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Brian said I should blog about my car, and so I've been trying to come up with some way to relate it to the web. I'm not sure just how that will work, so I'll start with a little story about sibling rivalry. My sister, Krisna, has been two years older than me for as long as I can remember. This means that she learned to whistle and snap well before I could produce anything louder than a slightly reedy wheeze. She drove first, voted first, was the graphics editor of our college paper a full two years before I was, etc. She minored in art, so I made it a double-major.
Things went on like this for a while until she eventually started a family and I decided to do my own thing (not start a family). Then, about a year and a half ago, she and her husband (let's call him "Chuck") bought a new, used car. Then, they bought a kit from Greasecar.com. They installed the kit and started running their car on waste veggie oil (WVO) they got from a couple of local restaurants.
I immediately saw my chance to rediscover the art of copying my sister. And so I looked on Craigslist and bought an automatic version of exactly the same new, used car they'd bought, except that it's blue (thanks Wayne!). I also bought a kit from Greasecar.com. And then my brother-in-law selflessly gave up two precious weekends to help me install that kit so that I can run my car on WVO (I get mine from Elevation Burger - THANKS!), just like my sister.
Now here's the thing (the way I relate this back to the web). I once worked in a car shop when I was 16, but I mostly filed papers. I've never changed my own oil. I once paid a shop $80 to replace my air filter. I was never a mechanic. And neither were Krisna or Chuck. But with the help of four very active forums, we all have the knowledge we need to take up our own wrenches, along with some level of confidence that we aren't going to break things that we shouldn't. Or be left totally stranded once we do (we won't, of course, but just in case). So I'd just like to give a shout out to all of the really helpful community members who post photos, resources, and step-by-step instructions for newbies on tdiclub.com, greasecar.com, frybrid.com, and biodiesel.infopop.cc. You're the best!
And Greasecar — that step-by step DVD with the encouraging music was awesome, even though the whatever-you-call-ems that held on my heat shield did not unscrew as easily as yours did in fast-forward. Not bitter ... just sayin'.
At only 32, Brian still has a few more years to continue his run in Tech Bisnow‘s list of “Top 35 Entrepreneurs Under 35” in the DC area.
Williams started Viget in 1999 with his brother and late father, with the idea of being an innovator in web consulting. They’ve done work for clients ranging from comedian Brian Regan to Strayer University, along with launching the sites of Loladex, Pay the Fan and Odeo. But he also loves spending time with his three kids and writing on his blog www.wynnewilliams.com, titled after his middle name because, as he explains, he decided to spend $20 in 1997 on beers with friends instead of buying www.brianwilliams.com. Hey, it might have saved him an argument from NBC.
Wish him luck!
Tom Osborne joined Viget this week as our design director alongside Peyton. Tom’s in our headquarters and Peyton in Durham, and together they’ll be leading our talented team of designers and working closely with our clients.
Tom’s web design background began when he co-founded eman communications design in 1996—which later merged with Telegraph.net —supporting clients like PGA of America and Motorola. He comes to Viget after four years at AOL, where he helped the AIM Product Design Team in their messaging and social media efforts. He’s excited to be here.
"To say that Viget has huge potential is to understate it," he said. "There’s an eight-year proven track record, imaginative ideas abounding, and talent brimming, bringing mind-blowing concepts to life every day. This is enormous. I’m happy to be a part of it."
Brian‘s happy he’s a part of it, too. After having met Tom a couple years ago at SXSW, Brian said he knew Tom would be a great fit for the team since "he’s authentic and down-to-Earth; clearly talented and personally driven.
"We have a great design team here and were fortunate to be able to take our time in finding the perfect candidate to lead the group," Brian said. "Tom’s balance of both visual and user experience design is a great match for what we do. He understands the challenges our clients are facing and will be instrumental helping to take our work to the next level."
Ben's a proud papa -- both to his first baby (girl), and now (officially) to his first book, Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects, which recently started shipping from Amazon and will be in bookstores starting next week. He's spoken nationally and internationally in the Rails community, and has been authoring the book since October 2007.
Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects is a guide to joining the burgeoning world of open web applications. It argues that opening up your application can provide significant benefits and involves you in the entire process—from setting up your application, to creating clients for it, to handling success and all its attendant problems.
- This book is the essential resource for anyone who wants to make their web application a full participant in the new Internet.
- This book is intended for intermediate–to–advanced Rails developers—people who use Rails regularly for sites and applications more complicated than the prototypical roll–your–own blog.
- In particular, it’s targeted at Rails developers who want to be good Web 2.0 citizens—sharing the functionality of their app with other sites to the betterment of everyone.
- Application projects include iPhone, Facebook, and REST for the enterprise.
Ben will briefly tear himself away from his new parenting duties tomorrow when he presents “Domain Modeling with REST” at 7 p.m. to more than 20 confirmed attendees at the Raleigh-area Ruby Brigade (raleigh.rb).
