aims to empower underprivileged children by providing them with a broad range of innovative literacy, arts and music programs. Want to be inspired? Watch this video.

Jess Eddy led the team (which included familiar faces such as our very own Amy, Ben, Alex and Tyler) and we couldn’t be prouder of the job they did for this great organization. The site is completely modernized, has been integrated into a CMS for easy management and can now move towards their goal of increasing online donations.

Jess will be posting in the next few days about the non-profit-friendly tools she used, but in the meantime, check out the site for more information about donating or volunteering.

Joined Arc90 in: January 2008

My most prized possession: Stanley, my female cat.

In the fall of 2007, Dave Hauenstein was hired as a PHP developer by IDT, a telecommunications company in Newark, NJ. But within a day of accepting, he was still searching the job market.

“I was trying to find the next great place to work,” the 26-year-old recalled. “I realized that I was settling because it was in Newark, NJ.”

After finding Arc90’s job posting for a PHP developer on Authentic Jobs, Dave decided to send in his resume. The Westfield, NJ resident interviewed with the company the day before Thanksgiving and was hired on the spot.

“I’m really glad I decided to check the job boards one last time because Arc90 was exactly what I wanted,” Dave said. “Arc90 has a way of hiring great people. I am surrounded by smart and motivated people who love their jobs and what they are doing.”

Dave had the opportunity to meet his future co-workers at the company’s holiday party, before he even started the job.

“It was definitely a taste of what was going to come for the next couple of years,” he noted. “I felt instantly comfortable with everybody.”

Dave cites his expanded knowledge about architectural style as one of the biggest thing he’s learned since joining the Arc team.

“The most important thing that I learned at Arc90 is the ins and outs of REST,” he said. “I’m using HTTP the way it’s meant to be used and it has definitely changed the way I write web applications forever.”

Some of those web apps have been built for the public. Dave is half of the team behind TBUZZ, a Twitter bookmarklet recently released by Arc90. Rich Ziade, Arc90’s founder, came up with the concept and enlisted Dave’s expertise for building it.

“It was great to see TBUZZ get popular so quickly,” Dave said. “Wired Magazine tweeted about it soon after it was launched and the lead developer from Twitter also tweeted about it. It’s great to have something out there that tons of people used that you created.”

The Iselin, NJ native also built Get a Room, an application used within Arc90 for reserving conference rooms, with Jess Eddy.

“We were using an actual book to book rooms and everybody was getting confused because nobody would use it,” Dave said. “I wrote an API for room booking with an Ajax interface using jQuery. We all use it and it’s a lot easier than using the book.”

Dave wasn’t always a programmer; his coding skills grew out of a necessity. In 2003, his rock band, Site 3, needed a website. Dave didn’t have any experience with design or web development but wanted to take on the task.

“My friend took a HTML class in high school and she helped me get started,” he recalled. “I kept wanting to make the site better so I kept developing it. Animated gifs and frames were huge back then.”

Dave’s side project eventually turned into a business opportunity. While he was studying Economics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Dave founded Killer Creations Design Group with a friend.

“Other bands needed me to work on their websites so I kept doing it,” Dave remembered. “We started a company for band sites and expanded the business to include real estate companies and interior designers.”

During his sophomore year of college, Dave also worked for the Rutgers’ housing website. At this time, he had a formal introduction to PHP.

“That was my first real job doing web design and working with PHP,” he recalled. “I took a few C++ classes in college so PHP was really easy to pick up.”

Dave admits that if he weren’t programming, he would still be playing with his band, Post Break Tragedy. After releasing their first CD in 2004, All of This is Over Soon, the band toured the United States in an assortment of vehicles.

“We drove from New Jersey to California in my grandpa’s plumbing van,” Dave recalled. “We eventually bought a school bus. It wouldn’t go over 65 miles per hour and going downhill, you might hit 70 miles per hour.”

Dave’s love for music, along with his admiration for a certain award-winning guitarist, has turned into a running joke within the company.

“Somebody found out that I like John Mayer and I haven’t lived it down since,” he explained. “I’ll come into work and there will be an ad ripped out from a magazine with John Mayer on it, sitting at my desk.”