Dave Nelson | SecretPenguin Blog

We had a great time working with the city on Mayor Suttle’s new website. Here’s a little bit of our thought process behind the project…

THE GOALS OF THE WEBSITE:

• Bridge communication between the Mayor’s office and the community.
• Help organize all of the content in a visual way for users to find information.

ORGANIZATION:
News Categories
We created categories that address the different issues that Mayor Suttle talked about during his campaign that link up to the relating posts… Public Safety, Green Initiatives, Economic Development, etc.

Slideshow
A slideshow is on the homepage that features important posts. This will help keep the needed news from being pushed to the bottom by new posts.

CONNECTING:
Mayor’s Hotline

Mayor’s Hotline is always available as a tab on each page on the left for easy communication.

Links to Social Media and other sites
Links to Mayor Suttle’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube as well as other city related sites throughout the pages.

Twitter Feed

Mayor Suttle’s Twitter Feed is pulled in directly at the top of each page.

USER-INTERFACE:
Visual Indicators

Drop downs replaced with whole section dropping down to reveal all of the links. Once you visit one, a visual indicator checks off of where you’ve been. Links to PDFs are shown with a PDF icon next to it that turns gray if you’ve already been there. Little arrows are also next to links that take you away from the site.

Some of the pages are so long, so as soon as you scroll down a bit, a TOP button appears in the bottom right corner that can scroll you back up to the top. We utilized scrolling, rather than jumping so users can have a visual for where they’re going.

UPDATABLE

The site will always be evolving, so we built it to have dynamic content with the ability to update on the backend by Suttle’s administration.

We had a great time working on this project with the administration, DotComm and everyone else involved. We love Omaha, and we are so proud to work with the city!

Earlier this year in March, HDR and the City of Omaha hosted a series of meetings to involve the community to get input for the new Downtown 30 Year Master Plan. It was a great idea, however not everyone could make it.

Beth Katz thought there could be another way for those people to give input that can’t make it to the meetings (prior engagements, work nights, night class, have kids, etc.).

OmahaDowntownPlan.com
So that following morning, we developed a quick website in time for the next meeting. This site offered the community a way to leave comments and watch the presentations as they’re happening or at a later date.

Over 200 people tuned in to watch the live video.
Over 300 people have watched the videos at a later date.
And 114 comments were left on the website.

Omaha World Herald did an article on what we had done.
(Check out the photo! Perhaps it should have been a photo of Beth Katz or the website, but I like that they used a photo of our penguin. ha!)

Our hope was to help the city utilize technology and design as a way to be more inclusive and have more community members involved.

And they have!

Beth Katz, Craig Moody and I met with Jed Moulton (Manager of Urban Design) and Steve Jensen (Director of City Planning) from the city to talk more about the next steps.

Since then, we helped Environment Omaha set up a Ustream account and they streamed a presentation live for people that couldn’t make it.

And last night was the Presentation of the Master Plan, and the city had set up their own website with a public forum and streamed the meeting live.

Yay!

Through skateboarding and being a part of Divvy (the design co-working space), I learned a lot about community vs. competition.

At Divvy, we were a community. We all learned a ton from working and sharing with each other, and all of our businesses grew. We didn’t leave anyone behind.

On the flipside with cut-throat competition, people suffer. There’s some shop rivalry among skateboard shops in Omaha. With this cut-throat attitude, I’ve seen skateboard shops talk poorly about other shops and their riders and it hurts themselves (some have put themselves out of business), hurts the skateboarders involved and makes it hard to put on large events together. All in all, it makes the skateboard community suffer.

I believe when we can all get along, we can all work together to build a better community as a whole… come together on events, educate the importance of design and it’s process, and simply learn from each other.

Matt mentioned a good point in his BIGOmaha post a while back,

“Cut-throat competition is dead. Undermining your competition is a disservice to your community. We can all benefit if we commit to helping each other thrive.”

This is one of the reasons we put out The Paper Family for anyone to use. It has helped us stay organized as we continue to grow, and we were hoping it can be useful to help others grow.

