Fenix is proud to announce Team Breakfall’s win at the Global Game Jam competition that took place January 29-31st at Carleton University.
The Global Game Jam is an annual IGDA event in which teams from 39 countries and 138 different locations spend 48 hours building a video game based on a theme presented at the event’s opening.
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I have a search I monitor in my Twitter client for “drupal“. As the awareness of the tool grows in traditional and new media (especially following the high-profile relaunch of whitehouse.gov), the relative backlash in the feed is startling.
I don’t really blame people, though. Drupal probably isn’t for them, and drupal.org and most Drupal advocates are doing a terrible job of setting expectations. So much so that I feel this trend of pushing Drupal onto everyone for everything is hurting Drupal’s reputation and perception. Read the rest of this entry »
We are often asked how to make the company intranet more useful and appealing for employees and with the use of social media tools there are plenty of possibilities out there for you. We no longer live in a time where people accept being talked at – your employees want to see value and be heard. So we’ve put together a list of things to consider when building or re-building your intranet.
Advantages to starting a conversation with employees
The fact is your employees are already part of online communities this is an opportunity for you take advantage of their existing comfort with this space and build an environment for employees collaborate, communicate and share.
Bridge the generation gap. If you’re looking to attract new talent having a dynamic and social intranet can play a role in the appeal of your organization. Knowing how different generations like to communicate can give you a leg up in the war on talent.
Bring together a global workforce. We live in a world where many people can be working on the same project but will never meet. Having an intranet that is customized to facilitate collaboration will not only make your employees jobs easier – it will also make them more productive.
Be part of the conversation. This is your opportunity to hear what your employees have to say and make your company better, more efficient and more appealing to new talent.
As anyone who has developed a Drupal site with devel module’s query logging on can tell you, a Drupal implementation can quickly get out of control when it comes to hammering the database. Personally, I’ve seen Drupal run well over 300 queries to render a single page. In a hosting setup where the bottlenecks exist at the memory usage and MySQL levels (which refers to nearly all non-dedicated hosting packages), this can quickly become a problem.
I’ve summarized a series of simple setup and configuration tips behind the jump that can help any site running Drupal 6.x improve performance and the subsequent user experience as a result. Read the rest of this entry »
Fenix announces the launch of another Drupal initiative, this time for Gennum Corporation, a leading Burlington based semiconductor company. Designed, developed and executed in under two months, the Gennum site was a significant Drupal endeavor requiring 15+ templates, 1500+ pieces of content, faceted search feature powered by Acquia, an innovative context sensitive block module, and laid the foundation for the development of the accompanying secure extranet which we will begin developing in the next few days.
“With each Drupal implementation our team impresses me more,” says Fenix Founder Jennifer MacKinnon, “and this project was no exception. The speed and sophistication with which we can deploy an enterprise class environment, complete with a complex feature-set and numerous custom components is exciting and we are happy to be able to offer this level of service, quality and professional capability to our clients.”
“Gennum Corp is a great company and we have enjoyed working directly with their team to see Phase 1 of this initiative to completion. Our two teams worked hard, but more importantly worked well together, mutually ensuring the success of this project.”
Adds Leanne Labelle, co-Founder of Fenix Solutions “Open source solutions are being more and more widely accepted, particularly by large, and international, organizations. Companies seek us out because of our Drupal and open source experience, passion and capabilities. The benefits of open source solutions are compelling and we are seeing a noticeable shift in thinking, resulting in the demand for our kind of offering deployed on open source software. It’s exciting for us to be leading this charge.”