For some time now, REST has been the One True Way to build Rails applications. Unfortunately, though, RESTful design is often easier to aim for than it is to achieve. Complex domain modeling with resources can be a challenge, and the implementation of REST in Rails itself can cause unexpected problems. In this talk, I’ll be discussing these issues and more. By the time we’re done, you’ll be ready to build the RESTful systems you’ve always dreamed of—or, at least, make your applications simpler to build, maintain, and integrate with the rest of the web.
Our very own Clinton R. Nixon‘s proposal for a tutorial entitled, “Extending Rails: Understanding and Building Plugins,” was accepted this week to O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention 2008! OSCON—which will be held in Portland, OR, July 21-25—welcomes more than 2,500 people each year and selects only 40 tutorials. Clinton is “more than a little excited” to lead his three-hour tutorial at the premier gathering of open-source developers in the world.
Congrats, Clinton!
A team of Viget folks spent a long weekend in Texas for South By Southwest. We saw some interesting panels, reunited with folks we hadn't seen in months or since last year, and got to meet and talk to dozens of folks we hadn't ever seen. It was definitely a great time, but it was also lacking a lot that we look for in a great event, especially one being paid for by our professional development budgets.
Continue reading "Building a Better SXSW"
FALLS CHURCH, VA – M. Jackson Wilkinson, senior strategist at Viget Labs, will cross the pond to participate in an Agile design panel discussion at the Webdesign International Festival in Limoges, France, April 17-19, 2008.
"This is my first overseas talk and I’m really looking forward to it," he said. "I think it’ll be a great opportunity for me to interact with a lot of bright people and share some of the things that we do very well here at Viget."
Wilkinson submitted a proposal on Agile design in early January and, after learning it had been accepted, immediately began brushing up on his French.
We last redesigned viget.com almost two years ago. As part of that effort, we launched the FourLabs blog, dedicated to sharing “insights and commentary reflecting the four key aspects of our work: strategic consulting, interactive design, application development, and online marketing.” We also noted that it was “ever-evolving” and today, “it” has evolved substantially. Multiplied might be more like it.
We found over the past 22 months that writing for the FourLabs was hard because of you, frankly. Who are you? A designer? Developer? Marketer? We found our readers to be each of these, but not all of them. That made blogging tough. A post about code couldn’t be too techie for fear of scaring off the design readers. A post about UX need to define what UX is if we expected the non-UX folks to keep reading. You get the idea. A good rule for blogs is to know your audience and stay focused. We were trying to be broad ... but no more!
Today, we’ve launched five blogs, one for each of the four labs (strategy, design, development, and marketing) and a newly focused FourLabs blog. FourLabs is all about us - our work, our clients, our team - and is written for those who care to follow what’s happening at Viget (and thank you for caring!).
Our niche blogs are all about you.
- VigetAdvance, our web strategy blog, will focus on web start-ups, new product launches, and how the web continues to transform every business.
- If you’re a designer, keep up with VigetInspire and the thoughts our design team have about stuff like user experience, web standards, and Flash as well as notable site launches and events like SXSW.
- If you’re a developer, we hope you’ll enjoy VigetExtend and our development team talking about open source, Ruby on Rails, test driven development, and events like RailsConf.
- Marketers should check out VigetEngage, where our marketing team will share tips and ideas on search, email, and social media marketing as well as analytics.
If you think you’d kinda like to follow all four of these, no problem—just keep keepin’ up with FourLabs, where we’ll have a week digest of what’s covered in each, or join our email list for a monthly update.
By launching these focused blogs, our growing team here at Viget can more effectively connect with their peer communities. We can share ideas and generally contribute to the vibrant and ever-expanding industry that we’re all in. And since each Lab here at Viget shares knowledge between them, we think our perspective will be a little unique. We hope you do too!
You’ll notice they each have a different look, and none really look much like Viget.com or even reflect our branding. That’s no accident! We’ll write most of the posts (though guest bloggers are welcome) but we want the content and discussion to be about you, not us. FourLabs will continue to cover all things Viget.
Will this plan work? One blog is hard enough to keep up on—will we be able to sustain five of them? The only thing we can promise is that we’ll give it our best shot. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions!
One more thing: kudos to Rob, Doug, and Steph, who led the charge here at Viget to get all this put together while juggling plenty of client work. Internal projects are notorious for slipping, but these guys were dedicated to getting this done in time for SXSW. Nicely done!
This content originally appeared as a press release on viget.com, and has since been adapted for our FourLabs blog.
FALLS CHURCH, VA – Senior Developer Ben Scofield will be taking Portland, OR, by storm in May when he presents "Advanced RESTful Rails" at RailsConf.
"I hope that the audience will become more comfortable using RESTful principles to model solutions to complex problems, and that they’ll be better prepared to deal with some of the shortcomings in Rails’ support for REST," Scofield said.
The conference – which runs from May 29-June 1, 2008 – brings together the largest number of Ruby and Rails developers in the world.
"It’s the best place to go to stay abreast of current developments and meet smart people from all over the place," he said. "Being able to speak there is just a bonus, really."
