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SkillsDMC showcased in the McFarlane Prize 2009 Book

April 27th, 2010 by Jacko

The SkillsDMC website developed and designed by Gruden was short-listed for the 2009 The McFarlane Prize and has now been published in the 2009 book.

The McFarlane Prize nominations are awarded to an Australian designer or team for a site launched or significantly upgraded between September 1st 2008 and August 31 2009. Sites may be designed for Australian or non Australian individuals, organisations, companies or governments, but must be designed and developed by an individual or team which works in Australia for an Australian company.

To learn more about the SkillsDMC website project please visit our portfolio.

One Response to “SkillsDMC showcased in the McFarlane Prize 2009 Book”

  1. igirok098 says:

We’re moving office!

April 15th, 2010 by Jacko


With Gruden continually expanding the range of services we offer our clients, we need to move to a larger office. Gruden will be relocating effective Monday 19th April 2010 to our new premises at: Lvl 10, 220 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000. Gruden’s phone, fax and email details will remain the same.

We look forward to seeing you in our new office soon.

Stunning slow-motion effects in this 5 minute indie film

April 12th, 2010 by Jacko

A few months ago I came across a beautiful black & white independent short film by Canadian director Arev Manoukian titled “Nuit Blanche” (“White Night” in english).

The movie is a great illustration of the technical resources being made available to indie filmakers. In brief the movie was shot entirely infront of a green screen with the principal photography completed in 4 days. After which 8 months was spent constructing the visually impressive digital effects.

Today I came across the “Making of Nuit Blanche” clip which provides a great insight into the special effect construction and the level of technical detail applied to the film.

Enabling online customer engagement with Adobe LiveCycle

April 9th, 2010 by John

It doesn’t matter if you’re a creative design genius, an uber-geek software developer, a stellar sales person or the most meticulous project manager, the one thing we all have in common at Gruden is that every day we spend a lot of time talking to our customers.

And as we do we’re noticing significant changes taking place, which we believe reflect a strong shift in public expectations, and a growing maturity towards the use of the online channel.

People are starting to do things in ways many aren’t anticipating. For example the recent floods and storms produced surprising jumps in the volume of insurance claims via the Internet as the preferred option. These increases were not incremental, but measured in orders of magnitude greater than through call centres.

And we believe this is the beginning of an accelerating trend which will take us from the first generation online applications which customers often found less than satisfactory, sometimes even alienating.

Surveys over the recent years by Forrester, IDC and Tower have tended to support this view, with quotes such as;

  • “Customers still opening 94% of new accounts in person or over the phone”
  • “90% of online users having problems completing internet business transactions”
  • “82% unwilling to accept lower levels of customer service online”
  • “40% of the problems online users had involved error messages”

Others cited a lack of trust either in the size of the organisation, or the online experience appearing inconsistent with the service provided through face to face contact.

It can also be caused by simple things like overly complex pages, or online calculators that estimate repayments, but then do little else. Why are we not taking these processes through to the next stage of completion? Why aren’t companies offering an end-to-end solution?

The next generation of online channel will deliver a more comprehensive, intuitive and personalised experience, with interaction in context, and a much greater harmonisation of back end processes and services – all focused on the customer.

Online calculators will actually produce something that can be ordered. People should be able to retain their estimated repayments from the calculators and then follow through with an application. Today – it’s a 2 or 3 step process, possibly across 3 mediums – online, phone and then paper.

Why are we developing in this archaic way? Predominantly, because the tools and software previously available have not been at the level needed to truly integrate all parts of the process.

And we strongly believe public expectations will mature to the point that if you can’t deliver these levels of service and experience, you will risk losing business and customers.

Prospective customers will evaluate a company by how they represent themselves online, how they manage the channel, diversity of product, aesthetics, usability, simplicity, consistency, accuracy and robustness. In short, people will evaluate whether a company is in command of technology, or the other way around.

The new customers everyone wants will be those with the least time. And those customers will increasingly expect an organisation, particularly a large one, to be capable of marshalling its’ collective resources and assets to help them. If not, there will be plenty of alternatives.

