Last evening, Envision attended the 2009 Providence Business News’ ‘Best Places to Work in Rhode Island’ awards ceremony, where we were honored to be recognized in the Small Business category.

Of the 10 companies recognized in this category, we ranked number 4, which is incredibly cool for our first time on this list. Still, regardless of our exact ranking on this list, the employees of Envision Technology Advisors’ know that this is THE best place work in Rhode Island and we wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

So why, exactly, are we the best? Since everyone loves a top 10 list, we thought we’d put together some of the reasons why we love where we work. Now, keep in mind that this list is what we think sets us apart and what makes Envision where we all love to work (as you would expect, this list was compiled from suggestions from Envision’s employees), so while it is true that we have an open door policy, are flexible with employees' schedules and empower employees to effect change and make Envision an even better place to be, those are qualities that many of the other companies on this Best Place to Work in RI list boast as well. So what makes Envision stand out?

10 . Random Acts of Lunchness – While we have scheduled lunches for special occasions like many companies, we also randomly enjoy impromptu lunches to reward everyone’s hard work. Nothing like coming to work with a ho-hum lunch of leftovers and being surprised with a smorgasbord of flaming chicken wing goodness!

9. Assorted Officewide Silliness – This is a fun place to be, bottom line, and that oftentimes manifests itself in randomly silly ways. Like when a 5-foot cutout of Brian from Family Guy just appeared in the office one day (and still remains here 2 years later) or the day when we had a ‘very important staff meeting’ suddenly called so we could all see a SNL ‘Taco Town’ video. Envision is fun – and if you don’t think so, we have a drawer full of rubber slingshot-like frogs that we will pelt you with until you recognize!

8. Hot and Cold Liquid Refreshment Stations – Like most offices, we have a coffee machine (which, as of this writing, boasts 16 flavors of joe, 4 varieties of tea and hot cocoa), but for those days where a hot beverage is just not what you crave, we also have a frozen slushie machine! We are a virtual cornucopia of beverage choices!

7. Josh Defreitas

6. Pet Friendly Environment – Our office is routinely shared with our four-legged friends, Nemo and Griffen. We also have sea monkeys, making for a well rounded, pet-friendly workplace.

5. Happy Hours and Summer Fridays – We all work hard, often times putting in late hours or weekend time, so it’s nice to work for a place that recognizes that extra effort and does something to help us relax a bit. Regular happy hours, complete with food, drinks, movies and, at times, massive office-wide video game tournaments, help us remember that no matter how hard we work, we always have time for some fun as a team. And during the summer, we get out 2 hours early on Fridays so we can enjoy the season and start our weekends early.

4. Ceiling Tile Project Gallery – Our Web design team is proud of the work we produce. While we always add recently launched projects to our online gallery, we have also created a program that allows the lead designer on a particular project the chance to create a ‘ceiling tile’ for their design. This allows us a few hours to reflect on a job well done and design something to showcase our work in our office – and the fact that we actually place these in our ceiling as tiles is great, if for no other reason than it is fun to see visitors to our office crane their necks and look up at our overhead project gallery!

3. Todd’s Horn of Information – Ever wish you knew what your boss was thinking? Wish you had a window into his mind? Well, with Todd’s Horn of Information (which is basically a coat hanger bent into a piece of headgear complete with a sticky note that acts somewhat like a thought bubble - patent pending), Envision employees always know exactly what our CEO/CTO has on his mind! Is he in a good mood? Check the Horn of Information. Bad mood – same story, check the Horn. They don’t call us Information Technology for nothing.

2. MVPs – It’s always nice to be recognized for a job well done. At Envision, you are routinely thanked for your hard work, but for those who go above and beyond (or contribute a particularly amusing Email that week), we have our MVP program, complete with silly t-shirts supplied to the lucky winner! One example would be a bright red ‘Hanging with my Gnomies’ shirt featuring a duo of heavily bearded garden gnomes. A pat on the back and ‘thank you for the hard work’ is great, a t-shirt that says ‘I (Heart) Lamp’ is even better.

1. Our People – Impromptu lunches, frozen slushies and silly t-shirts are all great, and they make Envision a fun place to be, but the number one reason this is the Best Place to Work in Rhode Island is the people who work here. We have been using the tag line, “Better Technology Solutions Start With Better People” for about a year now and it’s a message that really summarizes the culture at Envision. No matter how hard you work, the person next to you is working just as hard and everyone is doing what they can to continue to build Envision and ensure it remains a fun, exciting and challenging place to be.

So there you have it – 10 reasons why Envision employees are proud to work where we do and why we consider Envision THE best place to work, hands down.

On a side note – congratulations to all the companies recognized with these awards and at last night’s ceremony. It’s great to be in such illustrious company and confirming to see how many of the other companies on this list are actually Envision clients or partners, including Cox Communications, Kahn, Liwtin, Renza & Co. Ltd., Amica Insurance, Falvey Cargo Underwriting LTD, Vibco Vibrators and the United Way of Rhode Island. Congrats again – we hope to see you all on this list again next year!

Labels: Envision, fun, Jeremy G, PBN, Rhode Island

posted by Jeremy Girard

Envision recently presented at the 2009 VMWare User Group Conference (VMUG) in Newport, RI.

What could make our 3 sessions on assessing, monitoring and managing the virtual environment memorable? Giant rabbits of course!

Why rabbits?

Creating a VM (virtual machine) is cool - in fact, it's like a magic trick. The first time someone asks for a VM, you pull the rabbit out of the hat. Magic.

The next time someone needs a VM you pull another rabbit out the hat. More magic.

This is all good and very cool, but after time, rabbits being rabbits, they will begin to multiply. You must find a way to feed and care for these rabbits or left unchecked, those rabbits will multiply until they take over entire islands in Australia.

