While I didn’t know you from birth, you came into my life when you were a couple of years old – just before your new family at Adobe adopted you.

Not unlike a toddler in their terrible two’s my first experience with you was a bit overwhelming. Let me explain. My background was graphic design. You were my first move into the world of motion graphics. And for that, I am forever grateful. But I must admit, it took a bit of time for me to get to know you. 

Sure. Many of my colleagues said, ‘don’t worry! The kiddo is just like Photoshop’. And that was partially true. I loved that fact that you had many tools that I was familiar with from the graphic design realm…but you had so much more. And that frightened me.

I gave you time. And conversely, you were patient with me. Now look at you! Over the years, you have grown and changed so much! You have so much to offer. If I were one of the ’3 Dave’s'…I would be one proud daddy!

But for me, you played a different role in my life. You shaped and molded my career in motion graphics. Over the years, you and I became best friends. You helped bring so much more to my client projects. Things that would wow them. Things that would make them say, ‘how did you do that?!’. Things that made me shine. And there you stood silently, looking at me like a proud parent saying, ‘look at how much you have grown!’. 

And then, seven years ago, you took me in a whole different direction. One that I would have never foreseen. My passion for the creative work that was being done in motion graphics, animation, and vfx – much of which you were behind – inspired me to give birth to motion an annual event that celebrates creatives and creativity in the motion picture and broadcast industries.

Your role changed. Sure – you and I still get to create some amazing motion graphics – and I love that. But what you did next, was something priceless. You brought people into my life. Amazingly talented creatives and artists using After Effects. In 2007, you introduced me to Chris and Trish Meyer, who spoke at our very first motion conference. The loved ABQ so much they decided to move here – and since, we have become good friends. For that, I am ever grateful to you After Effects.

And that was just the start. Each year, because of you I’ve been able to meet some of the most talented – and humble – creatives in the industry including Mark Coleran, Brian Bowman from NiceShoes, Karin Fong at Imaginary Forces, Michael Waldron at TV Land, Andrew Orloff at Zoic Studios, Angie Taylor, William Lebeda at Picture Mill, Lauren Indovina at psyop, Patrick Hanenberger at Dreamworks Animation…and so many more. Not to mention hundreds and hundreds of people who’ve come to motion over the years and have become your extended family.

To thank you for all you’ve done, in 2010 I came up with the annual Made with After Effects Awards. For the past three years, creatives from around the globe come together to say, ‘look at what I’ve made with After Effects!’ Next week, we’re throwing a Birthday bash just for you! You’ll share center stage with Chris and Trish Meyer, Dave Simons and Steve Forde from Adobe – and the top-10 finalists in our live streamed show. We will be celebrating your 20th Birthday and the fantastic work you’ve inspired artists to create!

Happy Birthday After Effects! I’m looking forward to the next 20 years!

“WHY do you do what you do?”

Creatives are a unique breed. Michael Waldron, Creative Director at TV Land in New York City asks, “Why do we as designers keep opening ourselves up to failure time after time?”

And as Derek Walker from brown and browner notes, “We are creatives. We’re free thinkers. But time and time again when push comes to shove, fear takes over and we fall lockstep in line with one another”.

So what do we do? We come prepared. We learn techniques to cope – or as Alexandre Bartholo from WeDoVideo in Tokyo states, “we’ve developed a set of survival tips passed on from creative to creative”.

If you have even paused a moment to think about any of this…consider yourself one of the brightest and most creative minds in the industry. Good news… motion 2012 is designed specifically for you.

All of the questions posed, are part of our Saturday, October 13 segment at motion called, ‘The Lost Art of…‘. Join us as a member of the live studio audience. Take an active role in the open discussion. Engage.

It’s time to // feed your brain //

register now »

motion was designed for you.

