About the visioners

"The first company I worked with professionally was a startup in the dot com boom before 2000. We had strong points- a lot of funding and a clearly defined niche. Our significant weakness was in marketing- we just didn't know it. We quoted people results in 2 months, and thought that was competitive...until a star showed up fresh out of college and obtained results in 3 weeks that we never imagined possible. The funny thing was, the star had no experience. Just honest hard work, fresh eyes, and a truly apt mind.

"I began there in sales, proved myself, and then begged to get in the development shop. Skeptically, they let me in. After some initial success, and learning how to engage clients in the development cycle from planning through follow up maintenance after a project completed, I teamed up with the "Marketing Genius" to learn everything I could. I performed the work for my clients at her recommendations and treated others' accounts with SEO to offload some of her work. I saw firsthand the relationship between strategy and execution.

Marketing in Action

"The next 20 websites I produced were dramatically different, because the intent I began with was different. I had specific reasons to select content from all the possible language a client gave me- I performed minor consulting- advisory- about what was relevant and significant to include, and what was short of being effective on the web. SEO is no longer the most important aspect of marketing today, yet sites still need to observe sound SEO practices to achieve the proper foundation. I would say that this is chiefly what is lacking in 95% of web builds today. Sites seem to be created with a price-point in mind rather than appropriate function in mind. The foundation is often focused incorrectly, and like any physical structure, the foundation is most important.

"I'm glad I spent seemingly millions of extra hours in the office. I started then- over 10 years ago- taking on what I knew was an essential element in web design and business development. Marketing is the payoff ticket to superb back end development.

Without internet marketing my skills felt narrow. Without actually getting visitors to a site, delivering content that was so painstakingly crafted, and serving up the real value a company had, what was the point of all this technology anyway?

From Programming to Multimedia

Up to that point, before the company experience, I had diverted from programming into multimedia and video; I was interested in working with server architecture and distributed systems; I even began developing my own set of AI and Behavioral Coding. Yet I extended my passion for photography- and therefore light itself- into the work I developed with a co-creator, Thomax Hicks. We did not know that we made crazy video ready for the world with the sudden explosion of computing, the chaos theory, and fractal art. Thomax was a pure artist. I was tech. By the time I arrived in Seattle in 1993, my work in California had been adopted and developed by Kaleida Labs of San Francisco (partly because Thomax took it there), and it was already standard video effect for the rave scene which was just starting to go mainstream. Several prominent Top-40 nightclubs adopted my unique video entertainment, including Bedrock (the only after-hours club in Seattle), Pier 70 (owned by former Eric Clapton producer, Scott Daggett), and the ever popular Pappagallo's on the Eastside.

"Very few people outside scientific circles understood the Chaos theory, or had heard of the mandlebröt set at the time; yet my video was a vivid tour in color and motion through Chaos, and yet it relied on a the most "Chaotic" system of all- a living system- to produce it. Nobody knew how it was created, and yet that mystery eventually dispelled and you may reference my distinct style of video programming featured behind the announcers during every minute of the MTV 2006 music awards.

Unsung Heroics

Historically, it matters most to me that in 1994, I had succeeded in placing a run of video at the Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City, Utah. Within a few months of this inclusion, the laser director absconded with my tape and was never heard from again. More than desiring scientific recognition, it was about seeing my work light up an 18-foot half-domed ceiling, because I'd never seen it produced at more than 15-feet flat. It was very satisfying.

Curiously, I noticed that Spring of 1995 was the first year that a popular Snapple replacement beverage (Fruitopia) used a kaleidoscopic video theme for their ads, and the Gap followed suit at Christmas time with their first kaleidoscopic ad. Someone caught the bug.

I am also going to mention inclusion in The Windows '95 screensaver (The Maze) featuring my very specific "brain surge" effect which is so characteristic of my work- it's hallmark. 2 Microsoft employees attended an event at Pier 70 which was closed to the public in 1993. "L.A. Style" played for 200 industry people (entertainment, tech, everything). I have to believe them when these two serious geeky types asked me (a wild looking closet-geeky type) very candidly "Hey, don't be insulted by this, but have you ever thought your stuff would make an excellent screensaver?" Apparently they did think it would make an excellent screensaver, and The Maze shipped with Windows '95 featuring a mathematical version of my exact video sequence.

Back Story

"I have personally been programming since I was 10 years of age. I am 41 years old as of 2011, so when I started there were still monochrome monitors in the Apple store. The big deal then was having Orange instead of Green- softer on the eyes. At that age my big call to action was to begin programming AI. That might be truly impressive if I were accepted into MIT at the time; instead I had a different purpose: I needed to find a way to have the computer play the part of the referee when when I wanted to role play Dungeons and Dragons. This is where laughter is most appropriate, although some of my best AI challenges and processes to overcome them were conceived in that quest.

"I tried to get a Commodore computer with a cassette tape drive to handle that situation. I began converting the tables in the back of the DMG into workable code. Then I tried programming behaviors to foil my expectations, and give it. I learned a lot about the "Basic" language programming and Assembly language. I did better at the higher level language than the "machine language".

