Emira Mears's Blog Posts
-
A Workplace that Cares
February 17, 2013 CommentsAn article with the title 3 Reasons to Treat Employees Like Family at Inc.com caught my eye last Sunday morning. I've naturally been thinking a lot about the workplace culture at Raised Eyebrow lately (and will probably be blogging about it a bit more) as we're one of five finalists for the Best Employer award at Small Business BC. But really, it's something that's never too far from my mind.
The article was ultimately a bit of a let down; I was hoping for some hard facts or research behind why valuing your employees as you would anyone who is close to you, makes good business sense. Nevertheless, the third point in the author's list, which is summarized simply as "care" really struck a chord with me.
-
Best Employer in BC
February 12, 2013 Comments
Raised Eyebrow has made it to the finalist round in the Small Business BC Awards in the Best Employer Category, and I could not be more delighted.
Local and small business feel like buzz words these days, but I can safely say they have always been an integral part of my values system. Growing up in Victoria BC, I was really fortunate to live in a community of vibrant, dynamic small businesses. I grew up frequenting restaurants, clothing stores, bakeries, bookshops and the like owned by family friends or by people who became friends over our years of patronage. My first jobs were all working for small local businesses, where I felt like I was given a chance to learn and gain responsibility.
-
Makers Gonna Make
February 6, 2013 CommentsWe've long talked about getting a couch or some kind of lounge area at the office. And now, as we're thirteen years into Raised Eyebrow (though admittedly not all at this location), we've finally done it.
The interior design was done by Mak Interiors (Amber Kingsnorth) and we're all in love with it.
-
Announcing Hollyhock's SVI Women in Vancouver
January 29, 2013 CommentsI had the great pleasure of speaking at an event last night about Social Media for Social Good and realized when talking to someone over the evening, that there was no mention of this incredible conference on this site. So I'm here to rectify that.
-
Storify: Making Collections of Links Fun Again
November 26, 2012 CommentsI've been playing around with a new(ish) online tool called Storify as a way to curate web content and I'm increasingly impressed with it as a tool that non-profits might use for storytelling.
Storify is a tool that allows you to create "Stories" or pages of content that aggregate content from across the web. You can pull in links to articles, YouTube videos, individual Tweets or Facebook posts, Instagram or Flickr photos, or pretty much anything that lives at a public web address. You can see my sample below to see what the format looks like, it's pretty clean and allows you to put in comments on each piece of content. You're also given space to put in an intro/framing content at the top and a title.
How do I see non-profits using this? Well the possibilities are many, but here are a few that spring to mind:
-
Paying to Promote Pages on Facebook: What's Changed?
October 30, 2012 CommentsHere are two great summaries of what's going on with Facebook Pages and the Sponsored (read paid) Posts options. If you're wondering why your reach on Facebook seems to be getting smaller, this will help you demystify the changes at Facebook.
From the New York Observer, Broken On Purpose: Why Getting it Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right and from Dangerous Minds, Facebook: I want my friends back.
(Thanks @sublimestitch for the resources).
-
3 Month Check-ups for Your Website
October 11, 2012 CommentsWe've recently started implementing 3 month follow-up meetings post a site/app/project launch with our clients as a formal part of our process (meaning it actually goes on the task list then turns into a meeting). I'm writing this post at a coffee shop, just a few minutes after completing one such review and reflecting on why we didn't implement this formally much sooner.
Don't get me wrong, one of the things I love about Raised Eyebrow and our relationship with our clients is that we aim to have a very open door policy with regards to feedback, and we've been very fortunate to cultivate ongoing relationships with the vast majority of our clients. As a result, post-launch follow-ups tend to happen kind of organically in the form of on-going conversations, but it's amazing what happens when you build time in to really engage with a process, instead of just coming across something by happenstance.
-
Why Working With Multiple Stakeholders Is Awesome
October 7, 2012 CommentsLast month I flew to DC to present at HOW Interactive on the topic of Enagaging Multiple Stakeholders in an Interactive Design Project. I had a great time presenting in Washington and in particular enjoyed the feedback and questions from the attendees. The topic is one that is near and dear to our hearts here at Raised Eyebrow, working as we do most of the time with non-profit organizations, which means also working with multiple stakeholders.
-
Covenant House Vancouver Now Mobile Responsive
October 2, 2012 Comments
This week we launched a very exciting project for our beloved friends and longterm clients at Covenant House Vancouver. While there's no doubt that their new site is beautiful, the really exciting part for our team was that with this project we got to help Covenant House become a leader in providing a truly mobile responsive website to help serve their own clients, as well as for easy use by supporters and donors.
-
An Alternative to Google Analytics
June 12, 2012 CommentsWorking as we do with primarily non-profit organizations, we have a lot of clients who are concerned about data hosting on US based (or non-Canadian based) servers. Finding reliable and affordable Canadian Hosting isn't such a challenge, as we've mentioned before we love EZP, but a number of the third party tools that we use to help with reporting and efficiencies for our clients are US based. In particular, we run into this issue for Web Statistics and for Email Newsletter services.