Until next time…

Outgrown your current volume size on your Amazon Web Service EC2 instance? Here’s the recipe to get the volume size you need:

▪ login to your AWS console
▪ navigate to Instances > Instances
▪ select your EC2 instance
▪ in the Description area, click on the SDA1 link
▪ make note of the volume number
▪ navigate to Elastic Block Store > Volumes
▪ right click on the volume with the Volume ID that matches your instance
▪ select Create Snapshot
▪ it may take some time to create the snapshot…be patient 
▪ navigate to Instances > Instances
▪ select your instance and right click on it and select Stop
▪ when both the instance is shut down, and the snapshot is complete, go on to the next step
▪ navigate to Elastic Block Store > Snapshots
▪ select the Snapshot you just created
▪ right click on the Snapshot and select Create Volume from Snapshot
▪ in the pop-up window, select the size for your new volume in GB or TB
▪ select the SAME availability zone as your Instance (ie us-east-1a)
▪ select the Snapshot you just created (most likely is already selected)
▪ click Yes, Create
▪ navigate to Elastic Block Store > Volumes
▪ right click on the current volume your instance is attached to and select Detach
▪ when the new Volume Creation is complete, right click on the new Volume and select Attach Volume
▪ select the Instance you are attaching it to (should be shut down)
▪ change the value in Device from whatever it currently is to /dev/sda1
▪ click, Yes, Attach
▪ navigate to Instances > Instances
▪ right click on your instance and select Start
▪ navigate to Network & Security > Elastic IPs
▪ select the IP that was previously attached to this instance
▪ right click and select Associate
▪ select your instance
▪ now, login to your instance via SSH
▪ from the command line, enter df -h
▪ note, your disk space will be the SAME as it was before. It needs to be expanded.
▪ from the command line, enter sudo resize2fs /dev/sda1
▪ this process may take a bit of time. once again, be patient…
▪ when it’s complete, enter df -h again. It will now be the expanded volume size.
▪ when you are satisfied that the new volume and instance work correctly:
   ▪ you can delete the previous volume:
      ⁃ navigate to Elastic Block Store > Volumes
      ⁃ right click on your previous volume and select Delete Volume
   ▪ and you can delete the Snapshot you created
      ⁃ navigate to Elastic Block Store > Snapshots
      ⁃ right click on the Snapshot and select Delete Snapshot

For the next course…Plesk

If you are using the Plesk control panel on your instance, you will need to update your internal IP

▪ login to Plesk
▪ navigate to Server Management > Tools & Settings
▪ under Tools and Resources, select IP Addresses
▪ click the Reread IP button and your new AWS internal IP will be displayed
▪ (your public IP should already be there from before)
▪ navigate to Hosting Services > Subscriptions
▪ for each Subscription
   - click the link ⁃ select Change Hosting Settings
   ⁃ select the new Internal IP from the drop-down menu
   ⁃ click OK
▪ navigate to Server Management > Tools & Settings
▪ under Tools and Resources, select IP Addresses
▪ delete the previous internal IP that you will no longer be using
• select the new internal IP address and choose the default domain for the IP  
• navigate to Server Management > Tools & Settings
• under Server Management, select Restart Server

After the server restarts, the process should be complete!

Dessert

• go enjoy a nice cup of coffee, or go for a short walk – or better yet, a bike ride! you deserve it!

First, let’s take a look at the piece we will be creating:

AE CS6 convert to shape layers

Now, follow along with this tutorial and learn how easy it is to combine After Effects with Adobe illustrator to make creativity happen!

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a trend where Adobe is introducing more and more applications – each meeting specific needs of a narrow target market. More often than not, these ‘new’ applications ultimately have features that already exist in established Adobe products. Adobe is becoming a company with numerous ‘fragmented’ products.

Adobe, I’d like to make a suggestion. Consider implementing a ‘minimalist’ approach. Build on core applications. Create add-ons.

Adobe has a handful of – what I consider – ‘core‘ applications:

After Effects
Audition
ColdFusion
Illustrator
InDesign
Photoshop
Premiere

Flash used to be in this category, but over the past 5 years or so, it’s developed an identity crisis. Is it a tool for animation? Web development?Rich internet applications? Mobile apps?

How minimalism work

Using the job title Designer, let’s take a look at a real-world example of how this would work.

InDesign is what I consider a ‘core’ application. It is a powerful application created specifically for professional graphic designers. Using the motion picture analogy, InDesign would be the lead actor.

Graphic designers commonly use photography and illustration in their work. If you need to customize a photo, you use Photoshop – another ‘core’ application. You can also use Photoshop to create raster based illustrations. If you want to include vector illustration or graphics, you reach for Illustrator – another ‘core’ application. As in motion pictures, these applications take the role of supporting actors.

But everything that designers create, are ultimately for a specific medium: print, web, digital publication, etc. This is where the concept of output modules come into play.