We’ll be posting more of the family soon. We would love to hear any feedback… suggestions, if it’s helped you, etc. Leave a comment below, or email us at thepaperfamily@secretpenguin.com

Thanks everyone! We love being a part of this community.

A while back I agreed to do an interview for former Mayor, Hal Daub about his support of Robert’s Skatepark for the upcoming election of Mayor.

I later found out that it was a bit controversial if he really supported it in the first place, and this concerned me since the reason I agreed to do it was because I’ve always vowed to help anyone out that has helped support skateboarding in Omaha… especially during a time when skateboarding wasn’t widely accepted.

I wanted to know the full story, so Hal invited me up to his office to talk about it. He was quick to give the credit to Marc Kraft, which was nice to see. We worked a lot with Marc, and the skatepark would not have happened without him.

Hal ended by basically saying it was passed while he was in office. If he was really against it, it wouldn’t have passed. He was very kind, very respectful and surprisingly down to earth when we met.
I was impressed.

His campaign talked with us at SecretPenguin about doing their design work, but they continued to want spec work and we decided to pull out. They then went with hiring an out of town agency.

This was a bit odd to me. Why hire a non-local agency for a local election? I’m not concerned that they didn’t hire us, I’m more concerned that they outsourced the work.

I later met up with my friend, Gary Di Silvestro. Without his help as well, there would be no skatepark in Omaha. He worked side by side with all the skateboarders, and helped organize us and get us in contact with the people of the city.

I found out he was helping with Jim Suttle’s campaign, and I had the opportunity to meet with Suttle and he was a very nice guy. I was impressed with his hard work on getting the venues to be able to stay open for people under 21 to enjoy live music.

Music is one of the many things that makes Omaha such a great place to live, and I really liked his approach on this issue.

Suttle already had branding and a website, but they needed some help on a separate website about Suttle’s vision for the future of Omaha and how the local election effects you, and after talking and learning more about what Jim Suttle is about, we were happy to work with them.

It just makes sense for a candidate for Mayor to hire local businesses for a local campaign. That’s something I can definitely support.

Jim Suttle, you have my vote.

Here’s the website we created, OmahaNext.com

The PLAY page is my favorite, with the skateboarder rolling across and doing a kickflip.

Looks like our friends at Silicon Prairie News are making some headway of a coworking space of their own.

Around 2004/2005, Ryan Sorensen (art director at Bozell) called me up and started talking to me about a shared space concept for Omaha.
It sounded interesting, and I knew I had to get out of the house and be around people. I was going crazy not interacting with people outside of the internet during the working day.

I ran the idea by Adam Nielsen (owner of Good Twin) and John Henry Muller (owner of What Cheer), and they both seemed very interested.
John Henry was currently working as Art Director at Sacco, and was planning on doing his own thing. He wanted to use the shared space as a legitimate place to work and bring clients, and felt it was essential to have to start his business.

Ryan Sorensen, Adam Nielsen and John Henry Muller.

We started meeting every Thursday for almost 6 months. We kept it just the four of us to make it easy. We wanted to do this on our own without going into debt and owing any loans.

We covered every topic in planning… finances, ethics, times, cleaning, etc.
Ethics was a huge topic… we were essentially competitors working in the same space. We had a lot of things to hash out.

We got everything worked out, and finally found a space that seemed perfect. Cheap rent, great location, open area for everyone to work, a meeting room and space to expand, however it needed A LOT of work.

John Henry scraping the tile off the wood floors. (I think this was Adam’s idea. I remember being annoyed that he wanted to scrape all of this, but in the end the wood floors were beautiful. Thanks Adam!)

Divvy Collective all cleaned up!

Check out more photos of Divvy on Flickr.

John Henry came up with the name Divvy.
And we all worked on logos and taglines for it, as well as the website, divvycollective.com

We summed it up as,

“We are not an advertising agency or a design firm. We are a group of creatives that have come together to share space.”

Overall, it was a huge success. We started out with 4 people sharing space, and ended with 8 people all coworking together (Shannon Wall, Matt Linder, Chris Kollars and Cody Peterson). It was a great time.

