Happy Halloween from the Schipulites!

Happy Halloween!

We love Halloween at Schipul! Here are some photos of our team today! Did your office dress up today? Post in the comments and show us your pics!

Schipulites in Costume!

Put up y’er dukes!

The Schipulite Cats!

Zombified Schipulites

Every year we put our photography skills (and costume closet) to the test and take zombie photos. This year’s photos turned out particularly spooky:

Check out all of the  Schipul Zombie photos on our Facebook page!

Rock on, Zombie Schipulites!    

 

 

 

Want more spooky from the Schipulites?

Check out our Friday the 13th superstitions video!

Schipulite Superstitions for Friday the 13th! from Schipul – The Web Marketing Co. on Vimeo.

Have a fun and safe Halloween!

Friday Fun! Get to Know Steve the Bear

Meet Steve – Schipul’s Resident Polar Bear

If you’ve perused the Schipul staff page, you may have noticed some nonhuman Schipulites in the mix. One of those such team members is Steve the Polar Bear.

Get to Know Steve!

Schipul’s unofficial mascot is the Polar Bear. And when former Operations Manager April Kyle (now April Nassi!)  was looking for a visual reminder to set on someone’s desk when it is their turn to take kitchen duty – she followed suit and purchased a stuffed polar bear and named him Steve.

He has been a part of the Schipul tribe ever since.

Steve’s Many Outfits

In true Schipul fashion, we want to make sure Steve is taken care of in his time here with us. It is my duty (and privilege) to keep up with Steve & maintain his growing wardrobe, which over the years has grown to include outfits for summer, Christmas, business meetings, and of course Halloween.

Steve’s Wardrobe!
Steve Ready for a Round of Golf
Geek Chic Steve

Steve’s Newest Outfit

Steve’s newest outfit is a special one. Schipul is about to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary as a company! And what is more fitting for a fifteenth birthday than a  quinceanera? Appropriately, Steve’s latest frock is a mariachi outfit complete with sombrero and maraca!

 

Read more about Steve (and all of the Schipulites!) at Schipul.com/people!!

Special Delivery! A Corpse Flower for our Friends at CultureMap

I had the privilege this morning of dropping off a real live baby Corpse Flower to our friends at CultureMap as a congrats for their hilarious @CorpzFlowrLois Twitter account (which generated considerable buzz for the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Corpse Flower Lois last month).

Raising a Corpse Flower is not an easy job – according to the HMNS blog, Corpse Flowers only bloom once they are 7 years old. Luckily, our fledgling came with instructions such as temperature, amount of sunlight, etc.

Congrats to the new proud parents!

More Corpse Flower delivery photos on Facebook

What is that?

Special Delivery!

Baby corpse flower, enjoying her new home.

Steven Thomson, Lois’s personal ghost writer with the new addition

PS – I’m adding Corpse Flower delivery to my resume under “special skills.”

Check out the delivery of the corpse flower!

End of an era for a Schipulite!

So today is my last day at Schipul. After almost 6 years, leaving is NOT easy. Some of you will be asking why? I don’t have a good answer but mostly to have a little time with my baby girl and to see what’s next. I am not on a quest to find happiness. Happiness is having a my health, being married to a rock solid MAN, seeing a smile on my girl’s face, and spending the last 69 months of my life with a group of amazing people that have lifted me through a few dark times and escalated the happiest times.

Dear Schipulites’ I am so grateful for all the knowledge you talented, moving people have sent my way. You had made my 20’s unforgettable.  For so long, this has been my safe haven where I was not afraid to leap because I know you always had my back.  I have worked some of the best clients any company could ever have. Each and every person has touched my life in unimaginable ways.

I will never forget many deep conversations with @longstation, sharing an office with @deneyterrio (WOW, lol), and my Friday afternoon heart to heart chats with a STRONG and FEARLESS CEO.  Ed’ your efforts are amazing and I am honored to call Schipul my second family.

Enough already! You all know how amazing Schipulites are. I am excited about the future for you guys! I won’t be far.

Thank you 157,456,000 times for everything you have taught me.

Much love!

@inkoluv

These have been the best days!


Thirty Days of Thanks – LOL Cats

thanksgiving hands lolcatIn this month of thanks, I want to shout from the rooftop that I am thankful for LOL cats.

As a self proclaimed crazy cat lady, this subject is near and dear to my heart. I grew up with felines in my house, and I’ve been a proud cat owner myself since last year, when I adopted my cat Victoria Beckham from the Dallas cat rescue group Feral Friends (catch them tweeting as @feralfriends). This year, we doubled our cat residency and adopted a kitten we named Aeris (if you’re super geeky, you might understand the video game reference in her name).

If I could, I would attempt to save all of them. Believe me. But my apartment just isn’t big enough.

Cats are both hilarious and quirky, and somehow have captured the hearts of internet nerds everywhere with the advent of the site icanhascheezburger.com. If you’re unfamiliar with how it works, here is the basic process:

  1. Start with a ridiculously cute picture of a cat or similarly adorable animal
  2. Add a funny caption (in large obnoxious Impact font, using “LOLspeak” – incorporating obnoxious internet abbreviations)
  3. Still confused? See example above

ICHC gets over 2,000 submissions per day from members using the LOL Builder – and features the best of the best on their homepage… all of which are hilarious.

