Happy Mardi Gras from Gatorworks

February 15th, 2010 by Brian Rodriguez

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Mele Printing’s 7th Annual “Krewe of Kookies and Kakes” where I had the opportunity to make my very own king cake! The day started off with a quick meet and greet with the 20 or so other business professionals participating in the king cake class. My friends Trammie Anderson and Mendi LeBlanc from Lamar happened to be in the class as well, so it was great seeing them. After knocking out a cup or two of coffee, we were ready to tour Mele Printing’s impressive 33,000 square-foot facility where we learned about their state-of-the-art prepress as well as digital and offset printing equipment. One of the things that really stuck with me was the cleanliness of their facility. I’ve been in a few other printing warehouses in the past, and they weren’t nearly as clean and organized as Mele. I felt like I could eat my lunch right off the floor!

Mallery Mele leads the king cake cooking class

Mallery Mele leads the king cake cooking class

After the shop tour it was time to make our homemade king cakes. Now, for those of you who don’t know, Mele Printing bakes thousands of cookies each month for their clients. Many of their clients plan to receive their printing order on a Monday or a Wednesday so they’ll be sure to also receive a nice batch of fresh cookies. Anyway, each of us was given a log of dough with cinnamon rolled in the middle. We worked our dough in the form of a circle and threw it in the oven.

Once we took the cakes out of the oven, we dug out a few holes with our fingers on the bottom of the cakes to create a canal to insert fillings. I put strawberry and cream cheese in mine. Then, we flipped the cakes over and drenched them in hot icing and topped them with sugar. It was a masterpiece!

The event was an innovative way for Mele’s clients to learn more about their company all the while celebrating the rich history and culture of Southern Louisiana. We’re proud that Mele Printing is one of our vendors, and we look forward to fostering a long-term relationship with them!

Brian Rodriguez bakes his first Mardi Gras King Cake

Brian Rodriguez bakes his first Mardi Gras King Cake

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Voting Opens for the 2010 People’s Choice Awards

February 4th, 2010 by Brian Rodriguez

Our team just had the pleasure of finishing up the People’s Choice Awards website for the local design competition. Here are the details from the American Advertising Federation of Baton Rouge:

Here is your chance to decide on the elite creative advertising work in Baton Rouge. American Advertising Federation-Baton Rouge has created online voting for four different categories – print, radio, broadcast and interactive – to be awarded at the 2010 ADDY® Awards.

Voting is held online at http://www.aafbr-pca.org/. You can vote once per entry every 24 hours for as many entries as you want in each category. The entrant with the most votes wins! Voting closes at the end of the day on February 14, 2010.

Winner’s will be announced the night of the 2010 ADDY® Awards show on February 20 at the Louisiana State Museum. Tickets are available online at http://www.addy2010.com for $60 and $30 for students. Doors open at 6:30 for a cocktail reception prior to the show.

All entries into 2010 People’s Choice Awards are property of each owner. All entries included were entered properly using the guidelines placed by AAF National and AAF-Baton Rouge.

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2010 Here We Come!

December 30th, 2009 by Brian Rodriguez

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all our clients and strategic partners for a great year. We were fortunate to work with a number of really wonderful people and highly successful companies. We look forward to an exciting 2010!

Check out a small sampling of some of the websites we’ve designed, developed, and maintained throughout the last year.

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Gary Vaynerchuk is coming to Baton Rouge

December 29th, 2009 by Brian Rodriguez

Date: Thu. Jan 21, 2010
Time: 07:00 PM
Location: Independence Park Theatre
7800 Independence Blvd
Baton Rouge , LA

Tickets: 225.216.0660, theparktheatre.com
$10 – AAF-BR and SME-GBR members
$25 – General Public

The social media revolution has changed the way we live our lives and conduct our business. Learn social media techniques that will improve your sales from a master marketer.

Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local retail wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. In so doing, he learned that the Internet offers up potential via these free tools for businesses and individuals alike to develop their own brand. Gary will touch on his core themes for best utilizing these tools, including why listening is more important than speaking, the importance of authenticity in business, and what it means to “scale your caring.” Learn more about Gary at garyvaynerchuk.com, or catch him on Twitter where he has over 840,000 followers!