The concept is simple:
Design using the top design tool in the industry – InDesign. Select the Adobe output module for your specific needs.

Need to output for digital publication? Design in InDesign, and purchase the Adobe Digital Publication output module.

Designing for web? Design in InDesign, and purchase the Adobe Web output model.

Some features of Acrobat would be incorporated into InDesign, and the remaining would become an output model. The same would be true for Dreamweaver and Fireworks. Muse would be dropped and instead, a web based, fully-functional InDesign would take it’s place.

Perhaps in the future, all core-applications and output modules would become cloud based for ease of updates.

For Developers…

ColdFusion is a core application. But the coding tools for ColdFusion could be the same tools that are used for Flex – both based on Eclipse. Not a separate Flash Builder and ColdFusion Builder. In fact, many of the features of Dreamweaver that are specifically for coders could use this same tool. You’d purchase the core developer tool, and purchase the ColdFusion, Flash Builder, web output modules to meet your specific needs.

Upcoming applications…

Even the new Adobe Edge, currently in beta, could be eliminated. As much as I like this new application, it’s core concept is very similar to After Effects (but actually has a nicer interface since it is a newer app). After Effects uses a similar timeline and can create similar – as well as much more sophisticated – animations and motion graphics. The output module (Edge) would convert it to HTML5, CSS, and jQuery, for use on the web.

Adobe Dynamic Link: The Driving Force

The concept behind Adobe Dynamic Link would drive all of these tools. Each application would have the ability to output XML instructions that would be interpreted by the output module. The Adobe Dynamic Link server becomes the ‘behind-the-scenes’ translator between core-applications and output modules.

The Adobe Analogy

In New Mexico it’s common to see rambling hundred year old adobe homes or buildings. What started out as a small, efficient structure, gets added onto every couple of decades as current needs dictate. Ultimately, these structures wind up being a maze of multiple rooms, that each may serve a specific need – but ultimately aren’t efficient, or a good use of space. They may have character. They may be charming. But they are not efficient. Sometimes it’s better to raze the structure, and start new construction that ensures the structure is efficient and meets code.

Perhaps it’s not coincidental that Adobe – the company with the same name – tends to follow this same practice with their software. After Effects, for example, has been updated many times over it’s life span – but to my knowledge has never been completely rewritten. Ultimately, it’s not as efficient as it could be and is due for a major overhaul.

Would end-users be better served if software had cycles of being ‘razed’ and be completely rebuilt using modern day technology and innovative and efficient interfaces?

A win-win for all

End-users only need to learn a handful of core applications. They rely on output modules to handle the ‘grunt’ work. This translates to a happier, less stressed – more satisfied, loyal customer base.

Adobe would still generate the same revenue based on output modules, updates to both core applications and output modules, as well as cloud-based services – not to mention costs saved internally based on a streamlined product line. Adobe programmers would not be spread thin. Instead of allocating programers to yet more and more applications, teams could focus on a handful of core applications and variations of output modules that can more readily change alongside our rapidly advancing world of technology.

Sometimes less is more. My two cents worth…

What are your thoughts?

motion is a mind-bending two day ride – what we refer to as the “TED talks” of our industry. motion speakers are the top creative thinkers and innovators in motion graphics, animation, and vfx. A concept borrowed from TED, each speaker is on stage for 20 minutes giving the talk of their life on subjects they’re passionate about. Talks that revolutionize the industry. Talks that revitalize the creative muse.

I’ll be presenting When Time is of the Essence – join me in ABQ next month!

When Time is of The Essence

We’ve all been in this situation. The client wants a compelling motion graphic or vfx piece. The initial meeting was a great success. They have the budget. All the stars are aligning…and it looks like it’s going to be an exciting project! The only problem? They need it in half the time that’s humanly possible to create it.

What’s the key to ‘on-demand’ brainstorming and creative thinking? How do you generate multiple ideas without losing steam? What are some organizational techniques that will improve your workflow. How do you deal…when time is of the essence.

Join motion producer Elaine Montoya, in the second of our motion 2011 interactive sessions, designed specifically for motion designers and creatives faced with short deadlines. If this isn’t you…I want your job.

