Musings of Eric Sharp

The 2E team (Eric & Ethan) traveled down to the Bahamas last week for a big presentation to the Electricity Corporation.

We’ve been working with this terrific company since February on a comprehensive site coupled with an extensive and powerful admin tool. We’re nearing completion on the contract, so we flew down for 2 days to present to some board members and the executive management team. The presentation was a success, and we’re looking forward to wrapping things up and rolling it out to their thousands of customers in the near future.

While in the Bahamas, the Project Manager treated us to dinner at Atlantis. This was the most amazing resort I’ve ever set eyes on. I keep telling everyone that it’s better than anything I’ve experienced at Disney and/or Vegas. The brilliant detail and mammoth architecture was sensory overload at times.

I also believe I ate at the biggest and best buffet in the entire world. I’ve never seen such a variety and selection of food all in the same place. You name it, they had it – and that goes for dessert as well.

www.atlantis.com

Today I spent some quality saturday afternoon time updating the Caxiam Group website. Now, why would I do this on a beautiful (though very hot) weekend afternoon? Well, simply because I’m pumped! Though there are some underlying marketing reasons why we needed to update our site with the new team members and client listings, I’m just more excited about our growth than anything at this point.

This week of productivity at the office was off the charts. I’m seeing glimpses of how our team will interact in the future. Higher quality, faster turnarounds, new technology integration, more collaboration – all right in front of my eyes. I could attempt to explain my full enthusiasm, but I couldn’t do it justice.

In a nutshell, here’s how the team assembled. Of course you have Ethan & I, but last year we added in Joe – our Senior Software Engineer. He’s just phenomenal – he’s meshed well and is just a stud programmer. Dave, our long time friend, was pulled away from our old employer 2 months ago to become our Senior Developer. He’s brought us to a completely new level with his expertise and experience. Then, we have Will. Will was a part-timer for us back in the day (he used to work out of our kitchen!) when things were just starting to roll with Caxiam Group. He accepted a much needed full-time position last Fall with another company – which we were highly supportive of! Just recently, we returned back to our old buddy and offered him a full-time gig. He starts Monday, and will be our Development Manager. We’re having a tough time trying to manage existing clients, and Will is going to bridge those gaps in our company among many others. We couldn’t imagine anyone else filling this role better.

Caxiam Group is now 5 strong, with a couple part time contractors on a need be basis when the project calls for it.

Now, what young entreprenuer wouldn’t get excited about this monumental time period?? It’s time to really knock the socks off our clients!

Check out our crew

Returned from a monumental new business trip to the Bahamas on Friday evening. Caxiam Group is about to welcome (if all goes well) the Bahamas Electricity Company to the family. I have about 39 pages of notes and scribbles to digest and organize this upcoming week – which will be a daunting task to say the least.

My spectacular views from the Hayden hotel they put me up in!

Yes, I’ll also admit that I’ve vanished for a solid month and a half from my Blog. I DO have some legitimate excuses, so hear me out. First, I’d have to say that the month of January 2007 was one of the most unprecedented and intoxicating months of my entire life. You’ll soon see what I’m exactly talking about in future posts. It’s my only excuse at this point, and it will all make sense to you as I retroactive as much as possible. But for now, more on this Bahamas’ meeting!

The trip originally planned for Ethan and I to head down together. A full expense paid trip down to the Bahamas for a day and a half, to carry out our Discovery phase. What’s a Discovery Phase, Eric? Well, it’s basically a paid consulting time to absorb as much as possible from a client so an accurate proposal can be generated. Without a Discovery phase, we’re pretty much just throwing a number out there. Not good for us, not good for the client.

Before the trip, Ethan and I had to expedite our passports to make the trip down. Now, I HAVE to put in a plug for www.americanpassport.com. Less than 5 biz days I was ready to rock. Wow. Cost me a bit of money to make that happen, but hey – when you need it, you need it. Knowing I’m set for 10 years made the hassle of gathering all the necessary paperwork a respectable stress.

So, you’re probably asking why Ethan couldn’t make the trip down. Well, we really didn’t have any choice about it. It’s not that he didn’t WANT to, it’s that he COULDN’T. Caxiam Group has been swamped with a HUGE project for the last 45 days. The project is for Herff Jones, and 13 offices in Florida/Georgia are receiving websites from us at this very second. They’re pretty much lined up, waiting for us to activate all their backoffice utilities and front-end websites. Ethan leaving the US, for 2 days, during such a monumental launch was a no-brainer. He stayed, slept little, worked hard, and helped deliver the Tampa office a website on-time. Though he didn’t miss much in the Bahamas (all work and no play), I appreciated the sacrifice. What a business partner.

