It’s a very exciting time at Strawberrysoup right now. As the title suggests, we have been asked to help judge the .net magazine awards 2010.

As regular contributors to the magazine and other publications, we were really pleased to be asked by Future Publishing to help judge their coveted awards

The .net Awards website (http://www.thenetawards.com) – in association with Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 – is open now for votes in sixteen categories; Awards include ‘web personality of the year’ and ‘innovation of the year’, which sees the controversial Wikileaks (http://www.wikileaks.com) competing against nominees including Google’s Android 2.2 OS and Adobe’s Flash Player for Mobile.

Held annually since 1998, the long-running .net Awards mix public opinion with those of a leading panel of 100 industry experts, including the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman, Paul Boag and Molly Holzschlag, who deliberate on the final shortlist.

Winners of the prestigious .net Awards 2010 are announced on Thursday, 18th November at a special event in London.

The award categories for this year are as follows:

• Design agency of the year
• Interactive site of the year
• Blog of the year
• Mobile site of the year
• Mobile app of the year
• Innovation of the year
• Web personality of the year
• Redesign of the year
• Podcast of the year
• Video podcast of the year
• Web app of the year
• Open source app of the year
• Standards champion
• Best API use
• Community site of the year
• Viral campaign of the year

The awards are heavily promoted across Future’s portfolio of magazines and websites, with editorial and adverts running across 16 titles including T3, MacFormat and the fast-growing TechRadar.com (http://www.techradar.com), which now attracts over 3m unique users worldwide each month.   Influential online magazine, A List Apart – which explores the design, development and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices, becomes the first-ever .net Award’s media partner. The British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) will be promoting to their members as official industry partner, while Sitecore, Fasthosts and Basekit are category sponsors.

Editor of .net, Dan Oliver said:

“.net magazine is read by thousands of professional web designers and developers from around the world, and winning one of our coveted Awards is a great achievement, made even more special by the fact that both the general public and industry peers take part in the decision process. We work in one of the most dynamic and creative industries on the planet, and these Awards showcase the talent, creativity, and passion that help make the web what it is today.”

We love the big smoke, don’t get us wrong. The vibrancy of the city, the vast array of opportunities is both exciting and exhilarating. We have lots of London based clients that we enjoy working with. We even have an office there which acts as a more professional environment to meet our clients than the local Starbucks or Prét a Manger.

What we find really interesting (and frustrating sometimes!) is when we have a conversation with a potential client and they subtly mention they have a meeting with a London based agency. They seem to automatically assume that this agency can do a better job based on their location. Why does this have such an impact on the illusion of someones creativity or the ability to do the job well?

It’s correct to say that there are many fantastic agencies in London, probably more so than in any other city/town in the UK due to it’s size. The city scene is also boosted by some fantastic design colleges and universities that release inspiring graduate talent.

We just feel that London is not the only place to look. In cities and towns throughout the UK, you will find a growing base of graphic designers, web designers, illustrators and photographers that are really carving a name for themselves.

Look what’s down here

We know lots of people who have lived and worked in London and have experienced the hustle and bustle – ourselves included for a few years. We decided to move down to the South coast to get away from it all, live the lighter side of life whilst retaining our core design values.

Larger brands and corporations are starting to see the benefit of working with non-London based agencies due to their cost vs. creativity. Lots of agencies have been started up by ex-londoners seeking a better quality of life and work-life balance. You only have to look at websites like the Southwest Top 100 Creative Agencies (based on revenue) to realise the potential that the Southwest in particular has to compete with London.

Being a little biased, if you look at Bournemouth in particular, we have a fantastic range of digital and print agencies lining our golden beaches. Forget the traffic, millions of commuters, pollution and high living costs. Fresh air, beautiful scenery and lots of eager clients await.

Meetdraw

We went to Meetdraw 6 last night in Branksome Dene Chine and it demonstrated our above points perfectly – Bournemouth has a solid base of creative digital people. The event was created to pull together the creative talent of Dorset and its surrounding cities. It’s a great opportunity to meet new people and catch up regularly as well as compare stories, discuss projects and potentially gain some work.

Agencies, freelancers, students and anyone else interested in digital or print can come along and with food or drink sponsored by Dorset Design Forum, there’s no reason not to!

