Armadillo Studios Inc.

Leveraging The Virtual & Local Community

One of the founding principals of Armadillo Studios is to embrace, participate and encourage a sense of community.

If you’ve been following us for anytime you will have noticed how much we love to promote, retweet and encourage the growing Calgary tech community. It’s one of the main reasons, we started the “yycapps.com”:http://www.yycapps.com project last year and one of the main impetuses for participating with “democamps”:http://democampcalgary.com/, meet-ups and other “local ventures”:http://www.yycphotobook.com.

Leveraging the Virtual Community

(Read More…)

Getting Onboard With QR Codes

Earlier this month we had the pleasure of announcing the redesign of “Mike’s Bloggity Blog”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/mike-s-bloggity-blog-redesign-qr-codes. It was an important time for Mike, in addition to the new redesign he was also sponsoring the opening night of the “Calgary Underground Film Festival”:http://www.calgaryundergroundfilm.org/2011/tucker-dale-vs-evil.

So in conjunction with the redesign, Armadillo Studios, also crafted up a special advert for Mike’s Bloggity Blog in the festival program. Which of course gave us the perfect opportunity to jump on the *QR Code Bandwaggon*.

Getting on Board With QR Codes

(Read More…)

The Procrastination Equation: A New Book and An Exciting New Redesign

In conjunction with the launch of his new book, *The Procrastination Equation*, Team Armadillo is incredibly excited to showcase the new online home of “Dr. Piers Steel”:http://webapps2.ucalgary.ca/~steel/.

Dr. Steel is one of the world’s foremost researchers and speakers on the science of motivation and procrastination. Towards the end of last year, Dr. Steel approached Armadillo Studios to see if we could help him update and transform his personal web site. He was looking to not only promote his upcoming book, but to also create a new venue to create an ongoing dialogue about Procrastination.

Using our extensive knowledge of the WordPress CMS, we set about redesigning a brand new site for Piers. This new site, which was launched a little under a month ago, is quickly becoming an exciting new resource for everything related to Procrastination.

Not only does the site feature Pier’s new book, but it also provides a wealth of innovative features to enhance the user experience. From a Facebook integrated version of the ever-popular “The Measure My Procrastination Survey”:http://webapps2.ucalgary.ca/~steel/the-procrastinus-survey/ to the inclusion of two site skins to showcase both the _American_ and _Canadian_ editions of the book; this new site is designed to push the envelop of the standard _literary_ web site.

We wish Pier’s all the best with the big book launch this week and we look forward to the continued evolution of “procrastinus.com”:http://www.procrastinus.com.

DCWEEK2010: 140 Conference

To conclude our time at DCWeek, Team Armadillo had the privilege of taking in the D.C. edition of the “140 Conference”:http://dc.140conf.com/.

Started last year, by Jeff Pulver, the 140 Conference is a platform for the worldwide twitter community to come together and discuss the impact of Twitter, and to an extent the larger Social Connectivity of our culture. It’s a quick single day event, where speakers and panelists are give less than 20 minutes to cover their desired topic. The added bonus of last week’s event in Washington, was that it corresponded with “Digital Capital Week”:http://www.digitalcapitalweek.org.

The D.C. 140 Conference was filled with an “impressive line-up of thinkers and speakers”:http://dc.140conf.com/schedule. To detail each talk would probably fill three or four blog posts. So for the sake of brevity, I am going to detail three of the most interesting talks from the day.

The Salty Campaign

One of the more interesting talks revolved around Eric Weaver, an Agency executive with Vancouver based DDB. In his talk, Eric described the success of the “Salty Campaign for Knorr Sidekicks”:http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2010/01/knorrs-salty-salt-shaker-cant-catch-a-break.html.

And while many people are familiar with the T.V. spots which infiltrated Canadian Networks last year, how many of you are familiar with the accompanying Social Media campaigns?

Probably not many of you, but the campaigns were a huge success. In conjunction with the T.V. commercial, DBB also launched campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. On one hand user were able “to purchase Salty and Pepper shakers”:http://www.sidekicks.ca/arden.aspx and once people received their shakers. they were encouraged to promote pictures of their Salty in everyday life on Twitter. The second part of this aspect of the campaign allowed users who befriended Salty on Twitter and Facebook access to two hilarious video clips to expand the Salty story.

Here is one of the extra videos below.

Eric spent his time talking about the success of the campaign, but one of the key points he made was – _to have a successful campaign in this market, you have to have a corresponding relationship between Traditional Media and Social Media. Each tool has to compliment the other and it has to be geared to drive users towards the target campaign_.