Check out the first HJ website to launch, Herff Jones Tampa Bay!

As I began boarding a Embraer RJ145 (my first time) in Nassau, about to fly back to the States, I began to think about what Ethan and I had just accomplished. Though I was exhausted, stressed from the 2 levels of security I forged through, crammed into the very back corner of the jet, and overheating in my polo – I took a moment to appreciate what we just embarked on. We not only ventured into a new level of our business, but our trust and dedication to each other and our vision went discreetly unsaid. We recognized what we had to do, and we did it. If you asked either one of us, just 1 year ago, if this exact same scenario would have been as successful – we would have both answered emphatically “No way”. Our knowledge and experience has expanded astronomically because of our progressive natures. Not only was Ethan able to handle this enormous HJ site with confidence – but I was able to carry out a Discovery phase with a new client, in another country, by myself. Did we have a choice? No, but we both stepped up to the plate and hit a homer for Caxiam Group.

We’ve hit a spike in our growth because of the talent, faith, and dedication we have together. I’m truly grateful, especially in these moments of high, and look forward to how 2007 will setup the company for many years to come.

Caxiam Group has been recognized for a couple things recently. We’re pretty proud of them, so I figured I’d share.

The first, was an interview (conducted at our office) which then was posted on the Full Sail website. Check out the interview here or go to Full Sail’s amazing website – explore around – and look for the Degree Headlines in the News section.

We also won a National Platinum award (highest honor) for “Best Site Design” from eHealthcare for our work on Parrish Medical Center’s website. www.parrishmed.com

That award listing can be found online here. PMC is categorized as a Hospital of 200-399 beds – that will help you find it on the list.

The Director of Marketing over at PMC asked me to do a write up on the site, as it will soon be sent to the local Brevard/Orlando newspaper for printing. Cool! Here’s what I came up with. (thanks to all the eyes that helped me edit this!)

“The utmost challenge for us creatively was to accurately convey an online environment similar to the hospital environment PMC offers its patients. Therefore, it was imperative for our design to mirror the hospital’s philosophy that environment plays an integral role in the healing of the mind, body and spirit. We wanted the hospital’s healing environment colors (Purple, Green, Blue, Teal, Yellow, Orange, Red, Pink) to permeate the design content. Each color utilized was rich in saturation, yet remained in harmony with other site elements. The use of white fluffy clouds in conjunction with this bright color palette established a strong design foundation for what would follow.

In addition to embodying the hospital’s aura online, we had the demanding task of organizing and displaying a vast amount of content (over 300 pages). We wanted to improve communications and efficiency for physicians, patients, volunteers, and the hospital’s marketing department. To meet these varying needs, we conceptualized and designed two types of color coordinated navigation menus. The homepage, built in Flash, gives users the ability to quickly jump to one of over 75 different sections within the website, with a simple mouse hover and click. Outside of the homepage, we re-formatted the navigation into a clean, vertical treatment. We wanted the main body of the site to provide ample real estate to convey the necessary information, yet also allow spacing to expedite cross-linking from section to section with “click here for this” and “click here for that’ graphics. This concept encourages users to explore and absorb massive amounts of information, inconspicuously, without ever relying on a single means of clicking from page to page.

To add an additional touch of creativity to the overall experience, we envisioned a PMC homepage that would be kept fresh by dynamically loading in 1 of 12 different variations randomly. Each variation differs in photography and overall message with subtle, soft, and unobtrusive animation. Once moving past the homepage, we wanted the “Overview” of each main section to reinforce the PMC brand with moving cloud animations that would unveil one of Parrish’s seven pillars (e.g., Loyalty).

We were thrilled to accomplish our ultimate goal: Caxiam Group conveyed the PMC environment online through precise creativity and strategic functionality.”

The CG conference room received some significant upgrades this past month.

We welcomed a brand spankin’ new 32″ Samsung LCD monitor (long overdue), and finally framed our exquisite Doug Bloodworth print (a gracious gift from one of our magnificent clients) to add some decor.

Beauuuuutiful…