The session that Envision presented at VMUG focused specifically on ways you can get your virtualized environment under control.

Why is this important?

1. We don't want Australia to be renamed Easter Bunny Island.
2. You want to be sure that the promise of virtualization is fully realized and that your virtual environment is a healthy one - this was at the core of our presentation as part of our VHEALTH 360 solution.

The rabbit analogy at the heart of this blog post and our trade show display was something that Todd Knapp had mentioned early on as part of what he would discuss in his VMUG session. Using that analogy as a starting point, Envision's creative department ran with the rabbits theme and churned out a booth design that definitely made people stop and take notice (it's not often you see 6-foot rabbits set against a brilliant orange background). Bonus points that the display also helped illustrate our point in a fun and memorable way!

Check out photos of our booth in action:

Labels: Jeremy G, Jeremy S., Trade Show Booth Design, Virtualization, VMUG, VMWare

posted by Jeremy S.

If I see click here one more time on a web site, I am going to scream. (Welcome back to those of you who just saw a cute Pug licking the screen.) Are there big arrows on a steering wheel? Of course not. Users do not need to be told to "click here".

Since this usability mistake has been going on for 15+ years, Google will have indexed billions of web pages for this search keyword. Want to know what site ranks #1 for "click here"? I am going to contradict myself and ask you to click here.

Congratulations Adobe Reader! Many sites ask users to click here to download Adobe Reader to view PDFs. See the impact hyperlinked text has on search engine rankings?

Hyperlinked text does 2 things:

1. It lets the user know that the link goes to a page with content related to the hyperlinked text.
2. It lets search engines know that the linked site is related to the hyperlinked text. This is one of the 3 major factors in search engine rankings. For example, the following link to the Envision home page lets Google know to rank our home page for the search keyword "Envision".

So, if you have "click here" links on your web site, you are annoying users and hurting your search engine rankings. If you do 1 thing in 2009 for your web site, please remove every instance of "click here" unless you are linking to ClickHere.com or a clicking game. You'll be glad you did.

Labels: Anchor Text, Jeremy S., Links, SEO

posted by Jeremy S.

7 to Save - 9 to Delete

Without fail, every time I try to delete a voicemail, I end up saving it instead. The reason for this is simple – I have two systems that I receive voicemail at (my work phone and my cell phone) and while both systems allow you to either delete or save a message, they do so in exactly opposite ways. My kingdom for some standardization!

The phone system at my office requires me to hit the number ‘7’ to save a message and the number ‘9’ to delete it. My cell phone uses the exact opposite method, you hit ‘7’ to delete and ‘9’ to save the message. I can never seem to remember which is which, and inevitably I guess wrong every single time. That cold, robotic-sounding female voice saying ‘message saved’ is like some cruel taunt from the telecommunications gods reminding me that I have guessed wrong yet again!

This problem could be easily fixed if there were some standards that governed how phone systems operated. If ‘7’ to save and ‘9’ to delete was a universally accepted standard, there would be no need to remember which method is used on the device I am currently interfacing with – because they would all be the same. Work phone, cell phone, house phone, any phone – 7 to delete and 9 to save. How wonderful a world that would be.

Conventions Make Life Easier

The concept of established conventions, specifically in regards to Web sites, has come up a number of times recently in my conversations with clients. Conventions and standards can make a Web site user’s experience easier and more enjoyable because they allow visitors to quickly understand how to use your site by taking advantage of things they already know and understand. Knowledge gained from past experiences is leveraged so there is that much less that is ‘new’, which means that the things that are new (like your company-specific content or applications) are easier to find and interact with because they are framed by things that are already familiar.

An example of this would be the cursor. When using the Web, users have come to expect their cursor to appear as an 'arrow' until they rollover a link or clickable area – then it becomes a little 'hand'. Users know exactly how to position their cursor to access the link and make that click. This is a convention.

I was recently asked by a client if we could change the default cursor on their Web site to a graphic that represented their company/services. While the answer to this is ‘yes’, that is certainly possible, I suggested against this change. While the cursor replacement might be a neat visual trick, whatever novelty it offered would be quickly replaced by annoyance as users try to navigate the Web page and click links using this unfamiliar cursor instead of one they have grown incredibly used to.

Web users are an impatient and often fickle lot and the surest way to drive someone away from your site is to confuse or frustrate them. Breaking away from a convention they have come to expect is a pretty good way to do both.

Conventions and Creativity Can Play Nicely Together

I have heard some argue that adhering to conventions or standards saps creativity and innovation. I don’t think that is the case. I would never argue against creativity, but you need to weigh the benefits of breaking away from an established convention against the consequences of forcing your users to relearn how to perform an action (such as clicking a link).

If you’re going to innovate, understand why you are doing it and make sure it is the right choice. If your change is well thought out and executed (and if it provides value to the user or adds to the site in some real way), your users will take the time to learn this new convention-breaking method. Innovate because it is the right thing to do and it makes sense – not only because it ‘looks cool.’ As much as the designer in me hates to admit it, ‘looking cool’ is rarely a legitimate reason to break away from a convention and potentially frustrate users.

Share Your Conventions

Are there any Web conventions that you find particularly helpful and have come to expect from sites you visit? One I always make reference to is the company logo being placed in the upper left corner of the site (allowing users to easily find the company branding in a place they have come to expect) and also being linked back to the site’s homepage, kinda like a ‘start over’ button.

Feel free list some conventions you find useful – in the meantime, I have a number of voicemails that I need to get rid of since I never meant to save them in the first place!

Labels: Cell phones, Jeremy G, Web conventions, Web design

posted by Jeremy Girard