…the rest of the sessions

check it out:

Q. Why should I be at motion?

// THE RIGHT BRAIN //
A 3-minute Short…Everyday
Elastic Spaces
Exploring the Intersection of Advertainment and Storyselling
Failure is Not an Option
Fresh Out of the Starting Gate
Change with a Changing Industry
Getting There: Real Life RPG
HAX Double Vision
If These Walls Could Talk
Industry Timeline: Return of the Swiss Army Knife
Kinda Makes You Think…
Look From a New Angle, Change What You See
Mashup: Transforming Movie Scores
Now THAT’s Creative!
Removing My Cat’s Dingleberry: Notable Achievements
Standing Out from the Crowd
Taking Care of Business. And You.
The Lost Art of Original Music in Advertising
Walking Through Walls
When Time is of the Essence
Verses: Found

THE LEFT BRAIN
100m2 in the Palm of Your Hand
3D Broadcast Graphics: After Effects + Cinema 4D
3D Broadcast Graphics: From Sketch to Screen with Cinema 4D
Audio Post-Production Basics for Video Professionals
Beyond Keyframes: // LAB
Creating 3D Titles – Yesterday
Creating Custom Looks…in 20 Minutes!
Creating the TRON Legacy Title Animation Effect
Destruction City Trailer: Adding Effects that Sizzle
Forward into the Past: History in Motion
FOX’s Fringe: 3D Text Effect
HDSLR Editing with Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
Lean, Mean, After Effects Machine
Lean, Mean, Premiere Machine
Learning C4D: Creative Camera Movement // LAB
Open Workflows with Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
Planar Tracking for Graphics & Effects
Professional Video: The Adobe Roadmap
Putting it all Together: My Strong Suite
Roto Brush and Warp Stabilizer: Shortcuts to Higher Production Values
Stereo Conversion for Film & Broadcast
Sweetening Your Audio with Adobe Audition
The Edge
The Graphics Factory
The RED Workflow Acceleration Secret: Now You Know
The Reel World: Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro // LAB
Title Design from Concept to Screen: On Little or No Budget!
Track the Impossible: Using mocha and CameraTracker in After Effects
Upending Identity Crisis
Using Effects in Final Cut Pro X
Using Motion to Create Effects for Final Cut Pro X
Who’d a Thunk It!?!
Vector Art is your BFF: Illustrator and After Effects
What’s new in Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
You’ve got Flash in my After Effects // LAB

ANSWER: To feed my brain

Putting it all Together: My Strong Suite

Throughout The Adobe Post Show you’ve had the opportunity to explore the majority of the Production Premium CS5.5 applications. Now, let’s put it all together and see how well they play with one another.

In this session, using Premiere Pro as our base application, you learn how to work smarter and faster when working with After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash – and Adobe’s latest addition to the power suite: Adobe Audition. It’s a complete, roundtrip professional editing package. Make it your ‘strong suite’!

You’ve Got Flash in My After Effects // MiniLAB

In the broadcast and motion picture industries, Flash is known as a character animation tool that is being used more commonly for full length animated features. But there’s another side of Flash that will enhance the motion graphics designer’s toolkit as well – integrating Flash and After Effects.

In this 75-minute hands-on BYOL* MiniLAB, we’ll explore how these two powerhouse tools play well with one another. After a brief exploration of the similarities and differences between After Effects and Flash, and the scripting languages provided by each application, we’ll create a couple of projects that will explore transparent video, taking advantage of Expressions, and working with 3D cameras and lights. With each project, we’ll learn how to go from After Effects to Flash, and more importantly – the reasons you may want to do so.

You’re sure to pick up tips and tricks for your next creative project, as well as a whole new skill set you can offer your clients. Cha-ching!

*Bring Your Own Laptop. Bring your own laptop with the required software pre-loaded. You will have an opportunity to download the lab project files, prior to the session

…the rest of the sessions

check it out:

