All we are saying… is give geeks a chance
When I was 16, I worked in part-time in the engineering department of a chemical plant, producing cad drawings of machine parts and editing training videos. My supervisor, an old engineer with a disdain for people with business degrees told me regularly - when you become a manager, the easiest way to fail is to stop listening. Good ideas come from all around.
It’s easy to come up with clever ideas for consumer products - things you use every day, shows you already love. But when we had our first meeting with QNX, a company that develops a realtime microkernel operating system for everything from traffic lights to air traffic control systems, the brainstorming process took a little longer. Once the marketing people had the product explained to us slowly and with small words by our developers, we started throwing around ideas. After a few back-and-forths, we arrived at a promotion that would be entertaining, while educating embedded developers on QNX’s online community, Foundry27, and its new commitment to transparent development and coding “out in the open.” In the end, it was the developers who came up with the concept.
Meet the Pocket Geek.
He’s the pet developer who fits in your pocket. You’ve got five days to finish that big project, and the Pocket Geek needs to be in top form to meet your deadline. Using “management tools” like pizza, energy drinks and rubber duckies, you have to keep your geek happy and productive. Let him get too caffeinated or lethargic, and he’ll either burn out or fade away. Every month, the top scorers will receive a $1000 prize package consisting of a PS3, harman/kardon SoundSticks, a $50 gift certificate from ThinkGeek.com and various QNX swag.
When you’re done playing, if want to know more about QNX or their transparent development, you can browse the Foundry27 community of developers or read one of the whitepapers available on the site. You should also read over this list of how QNX touches your life every day. I know I was surprised by a number of them.
It’s a rewarding part of this job to work with brands who realize that marketing doesn’t have to be dry. Even illustrating complex ideas can be done in an entertaining way. And, at the end of the day, you can’t build a community with a print ad.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Client Love. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
