To get in the spirit of our client Central Market’s Hatch Chile Festival, today we held the first annual Springbox Hatch Chile Cook-Off. By lunchtime, there was quite a diverse spread, with everything from homemade Hatch Chile tamales to savory Hatch cupcakes.   

We ate. We drank. We ate some more. Then we searched for the Tums. 

• Overall – Hatch Carne y Papas con tortillas by Carlos 
• Hotter than Hell – Hatcharitas by Burger 
• Most Original – Brownies con Hatch by Tricia 

Next week, Springbox will be hosting an Austin Flash Platform User Group Meetup.

For you Flash pros out there, it’s a great opportunity to see our office and check out the work of our rich media and development teams. Drinks and refreshments will be provided. 

Roman Villareal and Chris Martinez of the Austin Adobe Flash Platform Usergroup will manage the meeting. They'll have some giveaways from Adobe, and there will be at least one, maybe two, presentations: 

• HTML5 and Flash, presented by Tom Hudson, Rich Media Manager, Springbox
• Face Recognition and Flash, presented by Steve Shipman (tentative)

Here are the details:

What:
Austin Flash Platform User Group Meetup 

When:
Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 6:30 PM 

Where:
Springbox office. 708 Congress Avenue, right across the street from the Paramount Theatre and Stephen F. Austin Hotel.  

Parking:
Up to you to find a spot. Spaces open up after business hours.   

RSVP here.  

Last year, Springbox held a swank SXSW party. This year, our best and brightest have submitted SXSW panel topics about a range of subjects. We need your help to rock the vote.  

As far as we can tell, there aren’t electronic voting machines involved — so vote often and be sure to share your comments. Voting ends on Friday, August 27.

Here’s a rundown of this year’s topics: 

Is HTML5 the Death of Flash?

Tom Hudson  

HTML 5 is challenging other plug-in-based rich internet applications (RIA) by providing much of the same functionality as Flash, and has the potential to render technologies like Flash obsolete. Or is it? Flash has capabilities that are way beyond those of HTML5. Will HTML5 catch up? We’ll explore items like this, compare current HTML5 adoption to Flash, and see where we might land in the future.

Read More and Vote

QR Who QR: Exploring QR Codes

Grant Norwood  

QR codes are new and cool in America. Having originated in Japan mostly for business applications, their use for social and commercial purposes is growing every day in the US. Let’s explore how developers can stay ahead of the game by incorporating new technologies into the popular trend!

Read More and Vote

When Facebook Falls: Future-Proofing Your Social Media Efforts

Justin Clemens 

Learn to future-proof your social media efforts so they don’t go the way of MySpace. The right social networking content, contests, features, news, etc., works across multiple platforms so that if you lose a follower on Twitter, you gain a fan on Facebook. This panel will give you social media secrets and tips to build an audience on every platform and create content that doesn’t rely on any of them.

Read More and Vote 

HTML5 Buzzword Bulls**t: The Truth Revealed

John French

Ever since Steve Jobs starting touting HTML5 as the new replacement for Flash, the standard has become the new buzzword from Human Resource departments to CEOs. This panel is designed to clear up the misconceptions and set the record straight with HTML5.

Read More and Vote

Listen To Me Dammit! I'm An Expert!

Chris Mayfield

Great creative work isn’t always immediately recognizable — even by the creators themselves. We, Creatives often require time to develop ideas before we’re fully convinced of their potential for success. So how do we get beyond our own damaged egos so we can see our creative visions fully realized? Understanding how to address our clients’ expectations as well as the obstacles they face, is not only good for business — it’s good for quality. And as the experts, that’s what we should care about the most.

Read More and Vote

Apps or Mobile Site: How to Choose

Adrian Taylor and Josh Kemmerling

To app or not to app? Consider it an apt question since web-enabled smart phones have essentially swarmed today’s market. Users have become accustomed to purpose-built apps, which leaves designers, developers and business owners with a tough choice: app or mobile site. This panel will provide participants with the information they need to make the smart choice on their next mobile project.

Read More and Vote

Is Mobile Ticketing The New Golden Ticket? 

Randy Elliott

Mobile ticketing is projected to be a multi-billion dollar industry in 5 years. While just 2 billion tickets are forecasted by Juniper Research to be sold this year, they predict that number will rise to 15 billion by 2014. The technology is moving quickly with Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled phones already being used in the Far East.  We’ll discuss where this new integration in taking mobile technology.

Read More and Vote 

Stop the Postmortem Boredom!

