SIGMA::BLOG

One of the core groups here at Sigma is our web-development team—that’s right we have an in-house web-dev team here in the heart of Oradell, NJ fully integrated with our planning and creative units allowing us to identify, develop and deploy digital properties that build meaningful experiences and relationships. What sets us apart on the development side is not just our full suite of technical skills, experience and intelligence, but more importantly the close relationship we have with software/platform providers (e.g., Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) as well as developers from all facets of the business. Without them, infusing innovation to our work would be like skiing on grass.

To give back to the web-development community, we are proud to sponsor Flash and the City. The brainchild of our web-dev leader Elad Elrom, this four-day, out-of-the-box conference will bring the Flash community from around the world together in New York City and redefine the way we share and marry artistic creativity with technological ingenuity.

To get an inside scoop on Flash and the City, we probed Elad with some questions:

1.  How did you come up with the idea of a Flash and the City conference?
Over the last few years I noticed that there haven’t been any large conferences in New York City. I have spoken to numerous people, from community leaders to Adobe’s evangelists. For the last couple of years, Adobe MAX has been in California, and there has been a real void for many professionals in New York City who would like to have a conference that allows them to be part of the Flash community. Additionally, I have noticed that in general many of the conferences are geared toward learning but do not have enough networking events. Flash and the City’s goal is to redefine the way we think about conferences as well as to unite A-list speakers with professionals in New York and other attendees from around the world.

2.  What are you most excited to hear next week?
Announcements during the keynote from our sponsors such as Litl and Adobe. Also some of the presentations that will be shown for the very first time during the conference.

I am excited about the venue as well. Instead of using a traditional hotel, we will be hosting the conference in an artist’s theater called 3LD (3-Legged Dog). 3LD is a technology center located in downtown Manhattan and is a thriving catalyst in the New York art scene. By hosting the conference in 3LD we will be supporting the artists.

3.  What are the top three things you want FATC attendees to leave with?
Networking
Attendees will have access to the City Track. The City Track is a completely new conference format, and the extracurricular activities will include a New York cruise and dinner, the rock/grunge band 22nd Century, and tours around New York City. I believe networking is one of the most important aspects of a conference; so networking with peers from the Flash community can only help our attendees’ careers.

Knowledge
Flash and the City is similar to other conferences in that attendees will get great value in terms of learning. They will receive two tracks for three days, and they can register for a workshop being held the day before the conference. In fact, attendees will have a chance to hear presentations from 50 speakers. These speakers are mind-blowing presenters that have made significant impacts on technology.

Inspiration
Attending the conference will gain attendees some insight of what’s being developed, what’s hot, what the trends are as well as the technologies that are worth learning.

4.  What is the new noise/buzz you hope will be created by the Flash community during FATC?
I think that now more than ever the Flash community needs to be united and show that Flash isn’t dead at all, and in reality we are creating exciting and amazing applications on many devices. FATC will show just that and allow the Flash community to have fun talking about technology and seeing what everyone is up to these days.

5.  How can people follow the conference?
Website: FlashAndTheCity.com
Blog: Blog.FlashAndTheCity.com
Twitter Account:  @flashandthecity
Twitter Hashtag:  #FATC

Highlights from the conference will also be posted here on the Sigma blog.  Stay tuned!

Some might think a morning with 100 children all under the age of five is not their idea of a good time. However, if you add some new faces, a couple of Dr. Seuss books, and a funny hat you have a successful recipe for smiles and laughs.

On March 2nd Sigma Group’s Team Hercules proudly partnered with Read Across America.  We gladly celebrated the birthday of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss by reading to several groups of children at the YMCA of Greater Bergen County.

Dana, our Associate Media Director, said it best when she noted her favorite part was, “Captivating the children’s attention and taking their imaginations for a wild ride through storytelling.”  With Dana manning the ship the children were indeed treated to quite a ride.  She spent over an hour reading story after story to a group of three-year-olds who sat with wide eyes and open mouths through it all.  Dana provided a voice for each character in her story and with an animation that rivaled even the most dramatic Disney character.