As any software developer will tell you, there’s a limit to the number of times you can hack on a codebase before it’s no longer sustainable. When a piece of software, protocol, or standard of some kind is conceived, it is done with assumptions in mind. These assumptions ultimately lead to limitations, and those limitations ultimately necessitate the need to come up with clever workarounds or, in the worst case scenario – hacks. Read the rest of this entry »
Picking up a new framework can be as difficult (and sometimes moreso) as learning an entire computer language. On the drupal end of things, the community has yielded all sorts of time-saving tools that you can use to get up and running without even having to get your hands dirty with code. We’ve whipped up a short list of modules we commonly use and that have saved us considerable time. Read the rest of this entry »
Check out our new microsite for information that will help you through the process. http://opensource.fenix-solutions.com We cover everything from open source content management solutions to frameworks.
The2009 Social Media Brand Engagement Report explores the social media efforts of the Top 100 Global Brands, including Starbucks (#1 rank), Toyota (#21), Dell (#2) .
The article provides excellent insight for anyone still not conviced social media can create an impact, or for anyone who is convinced but isn’t quite sure how to do it.
The article has an in-depth look into 4 featured companies and gives the reader a peek behind the scene. For example, Starbucks has a staff of 6 people manning 11 social media channels and they explain how manage that and who internally is responsible for it.
The study shows that those organizations that adopted and properly used social media (i.e. engaged customers) saw an 18% increase in their revenue between July 2008-July 2009.
When used right social media can show significant returns and limitless potential. “Recently, we found that for every four people we interacted with…another three people are added virally…” explains Starbucks.
How can you find success using social media? Fenix offers a few suggestions.
Stay focused: don’t try to do everything at once. Start small. Choose one or two channels/tools and dedicate time to using them properly. Be sure to benchmark where you are at and monitor your activities to see the impact of your efforts. Build a following, get the format right, and then adopt new tools/channels. This approach is designed to help you see success early on, so you don’t abandon your efforts. This approach is recommended for those of you just starting out. Determining what to start with can be tricky, we can help.
Stay on schedule: be sure to set aside time devoted to conducting social media, and social media monitoring, activities. Unless it is your full time job, you have to balance this with your other duties. Once you figure out the format for tweeting, blogging or whatever channel you choose, and corresponding monitoring, you will get into a groove. As with all initiatives, don’t abandon your channel. If you choose Twitter, then be sure you have the ability to keep the tweets up to date. Never abandon.
Don’t push: don’t use your chosen channels to solely sell your products or services. The key to social media is engagement and conversation. So while it’s okay to talk about your products and services, it’s better to find out who is talking about you and communicate with them. Encourage participation in your social media channel, thank users for their time/comments/feedback, answer questions, provide information, spark dialogue, encourage users to talk amongst each other.
Monitor: you must monitor not only how effective your social media efforts are, meaning the activities you do online, but to monitor the web in general to determine what is being said about your organization. Twitscoop, Facebook Lexicon, Technorati, Google Insights, are all [free] tools you can use to search for your organization and see what people are saying. Tools such as Google Alerts and TweetBeep will send you email notifications when your brand has been mentioned online or on Twitter respectively.
Use tools like Google Analytics to see how your own social media efforts are driving users to your website (if that is the objective) for example. Monitoring is the only way to find out if your efforts are working and the only way for you to stay on top of your brand chatter. Use this information to make decisions about your organization and your marketing/social media initiatives.
Get Viral: use your followers to spread the word and encourage additional followers of your brand. Word of mouth has always been a tried and true method of awareness building and the Internet offers a global opportunity.
Be wise: a protocol is beginning to form online with respect to social media usage and best practices. Be aware of this protocol and follow it wisely. If someone follows you, take the time to find out whether you should follow them back. If someone leaves a comment on your blog, be sure to review it and respond if required. If someone has promoted you, your brand, your product online, be sure to acknowledge that coverage. You get the idea.
Have fun: really. Social media is fun. It’s immediate, done in real-time involving real-people. It’s brevity makes it manageable, so go ahead and enjoy it. You just might like it.
The Wiki, built on the MediaWiki platform, is the Government of Canada’s first foray into the world of Web 2.0. and has earned considerable praise, adoption and promotion for the Government.