*Sidenote*: Eric, although not a full-fledged Canadian, was one of the three Canadians at the conference. Of course the other two Canadians were “TEAM ARMADILLO”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/drbeachvacation/4710974738/!

Blake Hall & TroopSwap

Blake Hall is a one of the three founding members of “TroopSwap”:https://www.troopswap.com/pages/about, an online tool designed to help soldiers who are constantly moving and transferring. His talk revolved around the concept of Enterprise 2.0 and how it can help communication issues within the Military.

Hall talked about implementing Enterprise 2.0 concepts and the ideals behind shared social networks to help communications between forces in combat zones. Hall’s visions revolved around the use of a massive discussion board or a secure Twitter like client (similar to “Yammer”:https://www.yammer.com/), where troops and commanding officers can safely pass on information in real-time to Platoon leaders. The goal of Hall’s vision is to ensure that information is available to all levels of a combat force in real-time.

Hall’s philosophy was that with so much collaboration and information being spread through these Social Networks, the concept of the Twitter and Enterprise 2.0 is something that could be leveraged to save lives in combat zones.

In a world where so much rhetoric is focused on brand development, ROI, and trends; Hall’s talk was an astonishing breath of fresh air.

The Browncoats: Redemption Project

One of the most interesting talks came from Mike Dougherty and Steven Fisher, who detailed their experience with leveraging the Twitter community to fund “The Browncoats: Redemption”:http://browncoatsmovie.com/.

The Browncoats: Redemption is a new film based in the Joss Whedon developed universe of Serenity and Firefly. But unlike the short-lived show Firefly and the movie Serenity, Browncoats is a completely fan-funded continuation of the mythos. It is the brain child of Mike and Steven and during the 140 conference, the two discussed the project and how they have used Twitter and Facebook to spread the word to the ravenous Firefly community to help fund their vision.

The 140 Conference

The 140 conference was an exceptional day of thoughts and discussion. As mentioned, I could go on about each of the 50 speakers, but it would probably be a bit of an overload of information.

If you do get a chance to attend a 140 Conference, please to take advantage of the opportunity. You won’t regret it.

DCWEEK2010: Media 2.0 Day & The Probono Lounger

For the past two days, Team Armadillo has venture into the heart of D.C. for two separate “Digital Capital Week Events”:http://www.digitalcapitalweek.org.

Media 2.0

On Tuesday, Armadillo descended on to the headquarters of National Geographic for a full day discussion on “Media and it’s role in the Web 2.0 World”:http://www.bivingsreport.com/2010/dcweek-media-2-0-day/. With a heavy hitting list of speakers from NPR, USAToday, National Geographic and the Pew Institute it was a wonderful day chalk-full of information.

Some of the most interesting tid-bits of information from the day came from the round table discussion in the morning on Social and Traditional Media.

Yes, this topic has been dissected ad nauseam at many other conferences and events, but this panel provided some interesting insight into the evolution of Social Media by some of the giants of Traditional Media. From the NPR’s usage of crowd-sourcing to provide geo-locational information in advance of Hurricane Gustov to The National Geographic’s implementation of a powerful members site to allow a more immersible social experience with their product, it was a refreshing site to hear the supposed _dinosaurs of traditional media_ embracing and championing Social Media.

But one of the most interesting concepts came from USAToday’s Brian Dresher who revealed a new spin on a frequently discussed topic – *ROIII – Return on Interaction, Influence and Investment*.

This concept is one of the key factors that USAToday leverages to analyze and evaluate their implementation of Social Media. It essentially expands upon the typical monetary value placed on Social Media and instead looks at how much interaction and influence USAToday is able to grow with the latest upcoming technology.

Probono Consulting Lounger

On Wednesday, Armadillo Studios had the pleasure of partaking in a special DCweek event called – “The Probono Lounge”:http://digitalcapitalweek.org/2010/06/dcweek-goes-probono/.

Essentially, this 4 hour brainstorming/work session was designed to pair Designers, Strategists and Developers with local D.C. area non-profits and help them tweak their online presence.

Armadillo Studios was lucky to team up with an excellent group of WordPress specialists and developers to help two local organizations – “DC Food For All”:http://dcfoodforall.com/ and “Bread For The City”:http://www.breadforthecity.org/. And while some technical difficulties limited everyone’s ability to really pour into the code, the event was a great success with the seeds of future collaboration planted.

Up Next…

Thursday is another big day at DCWeek with the ever popular “140 Conference”:http://dc.140conf.com/ set to take place.