For Joanna, our Account Director, it was being able to share three of her own children’s favorite stories with new smiling faces that gave her the most joy.  This also provided Joanna with an experience that she could share with her own children about her day that they could easily relate to.

For me the best part was not only seeing the joy that we were able to bring to the children but also the joy the children brought to all of our participants. It was a win-win experience that created an energizing natural high that lasted all day long! It certainly was time well spent.

This is one of the many ways Sigma Group and Team Hercules are “making it matter.”  We feel that allowing employees to enrich their day by focusing on a cause with purpose rather than profit provides our communities with a commodity they can cash in.

Read Across America is an initiative that requires so little time and resources that there really is no negative to this program.

Last week, marketers from all around the tri-state area converged in New Jersey at our Fuel for Thought conference to learn, share experiences and develop ideas to get a handle on social media marketing.  There’s a lot we covered/learned from each session and we’ll be sharing key highlights and materials here on our blog.

We’ll kick-off the first conference recap with John Battelle’s (CEO/Founder, Federated Media) keynote on “All Media is Social.  Now What?”  John’s keynote was brilliantly right-on-topic to get us all kindling new ideas.  Here are four key areas he covered:

1.  The Rise of Conversational Marketing: First we declared our intentions (what we want) through search.  Then we declared our relations (social graph — who we are as defined by how we are connected to other people) on sites like Facebook.  Finally, during the past year we declared our utterances (what we are doing, what we are interested in, etc.) on sites like Twitter.  When you put all these declarations together — intention, relations and utterances, you have an economy of conversations. (more…)

A year ago, we launched the Fuel for Thought Series with the goal to create a forum for marketers where we could share the most relevant trends, insights and smart practices that would fuel growth and innovation for their brands.  We made a promise to keep all content unbiased and free of sales pitches to ensure an authentic, no-strings-attached environment for marketers to engage.

Our first event last year focused on finding the optimum digital marketing solutions.  Geoff Ramsey, CEO/Founder of eMarketer shared his Seven Strategies for Surviving the Downturn and it sure got our attendees engaged in various discussions to help them jump-start planning in the right direction for the coming year.  Today, we’re thrilled to see that many of the attendees have implemented steps built from those insights/conversations into their marketing programs.  We as an agency also applied those insights and it helped us innovate and grow during the downturn. (more…)

Why should I?  What does it matter?  How can one person change the world?  We’ve all heard the phrase, “Think globally, act locally,” but how often do we actually heed the meaning of that phrase?

The needs of the world just seem so overwhelming, right?  We find ourselves saying, “Why bother? We can’t fix everything!” and then doing nothing.  I think that’s probably a very logical solution according to our selfish, perfectionist, overachieving natures –  “If it can’t be done right, why do it at all?“  Sound familiar?

While it is true that one person can’t solve all the troubles of the world, we at Sigma have realized that everyone holds great power to make a big difference.  The power that one person has to improve the quality of life for a few, or the ability that one person has to lend a helping hand, is tremendous.

We recently created a community outreach program called Team Hercules (we have a tradition that lends itself to all things Greek).  There were two reasons we created Team Hercules.  Reason #1: It’s a program that empowers all of our employees to reach out beyond themselves and beyond the confines of these office walls to give back and better our community.  And Reason #2: I’ll get into that in a minute, at the end of this post. (more…)

One of the coolest things about Twitter is all the creative applications and tools that are out there to further profile, search and engage with this micro-blogging platform.  There are over 1900 Twitter clients available as Twitter’s open API makes it easy for anyone to build their own client and the list grows every day.  Below are some of the favorites we use to enhance our Twitter experience.  Let us know if we’re missing your favorite Twitter tool.

[Never forget to safeguard your Twitter password and only use it on sites you trust.]

Twitter Search, Trends & News

Search.Twitter – Twitter’s own search engine (formerly Summize).  Type in any search term and see what’s happening on Twitter for that keyword.  You can subscribe to a search via RSS.

Twazzup – An alternative Twitter search engine.  It has the basic functionality of search.twitter.com, but is faster, has a better UI and offers additional useful resources. (more…)