The Davey Awards is an international creative award focused exclusively on honoring outstanding creative work from the best small firms worldwide. The 2009 Davey Awards received over 4,000 entries from ad agencies, interactive agencies, production firms, in-house creative professionals, graphic designers, design firms, and public relations firms.

The Davey Awards honors the achievement of the “Creative David’s” where strength comes from ideas, intelligence and out-of-the-box thinking, not a “Giant’s” bankroll. Work submitted to the Davey Awards is about fresh ideas and exceptional execution, not the biggest budgets.

Speak! extends a special thanks to Paul Sandy for his contributions to the project.

“Grey is out. Gloom is gone. It’s time to live our lives in colour.”

This is the introduction line on the site www.letscolorproject.com. It’s nice to see companies come together (in this case it’s Dulux, Dulux Valentine, Coral, and Marshall) to promote something positive. The goal of the “Let’s Colour” initiative is to clean-up neighborhoods, schools, and streets around the world using elbow grease and, of course, PAINT! So, watch this inspiring video, grab a paintbrush and join in!

It’s Thursday, and in Oregon it’s raining…yep…still raining. Sometimes on rainy days it’s easy to feel a bit blue, especially when it’s June. One of the best ways to cheer yourself up is to listen to some up-beat, jammin’ tunes. Pandora Radio is helpful in meeting this need, but sometimes you need something a bit more interactive.

So, for those of you looking to really tune things up, I suggest this website: http://www.incredibox.fr/. You will enjoy adding different effects, instruments and vocals to these great little “hipster” guys. All you have to do is drag an icon from the bottom to one of the guys and he will start playing. Click on him again and he disappears which gives you an amazing amount of options to create your own jamming tunes! Another fun option if you are in need of a bit of “Beat-Boxing” is http://www.beatbox.tele2.se/, which if you are a lover of Beagles, this is the site for you! While it is in another language, it’s not hard to figure out how to get some sweet tunes from the pup. Besides, who can resist a Beat-Box-Beagle??

You are now ready to tune up your day. And if you happen to see any Beat-Box-Elephants out there, let me know!

Our office consists of two rooms and is set on the second story of a building from the late 1800’s. Needless to say, being in an older building adds a ton of character to our office space. In our main office, we have high ceilings, brick walls and tall windows with half circle stained glass sections at the top. We also have a smaller secondary room that, until a few weeks ago, was in need of some love. This room had very dark walls, a dark floor and several tiny holes in the walls (a few of which I must admit I created myself when my aim for the dart board was just a bit off). In the last few weeks, that space has been transformed. It now matches the rest of the office, complete with a rusty-orange painted floor and some very fun Scandinavian furniture. It’s amazing how paint, time, and of course a bit of determination from your boss, can go. We now have a place to hold meetings, a place to organize and store things that were in need of a home, and a place to look out the window and allow the creativity to flow. The only downside to this office make-over is that I need to step-up my dart game and make sure that I don’t miss the board…but I guess that’s what wall putty and extra paint are for, right?

When we take the time to create space that is warm and welcoming, we create an environment that is open to all possibilities. We are creating an area of comfort and growth. This is something we can all do, even if it is as simple as organizing your work desk to make it a bit more like home. Take a few minutes today, look around and decide what you can add, or take away, to make the space you spend 8-10 hours a day feel a bit more like home. This is your challenge for the day. Good luck!

For the second consecutive year Speak! earned a Davey Award for their work done on a promotional piece announcing Sage Summit, an annual tradeshow for Sage Software. This piece allowed Speak! to bring home silvers in both the b2b communications and invitations categories.

The Davey Awards honors the “Davids” of creativity, the smaller agencies, companies, or organizations with annual billings or revenues below certain levels. Each year, The Davey Awards honors winners who derive their strength from big ideas, rather than big budgets.

The Davey Awards is judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, an invitation-only organization consisting of top-tier media, advertising, and marketing professionals from the world’s leading organizations and firms.

Speak! extends a special thanks to the creative team at Sage including Paul Sandy, Creative Director, and Scott Graveline, Sr. Copywriter for their contributions to the project.

I pay a monthly fee to Sharpcast Inc. for their SugarSync service, and when it decides to stop working, I have to e-mail support and wait a day or so for a response. They have no working mechanism for live customer support (seems that their “live chat” is having issues too).

As I’ve mentioned before SugarSync is a critical part of our business, when it’s not working it costs us money.

I will gladly pay more for support, because when the service is working it’s worth every penny. When it’s not working I want support, and now.

Our shop depends on this service to keep projects up to date in various locations. Interruptions in the service = project delays = unhappy clients = sleepless nights.

My gripe: We pay for this service. I don’t expect 100% uptime. I don’t expect perfection. I do expect communication. If there is a problem - let me know. If there will be scheduled maintenance - let me know. You have my e-mail Sharpcast, please let me know. Save me the hours of troubleshooting my own equipment when you are experiencing technical difficulties.

Just let me know. I do love you, but tonight you are sleeping on couch in the den.