updates
07-02-2010 | 4:00 pm
Between a busy workload, an office move (more on that later), meetings, and so much more, it's easy to forget to just stop every once in a while to let people know what we're up to over here. And, while there's definitely been too much to put into a single update, here are just a few things we've recently done that you might not know about.
This Spring we worked with the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF) on their May Membership Drive. Using WordPress and donation tools from Democracy in Action, we designed a way for NAPAWF supporters to make donations to the organization by way of voting for creative projects submitted by each of NAPAWF's chapters. All of the projects were great, so we think it must have been pretty hard for people to choose their favorite!
When we weren't working on getting donations for people, we working on getting them jobs! With the re-launch of the League of American Orchestras' Employment Opportunities Center, job-seekers and employers in the world of orchestras and related industries now have a new and powerful way to find each other. Backed by our custom-developed, LAMP-based, application framework, the site has been helping musicians find homes in the arts.
Speaking of the arts, this past Spring we also re-designed the homepage for Brownehouse Pictures' feature-length documentary, "After the Cup: Sons of Sakhnin." This compelling film tells the story and struggles of Israeli soccer team, Bnei Sakhnin; the first team from an Arab town to win the prestigious Israeli Cup. Watch the official trailer here and look for our complete website re-design later this Summer.
Along with these projects, we've also been busy continuing to support current clients, designing and developing things yet to be unveiled, moving offices, and much more!
06-16-2010 | 2:41 pm
CO2Stats emailed us the other day letting us know that we qualified
for the "Green Certified Site" program. We thought that was pretty
cool, so we decided to put their logo at the bottom of the
Growing Green
page! If you click on their logo, you'll see a message that says:
"This site is green friendly, and declares that it has taken steps to minimize its environmental impact through increased energy efficiency, reduced waste, and/or renewable energy purchases. It encourages and aims to use best practices in supporting green technology for the betterment of the planet."
Who ever said that it's not easy being green? ;-)
04-05-2010 | 1:51 pm
We made a list of things we wanted to do as a company
to make sure that we're as green as we can be, and one of our top
priorities was to make field15 a carbon-neutral company. We talked
with several of the major carbon offset companies, and after looking
at the programs they sponsor and how they work with the offsets, we
decided to got with a company called
TerraPass.
Wondering why, out of all the ideas we came up with, being carbon neutral was at the top of the list? Well, it's actually pretty simple—every company has an impact on the environment and we wanted to minimize our impact as much as we possibly could. A company's carbon footprint is really based on all the small decisions it makes on a daily basis (what kind of office space does it have, how much shipping does it do, what kind of paper does it use, for example), and we were very happy to work with TerraPass to measure how large our impact was. And we were even happier to find out that our footprint was really very small! We would have purchased whatever offset we needed, but it turns out that all those small, everyday decisions really do make a difference.
In the end, we were able to buy carbon offsets for our office space, our servers, our commuting, and our average shipping costs for the year. And, of course, if we do travel for business, we'll be sure to add an offset for that, too.
paperless billing has arrived!
03-24-2010 | 3:14 pm
We're really excited to report that field15 has officially switched over to paperless billing for our monthly invoices! This is one of many changes aimed at reducing the amount of resources we use, and while this is just the first step on the paperless path, we're happy to be able to take it.
We eventually plan on establishing a user-based section of our website for clients to login and view their invoices, but we decided to go ahead with a simpler form of paperless billing in the meantime. The last paper bills were sent out on March 15, 2010, and starting next month, all invoices will be emailed in PDF format to our contacts.
Not only will this help us save trees (no more printing invoices, using envelopes, buying stamps), it's also going to help reduce the emissions from postal trucks and clients won't need quite as much room in their file cabinets. There's nothing better than a win-win-win situation!
we're the featured tenant this month!
03-17-2010 | 3:31 pm
As we've pointed out on our Growing Green page, our Brooklyn headquarters are in a great environmentally-friendly office community called Green Desk, and we're happy to announce that we're this month's Featured Member! Here's the write up from their newsletter:
Featured Member
We are proud to announce that our featured tenant for the month of March is Field 15, located at 68 Jay West.
"field15, located at 68 Jay St. West, has been designing websites, developing web-, desktop- and network-based applications, and providing general IT consulting services since 1998. Our clients range from individuals and small non-profit organizations to larger for-profit corporations and the federal government, and one of our favorite things about working with such a diverse group of people on a wide range of projects is our ability to expose our clients to ideas and techniques that they wouldn't normally have access to.
In addition to helping our clients meet their goals and complete their projects, we're also trying to figure out how we can become a better business ourselves. One of the ways we're doing this is through our "Growing Green" initiative. By doing things like walking and biking to work, reducing the amount of paper we use and energy we consume, and even just renting office space at Green Desk, we're trying to do everything we can to reduce our impact on the environment and local community. We're also trying to do what we can to support non-profits and causes we feel strongly about. For example, we're using the affiliate program payments we receive from DreamHost (a carbon-neutral hosting provider) to make donations to Amnesty International, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), The Nature Conservancy, The North Shore Animal League, or The World Wildlife Fund.
