Month: December 2011

Blast From Holiday Parties Past!


A little Holiday cheer from our 2009 (Can you believe it was so long ago!?!?) year end shin-dig!

Want to walk a little further down memory lane? Check out more photos on Flickr.

 

My Tablet Is On Fire

by Dan Licht (@thedvl)

The Kindle Fire is no iPad. It’s also not an iPad killer (as stated in comments to our first review). But I personally don’t really think Mr. Bezos (or anyone at Amazon) would think it could be. We all know the basics, it’s not as fast, large or capable as it’s pomaceous competitor. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a capable device.

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Keeping the Year End Social Balance

by Ted Rubin (@TedRubin)

This is both an enjoyable and challenging time of year, as we are nearing year end and soon we will have a chance to pause, take stock of where we are now, review the past year, and plan for the coming year.  Most of us will have some things we can look at with pride for a job well done, while other things take more courage to look at honestly so we can stay open to making improvements.

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I Am Not An Infographic

by Alison Rominger (@heartskipsbeat)

Hi. I’m Alison, and I am not the 25-30 year old in this infographic:

Oh I used to be, which is how I ended up with more shoes, massages, clothes, kitchen gadgets, yoga classes, paintings, flokati rugs, haircuts, knick knacks, doo dads, tschotskes, and pink roller skates then any human being would actually need. How did this happen you ask? How did an otherwise perfectly sane, responsible and dare I say frugal person turn into a borderline hoarder/shopping addict?

First there was Gilt Groupe. And that was quickly followed by RueLaLa, Ideeli, Groupon, Lifebooker, Fab.com, One Kings Lane, Living Social, etc, etc, etc, each one more enticing and with better deals than the last.  It would all start first thing in the morning, when I would peruse through the emails for the daily local deals. Zip lining in Philadelphia? Sign me up! Shooting lessons in South Jersey? Yes please! Then I would browse through the preview emails to map out my plan of attack for the sales that start at noon.  At five of noon, I would open each website in my browser and hit refresh every thirty seconds until it was noon on the dot. Then bam! Flurries of clicking and shopping carting the first items I could get my grubby little arrow on before some other hapless shopping addict did before me.

Then would follow a mad dash to check out before my 10 minutes expired and my coveted winnings were snatched from my shopping cart and thrown back to the wolves. Chaching! The sweet feeling of success when the “thank you for blowing your entire paycheck with us” email arrives in my inbox. Join you for lunch? Sorry guys I’m broke, but wait till you see me sashaying around the office in the fancy new boots I just bought.

Then I moved to New York City. And when I arrived at my new, much, much smaller apartment it quickly dawned on me that I had a lot of stuff. What is all this stuff? And where am I going to put it? I realized then that I had a problem that needed to stop. Cold turkey. No more online shopping at all. Starting that day all emails would be redirected to the junk mail box, all websites would be un-bookmarked and I would not give in, no matter what.

One year later, and A LOT of stuff lighter, I can proudly tell you today I am no longer that infographic. And when a friend sends me an instant message at noon on the dot that reads: “Tell me to put it back!!” with a link to an item they most definitely do not need, I can reply, “Don’t be such an infographic, put it back!”

Do you see yourself in the infographic above? What about your co-workers?

 

Sentiment Analysis | Part Two: Negative Sentiment is a Creative Problem Solving Indicator

by Russ Ward (@russcward)

Social media sentiment around a product, service or brand is an interesting metric (and, as discussed in Part One of the series, one that ought not be ignored) that provides some insight into the emotional state of the demographic from which the sentiment is derived.

I have heard from a number of people that finding actionable strategies from a particular sentiment value is a difficult matter. I want to use this post to show you how you can turn that data to solve problems creatively.

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Requirements Engineering at Digital Agencies

By Juan Córdoba, Javier Acuña and David Alvarez

 

Many times, the projects developed by digital agencies require more work – in terms of requirements management and definition – than there seems time to do it. The fact that projects are scoped at a really fast pace means that it is imperative to have an agile process that allows us to reach alignment, in terms of requirements definition, amongst all parties involved: Client Strategists, Business Analysts, Architects, Designers, Developers, Testers, and yes, of course, The Client!
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Al Gore Recognizes Zemoga’s Climate of Innovation at the PSFK Gaming for Good Event

By Sven Larsen & Dan Licht

Photo by Louis Caldarola (www.louiscaldarola.com)

One of the most fun parts about working at an organization that has innovation at its core is the opportunities we get to work with like minded partners. Piers Fawkes, Jeff Weiner and the team at PSFK are some of our favorite “fellow travelers” and we’re always excited whenever they invite us to participate in one of their innovation challenges. Their latest effort involved working with The Climate Reality Project on “PSFK Gaming for Good“, an initiative that challenged creative shops like ours to use gamification to promote awareness of climate change. The talented innovation team at Zemoga rose to the occasion once again, submitting a number of different approaches and we were delighted when one of our concepts was selected for inclusion among the top ten finalists. Quite an honor considering there were more than 60 agencies submitted material for consideration.

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Sentiment Analysis | Part One: It’s Not Voodoo!

by Russ Ward (@russcward)

As the resident research and analytics guy here at Zemoga, I was asked by Briana Campbell, our Head of Social Media, to contribute to a conversation about the use of “sentiment” in social media monitoring.  Apparently the notion of sarcasm or the parochial use of words like “wicked,” “bad,” or “beast” in a positive context had caused some of her peers to dispatch “sentiment analysis” as flat out voodoo.

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