During our trip to the Big Apple, we met B-Reel, a design studio in downtown SOHO. Over the last year, they launched several amazing online projects and entered FWA’s Hall of Fame.

Alaa Mendili (Flash Developer), Seth Weisfeld (Creative Director), Niklas Lindström (Executive Producer) [as seen on the picture above] accepted to share their experience at B-Reel and their best practices. Here are a few reasons behind their success: creativity, hard work, a good cultural mix and a great team. We were aware of their great talent but were very impressed by their simplicity, their open-minded attitude and by how down to earth they were. Let me tell you: this is the kind of company you wish to work for! If only they had an office in Montreal…

Here are some of their projects:

This is a studio to watch very closely, they are the artists who bring emotions to technology. You can follow then on Twitter or visit and enjoy: http://www.b-reel.com/

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Jerry Knight is one of the three associates at 80/20, a studio based in San Francisco and New York: they are specialized in user experience. They worked with clients such as Apple (Aperture interface, Mobile Me), Adobe (CS4), as well as Verizon, Vodafone, Sony Ericsson and others.

The challenge in their work is to always make the interactive experience as simple as possible for the user (who doesn’t have a master degree in usability). Their design often goes unnoticed since it’s not advertising or branding: they really focus on the user experience. While some companies tend to forget that when they design, the user experience is the core of the 80/20’s business.

80/20 have developed a new cell phone operating system named Sonar; it helps customizing and managing the cell phone’s interface. Most of the cell phone market is still about “non-smart” phones and their interface is not user-friendly at all. 80/20 hence decided to develop a usable demo for “non-smart” phones to sell to major mobile companies. They took the risk of launching this demo because they truly believed the market was unexploited: they saw a good business opportunity. They signed a agreement with one of the major mobile company in United States; no need to say it paid off!

It was really interesting to meet with him and to get a different perspective on design. We are looking forward to see more work from their studio.

Jerry’s best places in New York:
- Allen and Delancey
- Club Cielo on Thursday night
- Momofuko (Ko) (it took him a couple of months to get a reservation so if you plan a trip soon start the process - they only take online reservations)

Visit 80/20 Studio’s Website

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Brooklyn Label is a modern american bistro located in Brooklyn that brings together everything Brooklyn stands for: diversity, art, culture and community. It serves very good food at a very reasonable price and on top of that it’s a bring your own wine! To give you an idea : we where seven people, and the check only came to 125$ with tips.

Brooklyn Label
180 Franklin St.
Brooklyn, NY 11222
www.brooklynlabel.com

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There is many coffee shops in Manhattan, but I really fell in love with the Cake Shop. It’s a Coffee & Bar shop with drinks, coffee, cupcakes, Wi-FI and a really nice indie decor. Can I really ask for more?

The cupcakes are awesome, the WC look awesome, the music is great (we heard some Black Mountain while we where there) and the place is also a venue for indie rock shows. During the day, you see mostly locals working with their laptop enjoying the good music and ambiance. I really wish we had a place like that in Montréal!

Cake Shop
Cafe hours: 9am-2am
Bar hours: 5pm-2am
(open til 4am Fri & Sat)
152 Ludlow St, NYC
btwn. Stanton & Rivington
www.cake-shop.com

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Island Burgers and Shakes is really THE place to eat burgers in Manhattan (in Hell’s Kitchen). The menu includes over 60 types of burgers and churascos (chicken sandwich). Make sure you get there with an empty stomach before you attack these huge and delicious burgers:

Island Burger
766 9th Ave
New York, NY 10019

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Jason Randal has accomplish a lot in his carreer. We have trouble keeping track with his resume: author, actor, songwriter, magician, musician, singer, stunt man, stunt coordinator for tv and movies, sixth degree black belt in Karate, certified hypnotist, special effects pyrotechnic operator, scuba dive instructor, single and multi-engine flight instructor, and a Ph.D. in social psychology. He trained Chuck Norris, played in Pretty Woman and was also a stunt coordinator on An Officer and a Gentleman.

How did he do it? By overlapping schema and time. Therefore, learning about something might just help you learning something else afterwards. And by learning several things at the same, you fell like you live on a fast track trampoline.

He explained that in the end, it’s how often you do it that counts. The more you do something, the more you are able to learn it. And if you learn something and you don’t use it, you will forget about it. It’s all about repetition and efficiency.

There are three critical criteria in order to be able to learn something:

• -Emotion practice
• -Power of intent
• -Use of motivation
• -Play and experiment by making it a game

• -Stretching
• -Toggling
• -Mnemonic
• -Overlapping

• -Get a coach
• -Peer Power (You are who you hang out with)

In the end, he explained that you are who you hang out with, and that’s what really matters. If you get around passionate people it will rub off on you. He also said that you have to reduce everything to what you can do right now. That way, you won’t be overwhelmed by the whole thing. Instead of thinking about how to do it from A to Z you’ll figure out how to make it from point A to point B, and then from B to C…

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Cheryl is a social entrepreneur and the President of Echoing. This global nonprofit company has awarded more than $27 million in start-up capital to over 450 social entrepreneurs worldwide since 1987.

While interviewing and selecting entrepreneurs she applies the pressure test:
-Passion threshold
-Show us your battle plan
-Idealogy vs pragmatism

She also shared a few skills to develop in order to be a good social agent:
- Core identity formation and aligment: mean it
- Focus and ability to execute with alacrity: going to execute and build on your own business mission
- Solution oriented: solving problems vs idea generation
- Ressource magnet: human capital is key
- Deep foundation of believing

Visit Echoing Green to learn more about their social work: www.echoinggreen.org

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Céline is a refreshing French graphic designer who lives in Park Slope (Brooklyn). We met her at the Loki Lounge on 5^th Avenue in Brooklyn.

She decided to leave Paris, where she worked on projects such as www.elle.fr and www.people.fr, to explore New York with her boyfriend. She now works at the only graphic designer for Original Signal Recordings, a music label located in Tribeca district in New York. She creates all the graphic designs: cd sleeves, websites, myspace pages, ads, posters, etc. Have a look at her portfolio at portfolio.celineoberle.com

She also writes a really interesting blog about Brooklyn:
www.thefrenchbrooklynite.com

Streets to discover in her neighborhood:
- 5th avenue (Brooklyn)
- Cobble Hill
- Court Street
- Smith Street

We would like to thank her for sharing her passion about Brooklyn!

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You should listen to The Sounds or Ingrid Michaelson or the other bands who are on the Original Signal Recordings label. Founded by young entrepreneurs that shared love of music, this label is located in New York.

Original Signal Recordings
145 Hudson St, Suite 5B
New York
www.originalsignalrecordings.com

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Seth Godin, CEO of Squidoo and bestselling author & blogger spoke the 99 Percent conference. He started the conference dressed like a priest saying: “You don’t need to be more creative, all of you are too creative”. Then he started explaining that you should always be in a shipping mode in a project. If you are proud of what you deliver and you follow the schedule, you will succeed and you will enjoy doing it. You simply need to ship and not being creative. It’s all about finishing and not starting.

He also presented his concept of the Lizard brain, that little voice that talks to you all the time (the left brain).The Lizard is always in a surviving mode, The Lizard’s brain is afraid, and wants to sabotage projects for self-preservation. “Don’t get more creative… Make your Lizard brain more quiet!” said Seth Godin. He also explained that the futher you get to the end of a project, the worse gets the resistence. In order to be efficient in a project, we really need to think, plan and discuss the most at the beginning, and hence reduce the pressure and resistence.

His presentation was very interesting but very short. Read this blog to know more about Seth Godin.

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