Since moving into Green Desk last September, we've really enjoyed getting to know many of our new neighbors and we're hoping to get to meet more. We offer a 5% discount on all of our services to other GreenDesk members, and we're always happy to have visitors stop by to chat about websites, software development, technology in general, or anything else." (field 15)
If you're not a fellow Green Desker, you might not get the discount, but we'd still be happy if you wanted to stop by!
02-24-2010 | 3:15 pm
We're always trying to think up new ways to improve our service to clients, help out around our community, and just generally be a better company. Lately, we've also been thinking about how the vendors we work with and how we interact with them says a lot about us as a company, too. With that in mind, we're very happy to tell everybody about a new donation program that we're embarking on by way of another vendor's affiliate program.
When it comes to website hosting, it's hard to beat DreamHost for affordability, service, and reliability. But, did you know that they're also carbon neutral and that they offer free hosting to non-profit, 501(c)(3) charitable organizations registered in the United States? We think all of that is pretty impressive! And, while they're not the right fit for all of our clients, we always feel 100% confident when we do recommend them to somebody.
Recently, though, we discovered that by joining DreamHost's affiliate program, we can get $97 back for every client that we sign up with them. So, we thought about all of the ways we could use these referral payments (office parties, video games, down payments on vacations in the Bahamas, etc.), and in the end, we decided that the best thing we could do is to donate the money to some of our favorite charitable organizations. So, moving forward, for every affiliate payment we receive, we'll let our client decide which one of five organizations we should donate the $97 to. The choices are: Amnesty International, The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), The Nature Conservancy, The North Shore Animal League, or The World Wildlife Fund.
Now we're all really excited about this new plan, and we're looking forward to the first time we can actually put it into practice. From where we stand, it seems like everybody wins, and we get to feel good not only about who we're working with but also how we're working with them.
02-11-2010 | 3:30 pm
Sure, we've all heard of Web 2.0 but how about Intranet 2.0?
Last week we upgraded PerLectric, Inc., to the most current version of TEAMS—our own in-house-developed MVC framework for web-based, intranet applications—and the results have been great!
With a rock-solid Perl engine and data storage by means of a PostGreSQL database (with support for other data sources ranging from MS SQL Server, to Oracle, to static XML files and more), the latest version of the TEAMS framework makes extensive use of the latest CSS standards, DHTML, and Ajax to provide PerLectric with the fastest and most stable intranet experience they've had yet. And, because the application itself helps PerLectric manage their contacts, track their bids and estimates, keep fire and electrical permits, licenses, and inspections up-to-date, track inventories, and report on crucial business intelligence, we know our framework's getting a great workout!
So what does Intranet 2.0 really mean? To us, it means building out a local application that helps our clients make the most of web-based technologies using open standards that they can either grow with or easily interchange in the future; it means moving off of legacy systems that are either too slow to meet modern demands or too tied to a single computer to be of use in a group setting; it means designing an application that lets our clients reduce resource consumption and wastes (of materials, time, and money) while meeting their goals faster than they ever have.
field15 launches redesigned site
02-01-2010 | 7:46 PM EST
field15 launched a new website today for one of our most difficult clients yet...ourselves. Our site has a brand new look, and it's fully updated with our most recent work, our current skills, and a new company-wide focus. We've been creating websites and developing web-based applications since 1998, and although that makes us old-timers in this field, we haven't lost the excitement of creating a new site, a new piece of software, or a new logo.
One of the biggest changes you might notice to the site is the growing green button in the footer of each page. The company founders have been interested in lessening their impact on the environment and increasing their impact on the communities around them for years, and the company is now in a position to help do something about those ideas. If you're interested in what we're planning, you should check out our Growing Green page. We're also going to start a company blog to highlight any progress or problems we run into, all while trying to help other small companies wade through both the green and not-so-green options out there. We'll definitely let you know when that goes live, so stay tuned!
Along with our green initiative, we've also started a social networking initiative. We've been using these for personal reasons for a long time, but we decided that a great way to keep our clients up-to-date would be start using them for the company, too. You can see the different logos in the footer, but in case you want to check them out from here, we now have RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, and last.fm.
And finally, we wanted to let you know about some other additions that you'll see in the next few months. One of the biggest areas to come will be a new password-protected client-only section of the site. Once this is in place, all of our clients (current and future) will be able to log in to their account to see invoices, downloads, updates, project notes, etc. It will be a very useful tool for users, and we're looking forward to offering it to you.
That rounds out the big changes happening here at field15. Take a look around, and we'd love to hear what you think—thanks for the support!
field15 is a carbon–balanced company | contact us · careers · privacy policy · copyright 2012, field15 inc.