Get to know the people who make Springbox an exceptional agency. What Inspires You is a series of posts that offer insight into our talented and creative staff.

Left to right: Zack Steele, Julia Ferguson, and Marcus Pope.

We enjoyed our “triple-threat” formula so much last month we decided to do it again. Meet Finance & Operations Director Zack Steele, Associate Producer Julia Ferguson, and Senior Developer Marcus Pope. 

Where do you find inspiration? 

Zack Steele: Everywhere. I’m a “connect the dots” kind of guy. I find inspiration in the connections between ideas, industries, and individuals. The world is becoming more complex due to the multiple interdependencies between the systems that hold our cultures together. The web is becoming the backbone of those systems, enabling the communication between previously disparate groups and allowing for new ideas from individuals to change industries on a more and more frequent basis.

Julia Ferguson: Friends, family, and the weirdness that resides in the city of Austin. It helps to work with such creative people every day.

Marcus Pope: I rely heavily on my social network to find the good sources. Conferences and local organizations have been an ever-growing source of ideas. Even concerts like SXSW and ACL deliver novel solutions as technology continues to bleed across traditional boundaries. But all of the above is completely trumped by a little imagination and a few minutes spent searching with Google. Following individual projects and people has always paled in comparison to searching a seemingly infinite network of ideas. And inspiration can be found with very obscure groups of keywords or through broad topic categories. It’s one of the primary reasons computer books are dying out. Even the blogosphere has begun to provide more accurate information than what can be found in a product’s knowledgebase or API documents.

Which websites have inspired you recently?

Zack: Content discovery and organization is most important to me when I’m experiencing the web. For those reasons, Google+ has been what I’ve been inspired by most recently, especially now that they are rolling out integrations for G+ into the other Google products that I use on a daily basis. For example, Google Reader has been my go-to site for keeping up with news and trends for 5 years. Now with the integration into G+, I’m able to share the different feeds and posts that have been coming into my feed reader with my social networks. I’m also able to discover more interesting content to subscribe to in Google Reader based on all the different individuals I’m following on G+. This allows me to stay on top of new ideas and trends in an organized and efficient manner which ultimately enables me to consume more ideas and information.

Julia: PSFK.com is a good place to get ideas and keep up with trends. Lifestyle sites like dailycandy.com and designspiration.net feature a variety of interests and are a great source of inspiration. I enjoy all things pop culture, so charlesphoenix.com and theonion.com are always a good time.

Marcus: StackOverflow.com has forever changed how I explore technology and solve problems, and it has finally converted me from a consumer to a supplier of tech-related knowledge. Node.js and MongoDB have shown me the power of evented and distributed processing respectively — something Google has used to dominate search since day 1. Facebook has taught me how NOT to write a developer API. And Twitter has shown me that if you can make feature-limited software expose valuable marketing metrics to corporations, then you’ve got a wildly successful product on your hands.

Which trends in interactive are you currently paying attention to?

Zack: The integration of different devices or form factors when it comes to the full experience of the web. We’ve moved from experiencing the web at our desktops to our laptops to our mobile phones and now to tablets. Along the way, we didn’t give up the other form factors; we just use them differently depending on the situation we are in. As technology advances, we will continue to add form factors to integrate the web even more into our lives. How all those devices and experiences will integrate is what I’m most interested in. Will they integrate on a closed platform that stresses design and usability over openness (think Apple); will the platform be the web architecture itself where the “browser” is the operating system that enables the use of applications across the different form factors (think Google); or, more than likely, will it be a combination of both?

Julia: I find myself watching the changes in information sharing through social media applications. It's interesting the variety of ways user-generated content is being utilized on sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. While some may be using these outlets for entertainment or just as a way to keep in touch, others are relying on these channels to relay vital newsworthy information to the rest of the world.

Marcus: The web is proving itself as the platform of choice for software development. What was once a one-way medium is now turning into the completely interconnected network that it was originally designed to be. UnionPlatform offers instant peer-to-peer communication in a way that before was only feasible via a Rube Goldberg chaining of technologies on the web and desktop. Phonegap has all but eliminated the need to invest in multiple complex and proprietary frameworks just to write applications for mobile phones. And with HTML5 finally getting around to fixing many of the problems that have plagued the web since I began developing on it 15 years ago, we’re only seeing the beginning of what technology holds for the future of interactive.