Yes the adoption of mobile applications will grow, but that’s just a small part of it. The much bigger picture is how an organisation engages with people holistically and personally.

This doesn’t mean that a simple HTML form is a thing of the past, but it does mean that the generation that has grown up with Facebook, youtube, twitter etc will expect and demand more.

A way forward?

Adobe LiveCycle (LiveCycle) goes a long way to focusing and delivering on customer interactions – across the organisation, caring for both internal and external users. Products like LiveCycle are destined to become an important digital medium for future customer engagement and reducing service delivery costs.

LiveCycle is often categorized simply by the ability to convert static PDF documents into “smart forms”, but it’s much more than that. Much more than can be covered here, but the toolset LiveCycle provides enables business to really move into a new level and era of customer engagement.

But what is LiveCycle? In short, it’s a complimentary group of software tools incorporating industrial strength security and rights management, print management and document generation, Rich Internet Applications (RIA), rapid application development, reporting & analytics, personalized user work spaces, workflow, straight through processing and, yes, smart forms. (and more!)

It does seem like a lot, but essentially it enables organizations to win & retain customers and deliver products & services more efficiently across the organization.

Consider a mortgage application. The forms are long and complex, which means it’s easy to miss things and make mistakes. They require a lot of detail, which needs to be handled securely. And the likelihood is that it’s going to take more than five minutes and one sitting to complete.

If you make a mistake then you may have to make an unscheduled stop at the bank. But if the application is delayed, and you’re one link in a chain, then the impact can be disastrous.

And every bank bears significant fixed and variable costs for manually checking and correcting the quantities of forms they process, which is a burden they would prefer to do without.

LiveCycle removes these pains by providing the customer with an intuitive electronic form (or highly engaging RIA) they can use and update at their leisure. Forms can be pre-populated before they are downloaded and information entered can be checked to eliminate errors and omissions. It can then be tracked through the mortgage application lifecycle that offers total visibility to where the application is at in the process.

The bank benefits through automation and the customer’s expectations have been met or exceeded. The beauty of this is that it’s not only the online medium that wins – take for example the reduction to call centres, the ability to quickly and easily inform customers exactly where their application is at in real time.

At the end of the day – everyone wins.

Where are we at today?

In 2006 the Department of Finance and Deregulation released a strategy paper titled e-Government Strategy, Responsive Government: A New Service Agenda, which established a vision to provide “better services and better government” which revealed that; “Currently there are thousands of government forms, which Australian citizens must use to comply with the three tiers of government regulations. Analysis of the forms registered on GovForms indicate that the majority of these forms exist in ‘flat’, non-fillable PDF format, requiring citizens to print and fax or post forms back to the originating agency, rather than submitting them online to be processed in real-time.”

This report has endorsed and set in motion the use of Adobe LiveCycle for the provision of services across all tiers of Australian government because it provides the best medium for simplifying government and connecting government to constituents.

Whilst this is a move in the right direction, at Gruden we believe it can go so much further. Today, forms are boring and they don’t need to be. People engage more with a more creative or visual experience and that’s where we fit in.

As an Adobe Solutions Partner, Gruden is committed to helping customers leverage the benefits of LiveCycle and greatly improve their customer engagement and retention. Our unique blend of creative and technical skills combined with strong delivery disciplines can ensure that we can make LiveCycle come alive.

NSW eTendering Team receive award for Excellence

April 9th, 2010 by Mark

One of Gruden’s key clients, the eTendering Team from the NSW Department of Services, Technology and Administration (DSTA), was recently awarded one of the eight DSTA Excellence Awards in the Service Delivery Community category:

For individuals or teams that directly support and deliver value to the NSW public highlighting:

  • Exceptional service to the community, in a particular incident or over a sustained period of time.
  • Enhanced quality of life or well-being for the people of NSW.

and it was awarded for:

FOI Legislation changes in 2007 resulted in a new requirement for the disclosure of all contracts between Government and the Private Sector valued greater than $150,000.

As a result of publishing contracts online, the eTendering team provided the key platform for driving transparency and efficiency across NSW Government and business. This has also delivered significant savings to tax payers and to the environment.