Join Gary at a Wine and Cheese Reception before the event from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Cost to attend the reception is $250.
Information courtesy of AAFBR.

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Great Visit with Scotlandville Magnet High

October 15th, 2009 by Brian Rodriguez

Today I had the pleasure of visiting with Ms. Ware’s 9th/10th grade business class! My good friend, Trammie Anderson whom I serve with on the board of AAFBR, has been working with the students over the last 6 weeks in conjunction with Junior Achievement. Trammie, who is a graphic designer at Lamar, has been teaching the students the principles of entrepreneurship and the tools needed to start your own business. So, on the final day of the Junior Achievement course, Trammie invited me to come speak to the students about my business. I enjoyed telling the students the story of starting Gatorworks at a young age (17), and I reminded them that it’s never to early to start planning your future. The students were very engaged, and it was encouraging to be surrounded by so many future leaders in our community.

At the end of my talk, the students played a multimedia presentation that they had put together as a going away gift for Ms. Trammie. The presentation was put together very very well, and I think I was in the presence of some future business owners in the room.

Congratulations, students, on all your hard work. I wish you all the best!

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Get Your App Together!

September 27th, 2009 by Brian Rodriguez

American Advertising Federation of Baton Rouge Event:

As technology continues to evolve and unite us, more and more consumers live their life on their phone. The media to know lies in the palm of your hand. Join digital expert Alessandra Lariu as she discusses the basics and guidelines to get an App completed. Her philosophy of design is to create work that is surprising, interesting or useful. “But especially useful. Useful is the new cool,” Lariu says.

She’ll share her expertise on topics such as:

·         App market & market share
·         Other platforms (Android)
·         Who are the best players/developers?
·         Documents you’ll need
·         What kinds of apps do well
·         Dealing with Apple and getting approved (including AppStore guidelines)
·         Pricing models (Do apps make money?)

Alessandra Lariu is the SVP Digital Group Creative Director of McCann Erickson in New York, where she works with clients such as MasterCard, General Mills, Kohls, Weight Watchers and Verizon.

Date: Sat. Oct 3, 2009
 Time: 09:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Location: Lamar
5551 Corporate Boulevard
BR, LA 70808
Contact Mandy Porta at 225.368.5492 for more information.
$10 for AAF-BR Members and AAF Students
$25 Non-Members

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Use Social Media & Mobile Marketing in Your Business

September 14th, 2009 by Brian Rodriguez

The Women’s Council of Greater Baton Rouge will be hosting “Women’s Week” September 25 – October 4, 2009. Brian Rodriguez of Gatorworks and Damien LaManna of Zymeaux will be conducting a seminar called “Use Social Media and Mobile Marketing in Your Business” on Saturday, September 26, 2009 at the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center.

Rodriguez will provide an overview of how social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, have changed the way entrepreneurs conduct business. Brian will be joined by New Orleans entrepreneur Damien LaManna who will discuss the impact that mobile marketing has on the way business owners connect with current and prospective customers. The seminar is free, and it will be held from 1PM to 3PM at 4950 Essen Lane (Baton Rouge).

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LIVE Blog: BarCamp NOLA 2009

July 19th, 2009 by Brian Rodriguez

11:20AM
I’m here at day 2 of BarCamp NOLA 2009 in the LaunchPad building. We’re in concept meetings to discuss a system that would recruit and mobilize volunteers for the Greater New Orleans public schools. We think we want a system that will showcase current volunteer efforts as well as help communicate how prospective volunteers can get involved. More updates to come!

11:30AM
The techies are in the LaunchPad conference room planning out the technical aspect of the project. Matt Tritico is jumping from the concept meetings to the technical meetings to try to keep an open dialogue between both groups. Our goal is to have a system by 4PM today. We’re thinking WordPress might be the technology to use.

11:40AM
Tritico just ordered pizza- will be here in an hour! Gatorworks will host the system.

11:55AM
Chris Schultz is heading up the concept meeting, and we’re going through our site architecture. Chris’ wife just walked in to join us! Here’s the temporary link for testing our system: http://www.gatortesting.net/schooldistrict/

12:10PM
The proposed domain name is nolaschoolvolunteers.org

12:25PM
The email address info@nolaschoolvolunteers.org has been set up. Our concept meeting will be meeting with the technical guys after lunch. Lunch should be here within the next 15-20 minutes I think. We’re going to purchase a WordPress theme to use.