We all learned a ton from each other. Tips on how to run your business, different brainstorming methods, working in a team environment where everyone has different goals, and so much more.

At the end, everyone’s business had at least doubled, and we walked away with Divvy making a profit.

I’m excited to see the guys at Silicon Prairie News revisit this idea and create another coworking space in Omaha. Keep it up guys!

My dad told me this again the other day. It’s something my Mom’s dad told him…

“Worrying doesn’t help anyone.
Never be worried… be concerned,
and then take action.”

I love that. I wish I could have gotten to know my Grandpa before he passed on.

On a side note, the other night, Sara Jean and I went skateboarding downtown.

We took the elevator up to the top of a parking garage.

Here’s Sara Jean ducking under as we go down.

When we got to the bottom, security was waiting to escort us out.
At least this guy was a little older. It’s always a bit awkward/funny when security guards younger than you kick you out for skateboarding.

I made a website directed towards the people that are voting for McCain because of the abortion issue, and why they should take a second look at Obama.

I feel kinda dorky talking on a video, but I thought it might get some people’s attention that know me through ministry.

There are so many reasons why I’m voting for Obama… I believe the way he runs his campaign is a testament to his character, I appreciate the way he thinks through each answer, his ability to inspire and unite people, and so much more.

If you are a person of faith and you’re not considering Obama, I urge you to take a look at this site and check the facts.

WhyIAmVotingForObama.com

Thanks.

My Dad spoke at Mutual a few months ago to a select few, and I was honored enough to be able to attend. I’ve always admired my Dad and the way he handles business, but I think more importantly the way he handles life in general.

Here are some basic notes I took, and always try to incorporate into my business/life…

• Make doing business with you easy and fun.
• Don’t look at your weaknesses, focus on your strengths.
• Choose your priorities wisely.
• Learn to say no.
• Dismiss the people who don’t appreciate you… so you have time for those who do.
• Half-efforts don’t produce half-results, they don’t produce anything. Especially anything you would want to be known for.
• If you can’t put all your effort into it, don’t do it.
• When you go to work, REALLY go to work.
• You’re just one day away from getting your life on track.
• Balance your activity.
• Bring clarity to the chaos.
• Being successful is hard work, so work hard.
• Life isn’t fair, get over it.
• Don’t look at someone that is successful and wish you were them. You have no idea the struggles they went through to get to where they are today. Focus on your own struggles and be proud of who you are.

One of the things we focus on at SecretPenguin is making legit stuff for “youth culture”. I feel stupid even categorizing my friends and I like that. But there are too many Ad Execs that take skateboarding and our “lifestyle” and completely misrepresent it.

Even some of the larger companies that you think would do just a bit of research could get it right. But Cisco completely missed it, Target completely missed it, even Mountain Dew missed it, and just about every other company missed it.

If you’re not a skateboarder and you’re looking at the links above and don’t get why they are horrible representations of skateboarding, then it’s important to research it and hire a place that knows skateboarding and it’s culture before using it in advertising.

When I was a Freshman in high school, they used to let all the skateboarders out 5 minutes early to avoid fights, I’ve gotten jumped by a car full of guys because I was skateboarding, I’ve been handcuffed and thrown up against a building for skateboarding down the street heading somewhere, and I’ve had guns pulled on me because some guys didn’t like skateboarders. You have to understand, this is a tight group of people that were rejected for so long and recently over the past few years are being noticed.

And now that it is popular, people want to use it to promote their brand. And I’m fine with that, but at least have the decency and respect of doing a little research and getting it right.

A while back I agreed to do a skateboard photoshoot for some friends at Bozell for Alegent Health. The only reason I agreed to it was because I knew the people and I knew they would do it right… and most importantly, wanted to do it right.

I was able to choose what I wore, not wear full pads, and approve the photo.

I think they did a good job, and I’m really thankful that they were open and respectful to skateboarding.

Sara and I went to Atlanta to visit my newly-wedded brother and his wife Cara. It was super fun to hang out with them.
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