We’re all proud to call Texas home, but for some of us non-natives, it’s hard to get in the seasonal spirit in such balmy temperatures. To celebrate the holidays and participate in the Downtown Austin Alliance's Holiday Downtown Stroll, we created an interactive window display that brings some delightful snow and holiday cheer into the lives of downtown Austinites.

Using the same mobile phone-based technology from Megaphone Labs that we employed for our popular SXSW party game, we transformed our front windows at 708 Congress Avenue into wintery scenes set against a downtown Austin skyline. For the rest of December, visitors can use their mobile phones to dial into a 1-800 number and create their own snowflake using their phone's keypad. Upon hanging up their phone, the snowflake is saved to our display and we send them a text with a link to an image of their snowflake that they can then share with their friends online.

The windows have only been up for two evenings, but they've already caught the attention of many passersby, including the team at Fox News in Austin, who did a nice profile of the display:

We encourage all of our friends in Austin to stop by the office and make your own snowflake! 

For updates, follow us on Twitter. We'll also be posting video and photos from the display on our new Tumblr blog.

Left to right: Eric Gehrman, Jody Adams, and Cecy Correa.  

It’s easy to start feeling worn-out and uninspired towards the end of the year, so we’re switching things up for this week’s installment of What Inspires You and packing three times the inspiration into one post. Meet Developer Eric Gehrman, Producer Jody Adams, and Account Executive Cecy Correa.

Where do you find inspiration?

Eric Gehrman: Poorly-coded websites and sites that give users a horrible experience. I love finding flaws in a website’s architecture/user flow. Oddly enough, this inspires me to do great work and not recreate something that I’ve found appalling. I also find my inspiration on the other side of that. A site that flows perfectly, seamlessly, and without hiccups also gets my brow raised.

Jody Adams: Art, music, film and photography.

Cecy Correa: I feel keeping your ears open can also help you keep your mind open. I love live music. I’ll take any opportunity I can to go see a band play live – regardless of the band. I love podcasts—This American Life, Planet Money, Radiolab, Pop Culture Happy Hour, and Stuff You Should Know. If you don’t listen to podcasts, but you’re going to listen to one, it should be SYSK. They talk about any topic from “How Mosquitos Work” to “How Blood Pattern Analysis Works” and even “How to Start Your Own Country.” It’s comedic and offers great insights into topics I might otherwise not know about.

Which websites have inspired you recently?

Eric:  The Wilderness Downtown is an awesome blend of Google maps, music, and HTML5. I’m a HTML5 enthusiast and seeing its potential in action is pretty inspiring.

The guys over at Method and Craft are always posting interesting stuff.

Jody: The 99 Percent, Behance’s research arm and think tank. The name was inspired by Thomas Edison’s famous quote, “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” 

The Big Orange Slide covers the worlds of strategy, design, digital, and advertising culture.

Tool and Tack seeks to highlight artisans, rebels, and quality craft of all kinds. They focus on goods made to last and daily inspiration.

Cecy: Brand New is a great way to start the day creatively. The blog takes a look at corporate identity, focusing on re-branding. 

Instagram-a-Day is a newly-launched effort from several designers and developers around the US, posting, er, a Instagram picture a day. I contribute to this group, but I also find seeing multiple contributors documenting their lives through Instagram quite inspiring. Some designers post sketches or other pieces of artwork, while others find beauty in the ordinary.

Which trends in interactive are you currently paying attention to?

Eric: Facebook Connect (authentication via Facebook to third party sites), HTML5, and responsive design.

Jody: Responsive web design and cloud storage.

Cecy: Augmented Reality and gamification. I feel those two elements combined will represent the way we tell stories in the future. As opposed to just watching a film, audiences (or customers) will interact with the story and be a part of the story. That’s where I see the future of storytelling—customers taking an active role in interacting with a story, product, service or idea.

For the second installation of our Innovation in Austin series, we talked to Mark McClain, CEO and Founder of SailPoint, about innovation versus invention, the legacy of Steve Jobs and Apple, and examples of innovation in Austin—including the local food trailer scene.

We recently were privileged to have a conversation with Sam Decker, CEO and Co-Founder of Mass Relevance. This video is the first installment in our Innovation in Austin series, which explores thought leadership and trends in the city we call home.