We would love to know what your thoughts are on London. Do you agree with us or think that it is unfair?  Answers in the comments below!

We were approached by Design Distillery, a design agency based in Chichester who asked us to develop this new eCommerce website for leading marine, auto and hotel refrigeration supplier Penguin Refrigeration.

They had an existing eCommerce website, however it looked out-of-date and needed to look more professional. We also suggested developing a customised system builder which would let end-users select core system pieces and design their own refrigeration system that they could then order online.

We developed the website on our StrawberrySystem bespoke CMS and developed numerous modules that fitted around their existing business processes. The end result is a beautiful looking website, a powerful CMS and a platform that will help Penguin Refrigeration increase their online sales and improve their business image.

If you would like to view the website live or find out more about Penguin Frigo, click here.

We have been lucky at Strawberrysoup. Since we started back in 2005, we have achieved consistent growth from two to twelve employees and feel that we now have the perfect balance. There is no doubt that we found it very daunting when we hired our first employee, but we were lucky – we started them part-time, they had another job running their own business and eventually they became full-time, so it was a smooth transition with minimal risk.

From there, growing to twelve seemed less terrifying. For sure, if we think about our monthly salary bill, it can get a little scary, but we have more than enough work to cover our costs at the moment, so there’s no real panic.

We never really had a growth plan either to be honest. There was no magical number that we were aiming on achieving in terms of team members, we were just seeing how we went and if the more people wanted us to work with them and we didn’t have time in our project planner, we hired.

Staying ‘small’ is the way forward

We feel that there is real benefit in remaining small. Officially, we are no longer small (up to 5 employees) anymore, but classed as a medium, however we are still small enough to change with the times and make effective decisions without the bureaucracy of larger corporations or agencies.
Since our first employee joined us, we have worked really hard to make Strawberrysoup a fun place to work. We wanted people to wake up on a Monday morning and want to come to work, to look forward to seeing each other and also socialising outside of work.  If people feel happy at work, it ultimately reflects on their work with a higher quality being produced with more creative results.

It becomes difficult for talent to shine amongst the hundreds of other employees. Some would argue that this is the responsibility of the heads of departments in larger agencies, but we know each of our employees as friends and understand their strengths and weaknesses, so projects and work can be apportioned appropriately.

Faster changes, better executed

In the current economic climate, things are changing. Customers want solutions to their problems faster than ever and for the best value. This coupled with the fact that our sector is one of the fastest advancing industries, with new technologies and ideas being generated all the time, we need to ensure that our business can keep up.

From experience, this becomes increasingly difficult to do as a larger agency. Multiple levels of management and a convoluted thought process mean that decisions can take weeks with all stakeholders needing to be involved and happy. This has been explained to us as the same concept with boats and ships.

A cruise ship is massive. It carries hundreds of people across wide open seas. In order for it to change its course, it needs planning, space and lots of resources. Compare this to a smaller yacht. Changing its planned route is simple, can be done in a small space and with minimal impact. We would without doubt prefer to be a smaller yacht.

Growth plans for Strawberrysoup

At the moment, we are planning on remaining small and agile. For the level of work and our project commitments in the near future, our team is more than capable of delivering fantastic creative, sound technical and friendly account management.

Don’t get us wrong – we work with some fantastic larger agencies who are doing great work. They have larger teams of individuals that focus on their core areas and do a really great job. We take our hats off to them for remaining stable and being able to grow as large as they have, it’s just that at this stage of our business, growth is our secondary objective, with quality being number one.

Volkswagon have recently had much success with their Fun Theory viral campaign, and they have developed it further with their Fast Lane campaign. We love this slide on the underground video – just goes to show that people on public transport can have fun and enjoy themselves.

The concept of the slides was taken to the extreme by Carsten Holler when he created slides in the Tate Modern.

“The slides changed the daily routine of those who experienced them, altering their modes of traveling and their conception of social appropriateness. In the midst of a public space, traveling down a slide like a child in a playground, one loses all sense of control, exactly what one fears in a collective environment”

We *love* the recent campaign by VW and think it’s just another great way of encouraging you to think fun and slightly different every once and a while!

This video shows another video from VW which relates to improving/speeding up the supermarket shopping experience! (Not sure if this would work for real though!)