Gruden have worked closely with the eTendering Team for over five years and feel that the recognition of this team was highly deserved. Congratulations folks!

Renaissance Art

March 29th, 2010 by Mark

The Internet continues to change the way we create & consume, but sometimes the new modes are not so new.

During the Renaissance portrait painting became popular – commissioned paintings of individuals, groups and families showing them in situ with the intent of capturing the visual appearance of the subject. It first became common among noble families, royalty and church leaders looking to have their greatness preserved for the ages, but it later became less exclusive and in the 18th and 19th centuries it’s popularity took off among middle class families.

During the 20th century portrait painting suffered a decline, largely due to the ease of photography as a method of capturing a likeness, but also because western society’s taste moved away from crafted goods to the mass produced. Painted portraits felt provincial, much like hand made furniture in the era of Ikea.

This trend had begun before Gutenberg and had the great benefit of progressively providing the masses with access to books, porcelain, transport, art, plastic, electronics, music, theatre and the Internet.

A combination of economic forces (mass-market, mass-distribution, mass-production) and the popularity of mega-brands squeezed artists out of the mainstream. The role of the craftsman, artisan and artist was greatly reduced and displaced by the factory worker, mechanic and miner and eventually by the programmer, management consultant and life coach.

Slowly bespoke artefacts have taken on a new meaning, a hand made chair became a sign of wealth rather than poverty. But for the mass-market, mass-production is it. Artists either make it big and became superstars or struggle to gain recognition. The traditional middle ground for the common artist has been lost.

One of the trends being enabled by the Internet is the breakdown of the economic factors that have caused this polarisation. Production, marketing, shipping and transactions are being commoditised and it is becoming viable for individuals to create and reach a market without having to pitch their ideas to companies with worldwide distribution and marketing clout.

Want to publish a book? Go to blurb.com and self publish. Want to market a line of unique lamps? Put them on etsy.com and buy some AdWords. Want to get exposure for your new single? Post a killer video on YouTube (10 million views in under a month, no major record label backing).

The flip side of this coin is that the market is seeking out unique, short run or hand-made products again. Sites like Threadless.com changed the way we look at T-shirts from being a vehicle for logos to a vehicle for creativity and self expression. The value people place on mass produced objects such as CDs is falling – but there is plenty of value seen in unique or limited release material.

My family recently commissioned a portrait from Nan Lawson. It wasn’t expensive and the whole transaction, from initial contact to feedback on a couple of iterations to the final payment, was conducted over the Internet. We love the personal nature of the portrait, the way it captures us, our tastes and the our time, but most of all I’m excited that the Internet is enabling a renaissance of commissioned creativity on this scale.

Pro Surfing Online: A Sporting Revolution

March 10th, 2010 by Philippa

Ace Buchan rips it up!

Ace Buchan rips it up!

It’s not often that surfing is seen as a sport that is at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies and events coverage. Viewers tune in seasonally to high-profile Australian sports such as NRL, Tennis and Cricket on television and are presented with a barrage of new technologies, camera angles, stats analysis and heat mapping, so it’s easy to see why many see these sports as industry leaders in their field. On the contrary however, surfing is often overlooked within this realm, often appearing on channels such as FuelTV which are less accessible to the everyday Australian viewer.

Before the emergence of online as “mainstream”, surfing fans often waited days or weeks to view images and results of recent surfing titles. Surfing, by nature, is not a spectator sport. Events are often held in remote locations,  held offshore and are notorious for sporadic consistency as the date/time of competing is determined by swell, wind, and waves. Print titles such as “Tracks” became the bible for surfing fans who read these magazines religiously for their only fix of their favourite sport.

In recent years, however, Pro Surfing and affiliated sponsors have exploited the online medium with resounding success, creating online communities with a high level of engagement, greater incentives and results for sponsors and marketers, live streaming facilities and a “surfing on demand” culture that is now accessible to a very wide audience.

By using the web to reach their fans, the ASP found that they could use smaller, more compact recording equipment for live event streaming online, that sponsors were willing to utilise their own websites to broadcast events which diversified the channels to content, and that online communities were forming globally where surfers and surfing fans finally had a medium to engage with each other on a mass scale.