12:40PM
We’re breaking for lunch right now. We’ll be back online in a bit!

1:00PM
We’re back at it- both the concept group and technical group is now coming together to discuss our ideas. We have 3 hours to code the system!

1:20PM
Chris Schultz just finished briefing the room on what our concept meeting discussed. Now Stanford Rosenthal is briefing the room on what the techies discussed in their meeting. I think the site architecture is pretty much finalized. We’re discussing specific WordPress plugins to use, etc.

Our goal is to thank the past and current volunteers of the NOLA public schools, report the latest happenings of volunteer projects in the schools, and help mobilize new volunteers for the NOLA public school system.

1:30PM
We’re getting ready to break out into teams again. We’re going to have different teams assigned to developing the various WP plugins we’ll need to achieve our goals. We’ll have copy writers working on gathering content. The energy is great in the room…people are stepping up and taking ownership of various pieces of the project.

2:10PM
The theme has been selected, and we’re getting ready to install on the server now. Thanks to Marc Juneau and Chris Schultz with the help on selecting the theme. We have several dev groups working on the WP plugins, and Andrew Larimer is going to work on modifying the design.

2:20PM
The theme is now installed and activated at http://www.nolaschoolvolunteers.org. We’re working on customizing the site according to the site map and architecture we’ve put together.

2:55PM
Things are coming together. We’re going to re-group in about 5 minutes to see what needs to happen during our final hour of development. I’m working on a press release that will communicate what we’ve done for our local community and help encourage technology professionals to join us for our next BarCamp. We are talking about planning a BarCamp in Baton Rouge in the Spring of 2010!

3:40PM
I just finished draft 1 of the press release, and I’m feeling pretty good about what was accomplished today. We have about 20 minutes or so left, and I think we’ll be in pretty good shape. Tung Ly has been documenting everything we’re doing so Troy Peloquin of the Recovery School District will be able to take this system moving forward and be able to update the content on a regular basis.

4:15PM
We have some guys working overtime over here at BarCampNOLA. However, the project is just about finished, and we just need to populate with content now. Check out http://www.nolaschoolvolunteers.org.

4:30PM
Ok, I’m going to go ahead and call it a day. We did it… we developed a website in ONE day in support of the New Orleans public school system. BarCampNOLA would not have been possible without our sponsors: Voodoo Ventures, LaunchPad, Humid Beings, Gatorworks, and Newstwit.com.

Today was truly inspiring.

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An Event Apart: Boston – Retrospective

June 29th, 2009 by Chase Swindler

And so it begins!This past weekend my coworker @davidlink and I drove 1,500 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line to a little town called Boston, MA. Why would we undertake such a ridiculous feat you ask? My response is: To attend An Event Apart, only one of the greatest web design and development conferences on the face of this glorious planet.

Arriving in our hotel on Sunday night was such a relief. We had just driven 26+ hours from Baton Rouge to Boston. The conference was worth it.

Monday we got to hear some excellent presenters like Jared Spool, Kristina Halvorson, Jeremy Keith, Dan Cederholm, and Jason Santa Maria among others. Tuesday we were privy to the presentations of Jeffrey Zeldman, Dan Mall, Simplescott, Heather Champ, and Andy Clarke. The knowledge flowed like a river. I would love to be able to share everything I learned but I’m afraid there’s just not enough space on the internet for that. (Heh, there actually may be.)
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50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

May 22nd, 2009 by Brian Rodriguez

A while back I came across Chris Brogan’s article on using Twitter for business, and I felt like it was a great guide for business owners who are still new to the Twitter craze. I decided it was about time that I include his ideas right here on the Gatorworks blog. For the complete article on Brogan’s blog, feel free to click here. I’ve included his ideas below, but I have also added a little of my own commentary in there:

First Steps

  1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
  2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
  3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
  4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
  5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
  6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
  7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
  8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
  9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
  10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

  1. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
  2. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
  3. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
  4. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
  5. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
  6. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
  7. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
  8. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
  9. Don’t toot your own horn too much.
  10. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

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