100m2 in the Palm of Your Hand
3D Broadcast Graphics: After Effects + Cinema 4D
3D Broadcast Graphics: From Sketch to Screen with Cinema 4D
Audio Post-Production Basics for Video Professionals
After Effects Beyond Keyframes: // LAB
Creating 3D Titles – Yesterday
Creating Custom Looks…in 20 Minutes!
Creating the TRON Legacy Title Animation Effect
Destruction City Trailer: Adding Effects that Sizzle
Forward into the Past: History in Motion
FOX’s Fringe: 3D Text Effect
HDSLR Editing with Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
Lean, Mean, After Effects Machine
Lean, Mean, Premiere Machine
Learning C4D: Creative Camera Movement // LAB
Open Workflows with Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
Planar Tracking for Graphics & Effects
Professional Video: The Adobe Roadmap
Putting it all Together: My Strong Suite
Roto Brush and Warp Stabilizer: Shortcuts to Higher Production Values
Stereo Conversion for Film & Broadcast
Sweetening Your Audio with Adobe Audition
The Edge
The Graphics Factory
The RED Workflow Acceleration Secret: Now You Know
The Reel World: Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro // LAB
Title Design from Concept to Screen: On Little or No Budget!
Track the Impossible: Using mocha and CameraTracker in After Effects
Upending Identity Crisis
Using Effects in Final Cut Pro X
Using Motion to Create Effects for Final Cut Pro X
Who’d a Thunk It!?!
Vector Art is your BFF: Illustrator and After Effects
What’s new in Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
You’ve got Flash in my After Effects // LAB;

plus motion 2011 sessions!

The two-part series is called Hands On and In Depth: After Effects to Flash.

Check out the promo video I made for the session…laughter is the best way to deal with stress!

Part 1

Use the cinematic power of After Effects to enhance interactive experiences you build with Adobe Flash Professional. Through hands-on projects, you’ll learn how After Effects can take your Flash projects to the next level. In part 1 of this two-part lab, we’ll explore similarities and differences between After Effects and Flash, take a look at scripting languages, and start creating projects such as Hollywood-style text animations, combining the power of these two applications. You’re sure to pick up tips and tricks for creating projects, as well as ways work smarter and faster when time is of the essence.

Part 2

Learn how to use the cinematic power of After Effects to enhance the interactive experiences you build with Adobe Flash Professional. Through hands-on projects, you’ll discover how After Effects can take your Flash projects to the next level. In Part 2 of this two-part lab, we will explore more advanced concepts such as creating transparent video and working with 3D cameras and lights. You’re sure to pick up tips and tricks for your next creative project, as well as ways to work smarter and faster when working between these two powerhouse apps.

For in-depth Production Premium Sessions: The Adobe Post Show

And…for a more in-depth exploration of the complete Adobe Production Premium CS5.5 suite, be sure to join me at The Adobe Post Show – October 12-14, 2011 in ABQ, NM. Here’s some of the sessions we’re offering:

100m2 in the Palm of Your Hand
3D Broadcast Graphics: After Effects + Cinema 4D
3D Broadcast Graphics: From Sketch to Screen with Cinema 4D
Audio Post-Production Basics for Video Professionals
After Effects Beyond Keyframes: // LAB
Creating 3D Titles – Yesterday
Creating Custom Looks…in 20 Minutes!
Creating the TRON Legacy Title Animation Effect
Destruction City Trailer: Adding Effects that Sizzle
Forward into the Past: History in Motion
FOX’s Fringe: 3D Text Effect
HDSLR Editing with Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
Lean, Mean, After Effects Machine
Lean, Mean, Premiere Machine
Learning C4D: Creative Camera Movement // LAB
Open Workflows with Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
Planar Tracking for Graphics & Effects
Professional Video: The Adobe Roadmap
Putting it all Together: My Strong Suite
Roto Brush and Warp Stabilizer: Shortcuts to Higher Production Values
Stereo Conversion for Film & Broadcast
Sweetening Your Audio with Adobe Audition
The Edge
The Graphics Factory
The RED Workflow Acceleration Secret: Now You Know
The Reel World: Final Cut Pro to Premiere Pro // LAB
Title Design from Concept to Screen: On Little or No Budget!
Track the Impossible: Using mocha and CameraTracker in After Effects
Upending Identity Crisis
Using Effects in Final Cut Pro X
Using Motion to Create Effects for Final Cut Pro X
Who’d a Thunk It!?!
Vector Art is your BFF: Illustrator and After Effects
What’s new in Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium
You’ve got Flash in my After Effects // LAB;

See you soon!

Their intention is to create a web-series – and eventually a television series that speaks to people on multiple levels. By creating an epic story of love and adventure, adding a pinch of amazing visual effects, the series will introduce energetic and spiritual concepts.