Rachel Barber, Priya Kothari and Tom Hudson

The reason for a postmortem is to learn from your mistakes and successes. Most of the time this meeting never happens or doesn’t follow a clear agenda with actionable items. We will discuss what ingredients make for a useful and productive postmortem meeting after a project.

Read More and Vote

Collaboration Nation: How Side-Projects Can Keep You Relevant

Phil Coffman

Side projects are crucial to remaining relevant in our industry. The web is constantly changing — new conventions, techniques and technologies — and one of the best ways to keep up is to do something for the love of it. Side projects facilitate a unique blend of experimentation, creativity and play that arenʼt always possible during billable hours or client projects. Weʼll be grilling our panel to bring practical advice and a candid take on their past experiences.

Read More and Vote 

How to Whup 'Em with the Leroy Stick

Hawk Thompson 

Leroy Stick — the man behind @BPGlobalPR — is just a regular guy. Yet he managed to help bring a global brand to its knees (and attract hundreds of thousands of followers in the process) with a single Twitter account and a mission that resonated with the masses. Meet the new consumer. Empowered by social media, each and every one of us is capable ofinflicting this kind of damage on a brand. In this panel, find out what professionals can do to protect their clients’ brands from being whupped with the Leroy Stick.

Read More and Vote 

Springbox takes a different approach to team building. At our most recent agency off-site meeting, Springboxers were divided into seven teams. Their task: address a local summer social issue. Topics ranged from to bike safety to keeping people safe on Austin area lakes and rivers.

With two hours on the clock, teams brainstormed creative solutions and produced 1-minute videos to pitch their ideas.

The winning team addressed water safety and won funding to produce their winning concept, instructional koozies. Want the full details? Watch their video:

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. 

Mike Bullock 

General Manager

What did you do before joining Springbox?
Prior to joining Springbox, I spent the first half of my career consulting for systems design and process reengineering for large corporations such as Sears. The second half of my career was spent in Marketing management at Dell, primarily focused online, brand and pricing.

Where do you find inspiration?
I’ve always been inspired by movies. As a kid, movies helped shape my view of the world (for better or worse), as well as helped me experience different cultures and lifestyles. I was most drawn to comedy. Monty Python was a big favorite. Raising Arizona is the funniest movie ever. Drawing from those artists, I would experiment with my own styles of comedic delivery and make people laugh as much as I could. That really energized me. Ultimately, I landed on a very dry style…which takes a while for people to warm up to. As an adult, my taste in movies has migrated to the more independent and documentary style films. Not sure what is going on there.

My attention has moved almost entirely to photography now — all kinds of photography. I’m fascinated with the concept of capturing and sharing compelling images. I also really enjoy the way it taps into both sides of my brain — the technical side and the artistic sides. I read everything I can get my hands on: looking at the old masters, like Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and appreciating how much they accomplished by focusing on the craft even though they had very rudimentary equipment. Current inspiration comes mostly from the Flickr community, but there are several pros, like Chase Jarvis and Joe McNally, that actively teach great techniques using equipment similar to mine.

Now when I watch movies, I have a completely different perspective. I have much more focus on the cinematography. Part of me wants to eventually migrate more to video (besides just shooting the kids), but it seems WAY too time consuming. I’m going to concentrate my energy on improving my photography for the next 5 years. Such a long way to go.

Which websites have inspired you recently?
Flickr is an obvious choice. They really tapped into the photography community’s desire to share and support one another. I can spend endless hours searching through it for ideas and inspiration.

I spend a lot of time of photography blogs. Some of my favorite are…
http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/
http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/
http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/
http://www.pixsylated.com/
http://www.zarias.com/
http://www.kenrockwell.com/

All of these guys have a ton to teach me and they are really inspired to share their knowledge and passion with the masses. Of course, they make money doing it. I really like their style of communication. It’s very real. Not commercial. I feel like I’m sitting down with them or going on shoots and picking up helpful tips.

Which trends in interactive are you currently paying attention to?
I’m fascinated by the social movement. Facebook obviously has incredible momentum, and I use it regularly to interact with distant friends and relatives that I would have otherwise lost touch with. That is extremely powerful and valuable. But where is it all going?

Mass adoption of platforms like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and various blogging sites, combined with the accessibility of powerful creative tools like DSLRs, video cameras and PCs are completely changing the media landscape. A similar movement is happening with other art forms, like music. Everyday people now have access to near-professional-grade creative tools and massive distribution channels. People, like myself, are learning to become creators instead of just spectators. Multiply that effect by millions, and you ultimately have fewer eyeballs on traditional media and more online.