"In that same timeframe, I had a friend who had a couple Apple IIe's at home and we'd geek out sometimes on the weekends. He was better at Assembly, at the machine language. I compared my work to the story "Adventure" games of the day. Worked for me. It was great, although I also picked up surfing the same year and you could find me skating in Venice Beach before I was a teen. I have never been someone to fit neatly into one box.

Mentoring is extremely important

If I'd had a mentor things would be very different for me. I'd have gone solid into Unix programming and Server Architecture in 1988 when I was 18. Yet if I'd have done that I doubt I'd have traveled the world, and taken up multimedia art, kept up with poetry and creative writing, and self-studied everything from Quantum Mechanics and the Chaos theory to Reiki and Tantra Yoga. Of course, some people figure I'm just a face or because I act like a spoiled artist sometimes. The point is I have always had tech sewn up, I am fluent in more client side and server side code than anyone else I know, and I successfully branched out into multimedia and digital art as well as video production.

Early Marketing Efforts

’My first business app was to organize local businesses and create a single flier featuring up to 10 companies and retail stores as a syndicate, and "cross pollinate" the stores so that each location had the entire hot sheet with their syndicated local business discounts on it.

One of the chief arguments I ran into was "but why give a discount for services that people already use?" in that local business network. I can't convince people what can take years of marketing education in an afternoon, so let the fact that it worked for everyone who tried it stand firm. It created loyalty, more return and repeat business, and people started taking fliers for friends. I did this locally for a about 45 businesses and made money while I went to college.

’I was 17 then, and the next year I had developed an idea based on XML, whereby grocery stores would begin digitally producing the coupon sheets they printed. Online distribution (my ultimate vision) was several years away at that time, but the benefit showed in inventory, tracking coupon usage, and formatting pages on the new computer terminal and software systems, sharing this with other stores, and consolidating many print pre-press jobs into regional and local administrative options. The same XML framework I contributed to then provides the basis for online coupons available from Safeway and other grocery giants today.

I have always been interested in workflow and how to maximize one's solo capability. I think this is why I attract many single producers- entrepreneurs who find it so challenging to do it all by oneself. I have done it all by myself, and I know what that's like.

Lately I have enjoyed serving larger organizations, and small networks of professionals to create maximum impact through collaborative efforts.

This is the time to Innovate

"This is supposed to be about us here at StarLogic, but you'll find that many of the ramblings we provide are all about you. We look forward to your success, and nearly every communication we conduct is aimed at your benefit. We do our best, but if the meaning isn't clear just ask 'how does that benefit me?'

If we can impress nothing else upon you, it's that right now (if not yesterday) is exactly the time to innovate. I simply don't understand why otherwise great business leaders have closed opinions about that.

Actually I do know- change is scary, and things are changing so fast with so much turbulence that I share many of the same concerns as I watch the apparent chaos in the marketplace. Yet it's much more clearly ordered when viewed through the perspective we have here. We have uncommon sense, and we use it to benefit companies all the time.

Find a strategic partner to help your business navigate the new Marketing style. This is what we're about.

Business as usual

Technology is changing the way things get done and yet there is such a thing as "business as usual".

Business is still about maintaining relationships and developing trusting partnerships. It just happens in a different way. Your Grandparents or Great-Grandparents may have told you about the shock factor of the automobile in their lifetimes. It happened gradually, but it changed lives, and not so gradually when new interstates destroyed the economy of small towns. People themselves changed because of it.

With computing and the internet, it hasn't even hit critical mass. It isn't so much the computer itself but the Internet which is responsible for the global changes in economy. The way people are using the internet is directly responsible for the changes in business environment and even the severe losses in the housing markets.

To close this point before covering more of our personal history here, your business needs to review your web sites, your infrastructure and your means of networking your resources- that means your clients and everything else. Literally 95% of sites just don't have their oars pulling in the same direction. I'll be talking to 1 in 20 businesses who are willing to let us work our magic and do what we do best. We promise it's not Voodoo, it's just that we've been doing for long enough to have it down cold."

Price for quality comparisons

"I use a lot of car analogies, and here's one more about the way a web system works. It's like a car engine, and for a car engine to produce forward motion in the vehicle, each cylinder in the engine must fire in sequence or else it just doesn't work. Your web presence works the same way.

Whether it's a 4, 6, 8 or 12 cylinder model, each of the components required to create forward motion in the business must operate together. When it comes to marketing and the web, I see a lot of single cylinder builders- and some very fine ones at that- yet few companies are stepping up to the plate to offer complete solutions and services.

This seems to be a specialty arena again- and yet the specialty model will not produce traction within the technology world unless there is someone managing and hiring resources- one who actually knows the worth of the resources.

This is where I see many businesses fail- they literally waste their budgets and throw away all the leverage they have because the system- the vision it was created with- was simply not an integrated vision.

Getting it done right the first time without getting charged showroom prices is a bargain in my book. About 30% of my work is cleanup and finishing work which sometime cuts down to the foundation of what was already built. It's far more expensive to pay for education through the school of hard knocks than it is to learn what is needed to make it work the first time, or to hire us as consultants and prescribe the project specs.

Bottom Line: We're a one-stop-shop, and we're very inexpensive for the scope we deliver.

Posting of company philosophy at Facebook

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