The storyline reads:

As earth approaches 2012, it also approaches the time of The Next Portal, a moment during which the great archangels wish to start evolution over from the beginning. Morgan, a yoga teacher in Los Angeles, will find out her true heritage as an Atlantian being while being torn between Jonathan, the one she thought she loved, and Maitreya, the one who will guide her towards a greater destiny than she ever could have imagined …

They’re currently trying to raise funds through Kickstarter to make this happen. They’ve got 9 days to meet there goal! If you can help them out…do so!

Check it out:

For example, Elements CRM has a great user interface – one that is very inviting. As a designer, my right brain always kicks in first and the overall design of the application either catches my attention – or doesn’t. If it draws me in, my left-brain developer side steps up to further explore the application, determining whether or not it meets my specific needs.

SugarCRM is feature rich, complex, and … uninviting. While it is customizable, customization is more complex to achieve, and the results are ultimately unintuitive. Nonetheless, it is the CRM I’ve been using for the past few years. But one of my goals this year was to find a CRM that really was a good fit for us.

Finally, I think I’ve found a CRM that’s…just right. Daylite. The Little CRM that Could.

First, let me clarify. Years ago, I tried Marketcircles’s Daylite and there was something about it that just wasn’t a good fit for me.

Unfortunately, since it was long ago, I don’t recall why I rejected Daylite as my choice for a CRM. Fortunately, I decided to give it another go in my recent search for a new CRM, and have been pleasantly surprised.

Making the initial cut.

My life is very busy. It seems like there’s never enough time. In fact, one of the common themes in my writing and speaking is “When Time is of the Essence“. Because of this, my process in evaluating CRMs took on its own ‘efficient workflow’. How could I select a new CRM while expending a minimal amount of time? The first step was to narrow down my choices to just a few CRMs that met my initial criteria, making the initial cut.

As I mentioned, user interace is high on my list. Additionally, I had to consider the other people in our organization who will be using the CRM. While there are only a few of us, in general everyone is a right-brain creative – with very little left-brain ‘geekiness’. In fact, I’m the only member of our team with a right-down-the-middle-left-brain-right-brain-split. The extension of this? Any customization of the application will fall into my realm, so I better select one that is relatively simple to customize as a means to minimize my time investment.

Upon initial inspection, Daylite met all of these requirements and made the first cut.

Stage two.

The next stage of evaluation involved exploring the basics. How well does the CRM handle the basics? For me, this includes contact management, calendars, tasks, and projects. I started putting Daylite to the test, and was excited at the outcome. All of these aspects are intuitive in Daylite – making it easy to use.

Plays well with others.

To make the cut to the next level, the CRM had to play well with others. Since the CRM I select will be used in a multi-user/multi-device environment, it must easily sync data among users and devices. How easy is it to sync with other applications that we commonly use? Being Mac based, this means it has to smoothly integrate with Address Book and iCal. If it works with Mac Mail, it’s a bonus. On the device side, it must have the ability to sync with our iPhones and iPads.

Daylite almost met all of these requirements. On the plus side, Daylite includes a free server based application – Daylite Server – which acts as the central database. It’s perfect for our environment where we use a Mac Mini Server as our shared server. I installed Daylite Server on this box. It was simple to install, setup, and easily connected to our desktop and laptop computers.

But, this is the point in my exploration where Daylite was almost eliminated.

Daylite has a sync feature that shares data with both Address Book and iCal. From Daylite > Preferences, select Sync.

The following window appears:

From here, you select to sync the Address Book and iCal.

Daylite did it’s thing and tried to sync with Address Book and iCal. Unfortunately, each time it tried – it crashed. I tried several times, with no success. My first reaction was – if it can’t sync with Address Book or iCal – it’s not an option.

Because I really liked what I had seen thus far, I wanted to give Daylite the benefit of the doubt. So I decided to submit a support request.

Unfortunately, I also knew that I needed to return to my day-to-day tasks at hand and would have to get back to evaluating CRMs at another time. I submitted the support request and at the same time, requested an extension of the trial expiration. James Spencer at Marketcircle was very responsive and honored my request to extend the evaluation. I also heard back from the support team as well, but didn’t have time to follow-up with the request.

This ultimately ended up being a good thing. When I got back to the CRM evaluation process, it was the weekend and Marketcircle’s support was closed. I decided to forget about attempting to sync, and instead explore other features that were important to our workflow.

I decided to switch my focus to exploring the device apps – Daylite iPad on my iPad and Daylite Touch on my iPhone. And it was a good thing I did.