With online as their primary broadcasting medium, unlike traditional sporting events coverage, opportunities were unlocked for marketers looking to tap into a previously distant audience.

Sponsors broadcasting events and results on their own websites via live streaming facilities, as recently seen in the Quiksilver Pro, were effectively creating website retention whereby viewers of the event were simultaneously exposed to their brand, their products and call to action, all without the use of expensive commercials and marketing collateral associated with traditional broadcasting. Users could easily navigate to the online shop and buy a pair of boardshorts or a surfboard while waiting for the next surfer to hit the waves, all without leaving their laptops, let alone the sponsor’s website.

The websites for these brands suddenly became useful, as users would flock back event after event to watch their favourite sports stars (and maybe purchase some surfing gear while they happened to be there). When events aren’t on, users can still pop back to the websites to see the latest stats and rankings on their favourite surfers, or blog posts from their surfers on tour. The ASP and associated sponsors suddenly made a previously inaccessible sport with limited marketing opportunities into a marketing empire by following online trends and showing innovation in terms of online branding, a hurdle that most modern sports are yet to achieve.

With the rise of social media, pro surfing has now extended to broad online communities which facilitate engagement with their fans. Facebook has been widely utilised to reach these audiences with great success, and all under the umbrella of corporate organisations. Unheard of right? While many users of facebook are reluctant to support corporations online, surfing has managed to cut through the stereotype of companies moving into the online space trying to “sell” by becoming a resource to fans of surfing and facilitating conversations between like-minded people. Following this year’s Quiksilver Pro, Quiksilver’s facebook page now has 280,000 followers and counting, not to mention a corresponding Twitter account with 10,365 followers. Brands such as Oakley have now been utilising iPhone applications to continue to tap into this emerging market. The possibilities are now endless.

While many sports are still at the forefront of traditional broadcasting, it’s interesting to analyse whether this is the best approach to “innovative” sports coverage. Looking at Pro Surfing as a case study, it’s important to see the value they have created utilising the online/mobile medium in attracting and retaining sponsorship and funding from almost nothing. Their willingness to use the web as their primary engagement point has had amazing success, and should be seen as a benchmark for sporting coverage and engagement going forward.

Beats having a rotating banner at the side of the football field, don’tcha think?

Track your brand’s online media performance for free

March 10th, 2010 by Jacko

“How is my campaign going?”

“Is my product receiving positive reviews?”

“What are my competitors doing?”

These are only three of many questions marketing and business managers seek answers to every day.

While there are a number of excellent companies that offer media tracking in Australia there is free beta service from Google called “Google Alerts” that lets you set up free online media tracking.

The Google Alerts service is an email alert system that lets you monitor keywords on the Internet. It works by monitoring media sites and emailing you a summary of when and where a keyword has appeared online.

The application of this simple powerful service is endless… especially in the business ecosystem.

To help you start monitoring keywords through Google Alerts we have written a simple 6 step walk through below.

Step 1. Open http://www.google.com/alerts/ in your favorite browser.

Step 2. Enter the search term you wish to monitor in the search terms field located in the Create a Google Alert box.

Step 3. From the Type combo box select the category you would like to monitor. The default option Comprehensive will monitor News, Blogs, Web, Video and Groups. If you wish to just target news sites select that from the drop down. We recommend selecting the Comprehensive, as this will give you the best cross section of results.

Step 4. The How Often combo box lets you select the frequency you would like to receive updates. We recommend selecting “once a day” as the as it happens option can flood your email box and the end of week can include out dated information.

Step 5. The Email length combo sets the number of records the email alert will contain. For users starting out at Gruden recommends selecting 20 records. Once you are comfortable with the system you can change to 50.

Step 6. The last step is entering the email you wish the alert sent to.

Through completing the above 6 steps you can now monitor any keyword you like for free. While this is a simple powerful system it doesn’t replace media tracking services that track demographic penetration, tv, radio etc… but compliments them by allowing you to keep your finger on the pulse each day.

Life, below 600px

February 3rd, 2010 by Mark

A nice exploration of what goes on below the fold

Life below 600px