http://jamesbeard.org

for all of you foodies out there, you probably already know the james beard foundation. if you don’t, it’s america’s pre-eminent culinary foundation. they have beautiful member dinners produced by the best chefs of the country, along with the james beard awards and many educational programs. we had the honor of being part of the team that took on the huge project of updating a website with thousands of archival entries and daily updates. we never wrote about it before because our blog wasn’t live in early 2008.

although we finished the first phase of jamesbeard.org in april of 2008, we spent the following 8 months adding to the massive structure built on the drupal framework. the site was beautifully designed by our friend scott of simplissimus (with whom we’ve done other projects) and we did all the multimedia and interactive elements along with the build. the site currently gets about 37,000 hits a month.

anyway, fast forward… the reason we’ve decided to write about it now, is because today is the last entry day for the w3 awards (yes, yes, i’m always running late - but we make the deadlines). we think it’s a really beautiful and comprehensive site and therefore we decided to enter it in the the food and beverage category. so if any of you out there have any pull with the w3 awards judges —-> nudge, nudge, wink wink.

the visual mercenary group is proud to announce the launch of the 2009 MPA Kelly Awards Gallery.  for those of you who voted on MPA’s America’s Favorite Ad at mag-ads.com, the people choice winner has also been announced. at the kelly site you can view all the winners, inspiration videos from the creative teams behind the work, judges’ insights, and case studies from the winning ads. the winning team took home $25,000. there’s some pretty good stuff to check out there.

this is the third year that we’ve helped MPA develop the kelly awards site and the first that we designed and built the polling site at mag-ads.com. additionally we created print and banner ads based on the look and feel of mag-ads. this was truly a multimedia assignment spanning LAMP application design and development, print, video, audio, and flash animation & programming. we love working on this kind of integrated media stuff.

so how did your picks fare with the industry judges at kellyawards.org?

http://www.comcastlessonslearned.com/

Comcast, in association with Business Week has put together a micro site that is focused on providing quick stand-alone lessons for small business owners. the site was designed by Segal Savad and was built by the visual mercenary group. this is the second year of the site. there are six lessons from 2008 and we just recently uploaded lesson #2 for 2009. it’s a collection of interviews from business owners across the country by writer Marcia Layton Turner. Marcia offers some keen insight to the problems presented. look for the commentary on the right sidebar. there are also resource links to help out if needed.

the site breaks the content down into the problem areas that small business owners run into. like me, probably most s.b. owners never took any business and/or marketing courses; it’s been more of a trial by fire. they might have had a passion about something, opened a shop or store and left a lot of the course to fate. although it may work for some businesses, overall that’s not a good strategy to have - especially in these economic times.

some of the current lessons online are:
1. Focus on generating revenue vs reducing expenses
2. Allowing one client to dominate your bottom line
3. Overlooking the easy sale
4. Business Plan Basics
5. Managing Your Finances

they’re great to read if you’re looking to open a small business and good reminders for those that are already running. the site contains a summary article of the business lesson and all complete interviews are available in mp3 format, if users would like to download and listen. let us know what you think and if there is anything you’d like featured for future lessons.