It was at this point I realized that because of my prior experience with other CRMs, I was ‘cutting off my nose to spite my face’. Let me explain. Most CRMs heavily emphasize the ability to sync with Address Book and iCal. Knowing that I needed to share data with multiple users – and across multiple devices, I was fixated on the concept that the ability to sync with Address Book and iCal was the only way to make this happen.

I was wrong. It was time for a major mind shift.

So let’s forget everything we’ve ever learned that says it is critical to be able to sync with Address Book and iCal. Not that you can’t do this with Daylite. (Daylite support ultimately resolved my sync issue.) Instead, the question that begs to be asked is – why do you want to sync with Address Book and iCal?

Seriously. Take some time to ponder this question. What are you hoping to achieve by syncing with Address Book and iCal?

Let me help you shift your perspective.

• Step one: spend a bit of time looking at Daylite Touch for the iPad.
• Step two: spend a bit of time looking at Daylite Touch for the iPhone.

To better understand the Daylite Ecosystem, from Marketcircle’s website:

First off, I love the user interface of both of Daylite Touch for the iPad and the iPhone. In fact, if Daylite wants to take their desktop application to the next level, I would recommend redesigning the Graphical User Interface (GUI) to look more like their mobile devices counterparts. Very clean. Extremely inviting.

After a bit of time using both of these mobile applications, a light bulb went off in my head. If I can use these Daylite apps on my iPhone and iPad, why would I need – or want to use Address Book or iCal?

I had been approaching this from the wrong angle.

Looking at it with new eyes: the final criteria.

Now I was really excited. Daylite met all of my initial criteria. It was time to take it to the extreme – how customizable is Daylite?

Short answer? Extremely.

While almost all CRMs offer the basics: contact management, calendars, tasks, and project management – their ability to be customized to meet specific needs varies drastically.

For some companies, the ability to customize may not be necessary. But for us – it is critical.

A bit of background. We’re a small company. There are just three of us and the occasional freelancer. But there are many parts to our two companies: the motion group and zocoloco | studios.

the motion group includes multiple resources for the motion graphics, visual effects and animation community: motion.tv – the ‘hulu’ for our industry, cgnews – industry related news, motion+connect – our live, online event, and motion – our annual conference.

We all wear many hats. We all have numerous projects, tasks, and contacts that need to be well organized and easily shared. Efficiency in workflow is critical. Given this, the ability to highly customize our CRM – distinguishing the two companies as well as the primary components of the motion group is paramount.

Fortunately, Daylite can be easily customized. In fact, Daylite is so customizable that you have to be careful not to micro-customize your workflow to the point that it becomes overly complicated. Keep it simple. Make sure that each customization you add ultimately helps you save time – especially when time is of the essence. What do I mean by this? On the most basic level, here’s an example.

In Daylite you can set custom labels for types of electronic addresses (email, web, and IM). When you add a custom label, ask yourself – will I need to search by this criteria at some point?

For example, let’s look at email. Over the years the labels that I’ve added for email addresses in Apple’s Address Book have become…messy. Work, Home, Gmail, MobileMe…you get the picture. Is there any reason why I would need to search for all email addresses in my contact list that are Gmail? MobileMe? I can’t think of any. And, if by slim chance there were, I could search for all addresses that contained the gmail.com or mobileme.com domain. These are obviously extraneous labels. In fact, when it comes down to it, for my purposes I really only need to know if this is the contact’s work email address or home email address. Period.

In the Daylite incarnation of my contact list, ‘work’ and ‘home’ are the only two categories I’ve decided to use for email addresses.

On the other hand, let’s take a look at websites. In our industry it is common for people to have a variety of sites: the company website, company blog, their personal blog, and a reel or portfolio site – to name a few. In addition to these, many of our contacts have a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, and because our industry centers around the motion picture and broadcast industries, a Vimeo account.

All of this is information we need. So I defined a custom label for each type of website.

The IM category is a bit ‘old school’ and could possibly be more flexible in the next iteration of Daylite. Many of our contacts have AIM IDs, so that works. Additionally, because we broadcast live interviews with some of the amazing talent in the motion community, many also have Skype accounts. I would suggest that Marketcircle engineers change this category to be similar to the email and web categories. It should be utilized for anything that contains a user ID.