There are lots of kitty content creators out there – and many of them are very tech savvy, like programmer Kimberly Nixon and her tweeting RFID cat door. I myself ghostwrite on Twitter for my cat (@kittentweet), who embarrassingly enough had way more followers than me until recently. Talk about niche communities online – the tweeting cats community is a tight one who loves to promote each other and share advice on pet care.

advice
Here at Schipul, LOLcats are staples in office emails, they are seen printed out on people’s desks for inspiration, make appearances in contests on the Schipul blog…   I even dressed as one for Halloween.

qcait and the cats

Sure, Ed may say that we are officially a “dog company” (whatever that means), but there are many of us who simply get a kick out of an adorable feline. What about you? Whose side are you on?

Love LOLcats? Spread the love with local Houston animal friends –

Trend Tuesday: Still Waiting til the Last Minute?

(I realize this was published later than normal.   It is part of the story.   Welcome again to another crazy JMO post.)

In the blogging world, many people teach that having posts on a regular schedule is the way to create a readership.   But this is only half of the message.   It leaves out the ‘quality’ part.   To have a successful blog, there should be a regular stream of quality posts to feed a readership.   Here is a quick list on how to have a great blog.

  1. Make a blog. (wordpress is good)
  2. Set a regular schedule you can maintain.
  3. Write a QUALITY Post.
  4. Click Publish.
  5. Repeat 3 and 4 based on 2.

Ok, so that probably isn’t the Top 5 list you were hoping to see.   Too bad, because that’s really all there is to it.

In writing this post I was almost guilty of overlooking Step 3.   When you title your blog post Trend Tuesday, you are setting yourself up for a pretty hard deadline.   And Tuesday is almost gone.   Should I just hit Publish now?   Probably not, as I haven’t finished my story yet.   So, why am I not done yet?   I’ve got some great excuses.

  1. I haven’t reached the deadline yet
  2. I work better at the last minute
  3. It wasn’t a high priority

I haven’t hit the deadline.   For this excuse, I am really blaming the deadline.   Unfortunately, deadlines have a tendency to backfire.   A week ago we set a deadline to have a new Trend Tuesday blog post done by Tuesday.   I had a whole week to get it done.   But really, by giving myself a deadline of Tuesday, I committed to doing it on Tuesday.   Because this is due in a week, it ranks behind other tasks, until Tuesday that is.   Now it is on top of the heap, but it is almost too late.   Way to avoid this: set earlier deadlines, or, if you can, do things immediately. Think of the deadline as less of a due date and more of a time to actually do it.

And anyways, I work better at the last minute.   Because at the last minute, there is added stress and pressure.   And I work great under pressure.   NOT.   At the last minute, I am forced to get things done.   Not to make them right, or even above average. And certainly not to make them spectacular.   But they do get done.   Had I made my deadline, you would have stopped reading after the Top 4 list.   That is what is produced by someone who works better at the last minute.   Way to avoid this: set standards for quality. For this post, it could be the words, time spent on it, or links.   Or it could be that I got 5 other people excited after they read it.

But the real reason I didn’t finish on time is that this wasn’t a high priority.   Unfortunately, task managers and to-do lists have this annoying priority system built in with 1-5’s and stars and red flags, etc.   I think priority is really a boolean, or an on/off switch.   Something is a priority, or it isn’t. Merlin Mann agrees, or really, I agree with him.   But when I first learned of this task, I said this wasn’t a high priority. But if this isn’t a high priority, then why am I not done yet?   It is superseded by a real priority.

The real priority is that when I publish something with my name on it, it has to be my best effort. This is the priority.   This is Step 3 above.   And this is what makes great bloggers, writers, designers, and all creators.   When I first started this, under the deadline, rushing it out, it was about 200 words of garbage.   I’ve since deleted all of that, and written all of this.   While some may argue that I was just lazy and procrastinated and that’s why this wasn’t finished, I’d have to disagree.   I set myself up for failure when I did the following:

  1. I   made a deadline that was the absolute last minute I needed to finish.
  2. I did not make this a priority.
  3. I did not start until close the deadline because this wasn’t a priority.
  4. I lied to myself about my abilities to do quality work quickly.

All of these things caused me to miss the all important Step 3.   Fortunately, the place I work is smart enough to recognize that a quality post that is late is much better than a weak post on time.   Hopefully the readers if this blog and yours are also flexible.

Recap:

  1. Set deadlines before things are really due, or just do them immediately.
  2. Don’t wait til the last minute.   Your work is not better when you do.
  3. Make quality stuff (which should be on time if you follow the first two).

Hopefully the trend of waiting til the last minute will fade like Will Smith’s hair on Fresh Prince.

Welcome to our Blog and the Schipul Arts Page!

The Schipul office is pretty diverse, but one thing we have in common is our love for the Arts, especially the homegrown stuff.   So we thought, what better way to celebrate the inaugural Schipul blog post than with a celebration of the Arts Community in Houston.

Oftentimes, Artists just don’t get the recognition they deserve, so we wanted to create a Schipul page just for them!   We try to hit up as many of the events hosted by the artists on this list as possible (from shows by our fav graffiti beat boys to events hosted by a Houston staple, the Orange Show) but it is easy to lose track of what’s going on in such a busy city.

To cut down our frantic end of day gtalk messaging and Twitter DM’s searching for something cool to do, we created this page and wanted to make it public to you. what is wrong?

Check out the Schipul Page for a comprehensive list of who’s hot in Houston Arts… and PLEASE if we left anyone out, tell us about them in the comments section!!!   We know there is a ton more aweseome artists our there and we would love to hear about them.