First, Daylite could change the category name from IM to Connect, Social – or something similar. Then, instead of two additional drop down menus, eliminate the one that contains AIM, Jabber, MSM, Yahoo, and ICQ. Leave the remaining drop down menu for the user to customize. The drop down could include AIM, Jabber, MSM, Yahoo, and ICQ – but additionally it could contain Twitter, Skype, and any other electronic addresses that are user ID based.

The tip of the iceberg.

Labels are just the tip of the iceberg. Additionally, there are numerous types of customizations that you can achieve with Daylite including categories, keywords, contact roles, organization roles, relationships between contacts, organization types, industries, regions, opportunity types, event locations, and more.

You can also set default values for many of the standard fields – and they can be different for each Daylite user. For example, the majority of our contacts are in the United States. I can set the default country to ‘United States’ and it will save a few keystrokes when it comes to data entry. I could set the default priority level for a task to high, medium or low and set the default due date to be ‘x’ number of days after the creation date. The options go on and on.

You can also create custom fields for contacts, groups, projects, organizations, opportunities, and products/services. These include both custom text fields, and custom date fields. So let’s say for each organization, in addition to their SIC code, I want to know their NAICS code, annual sales, and the year they were established. I simply create a custom field for each of these items.

You can add custom ‘resources’, including facilities, rooms, equipment, etc. Then you can schedule when these resources are in use.

You can assign permissions for each user, group users by teams – and even select what information is visibile to each user.

Productivity tools.

Additionally, I can create a variety of ‘tools’ that aid productivity including custom forms, custom letters, activity sets, and pipelines. Let’s take a brief look at each one.

pipelines :: Pipelines are a way to indicate your progress in a project. For example, a common pipeline used in sales is

• research viability
• initial contact
• meeting/presentation
• proposal
• negotiation
• commitment
• contract
• invoice

For our company we also create pipelines for common projects like motion+connect - our live monthly online broadcast.

activity sets :: Activity sets are very useful. Basically, these are pre-determined sets of tasks that you follow each time you work on a specific project. For example, with each episode of motion+connect there is a certain set of tasks that must be accomplished. In fact, in the case of  motion+connect, we have two activity sets for each episode: one that leads up to the show, and a second that takes place post-show. For example, prior to the show we must determine the content, find the speakers, create the motion graphics, promote the event, prepare the Tricaster for broadcast, etc. Then post-show we have to break down the equipment, follow-up with sponsors, send out giveaways to winners, and repurpose the content for motion.tv – just to name a few.

When it comes time for each motion+connect, I simply add the episode as a project in Daylite, and then add the two activity sets. All of the tasks that need to be accomplished for the show are automatically added. Sweet.

letter templates :: For each motion+connect broadcast, we send a detailed email to our invited guests that explains the process, provides an overview of the show schedule, as well as the FTP login details for uploading their video content. With Daylite, we can create this template once, and then easily merge contact information including the recipient’s name, date of their show, and their content upload deadline to create a personalized message.

custom forms :: Custom forms are also an amazing feature. Here’s an example of how we use them in our workflow.

Each year our annual motion conference consists of industry changing, mind-boggling presentations from the brightest and most creative minds in the motion picture, broadcast, and gaming industry. For each speaker I fill-out the custom form I created that includes the speaker’s name, title, company, bio, and what part of the show they are speaking at: motionfest, motion, or The Adobe Post Show.

Additionally, I created a custom form to be used for each session they are presenting. This form includes: session title, session description, target audience, skill level, location, date and time. Because Daylite is a relational database, I can then link each session to its speaker. Simply amazing.

Conclusion.

My search for a CRM that is a good fit – turned out to be a great experience. One of the things I commonly discuss with attendees when speaking at events like NAB Post Production World, Adobe MAX, or our own event, motion – is the importance of looking at things from a different angle when brainstorming creative concepts. I was stuck on the concept that the CRM I selected had to integrate with Address Book and iCal in a specific way that I had envisioned. I almost eliminated Daylite from the running because of this. But fortunately, I was able to take my own advice, step back, and look at the concept of an ideal CRM multi-user/multi-device from a different angle. And I’m glad I did.

Daylite and the Daylite ecosphere – including Daylite Touch for the iPad, and Daylite Touch for the iPhone – provide an extremely powerful, and highly customizable CRM solution that just works.

I discovered the The Little CRM That…Does. Daylite.