In this post I’d like to review how we use Google calendar, iCal, Basecamp, and Unfuddled to help manage projects across our computers and iphones. As with many tools, the challenge is not finding one, but combining them in a way so the result becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Specifically I’ll cover three use cases – managing individual schedules for team members, day-to-day tasks, and project milestones. Then I’ll review how to create this setup by syncing Google Calendar, Basecamp, and iCal so everything lives on the cloud. With this setup anyone can access the granular details of a project, or easily see a comprehensive overview from either their computer or iPhone.

Google Calendar for scheduling projects:

At the heart of our scheduling setup is Google Calendar. Each employee at BKWLD has a calendar, and this is where we assign people to a project for each day of the week. The point here is to provide a broad overview of every employee’s week, not to provide granular details of specific milestones or todos. Each Friday Dan and I cover who is working on what for the following week and input it in GC on that employees calendar. We keep it high level, listing only the project name, and one or two words of what employee is working on, such as  ”Project name, flash dev.” If someone is out for vacation, it goes here too. In order to have access to coworker’s calendar’s just add them on your GC homepage under “add a coworker’s calendar” by entering their email address. Here is a screenshot of GC settings tab. You can sell the coworker’s calendars that I have access to edit, and other that I can only view. :

Google Calendar for day-to-day tasks

As producer, I’ll also use Google calendar to schedule internal meetings, client calls, or events outside of work for all us Buk folk, such as Ignite Seattle, the NW Pinball Show, or our upcoming Paintball outing. I know some producers prefer to use iCal for scheduling meetings, but I like Google Calendar because everyone invited can see the relevant info directly on the invitation, instead of having to open the invite in iCal to view the time, location, call-in number, ect. I’ve found that many clients don’t use iCal so it’s nice to have a tool that’s browser based.

Managing project milestones in Basecamp

At BWKLD we use Basecamp for most of our projects. At kickoff a producer will add the milestones from a project schedule to BC. From there, everyone assigned to the project can view the milestones and have visibility to both their portion of the project, and the overall scope. We also assign milestones directly to employees in bc. This is important because both Google calendar and basecamp milestones, as well as Unfuddled milestones, sync to iCal. To subscribe to a milestone calendar in basecamp, just go to the milestones tab, and click on the “subscribe to iCalendar” in red. You can subscribe to a global iCalendar where you’ll see all the milestones for each project, but I prefer to subscribe to each project individually. The advantage to subscribing to individual iCalendars is that iCal allows you to color code each project’s iCalendar different. This is really helpful if you are working on multiple projects concurrently. Check out this link for more info:

Using calDav within iCal to sync it all together

Now you can sync google calendars and basecamp to iCal. Consequently, by looking at iCal you will have ONE place to look to see the following:

a) events from your own google cal (meeting invites and your schedule on a daily level)

b) calendar of other people you have access to on google calendar (helpful if you are ever making a schedule or want to see who is working on what)

c) all milestones from any basecamp projects you’ve subscribe to. If the dates are ever changed in basecamp, just refresh iCal and you’ll see new dates updated.

It’s great to have one place to look to see how the project milestones from basecamp are lining up with individual employees schedule. To set this up, follow the steps here for syncing using calDAV on iCal Desktop by following this link and clicking on “Enable Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal”:

Recap:

Below is a screenshot of how your iCal will look after you’ve done all the setup:

On the top you’ll see Dave.Brown@bkwld.com – this is my BKWLD google calendar only. This is where I’ll see my meeting invites, and receive pop-up reminders throughout the day for upcoming meetings.

Next down is Gmail – this is a personal calendar, so by checking this box I’ll see anything personal. Helpful when I’m checking to see how a travel schedule lines up with  my personal life. I also add my wife’s calendar so we’re all synced up too.

Next down is Delegates. This is the list of all the people you’ve added on Google calendar under “add coworker’s calendars.” If you want to add/modify these settings directly in iCal, go to preferences>Accounts>Delegation.

Finally is Subscriptions – this is the list of projects subscribed to on basecamp. We’ve also be using Unfuddled at BKWLD recently and you can also subscribe to individual calendars through Unfuddled.

Now you’ll have complete access to all the info you’ll need for any project, easily accessible for a project. If someone asks you “who is assigned to x project and can I move them help on project y” you can easily see who is working on each project, look at when the next milestone is due, and see who else may be available to help based off of current workload.

Syncing with iPhone

You can also setup calDAV on your iphone so you will be able to keep your iCal and iphone calendars kept in sync wirelessly. You’ll be able to add/modify event made in Google Calendar on either you iCal desktop or iCal on iPhone without having to do a physical sync. Here’s how to setup CalDav on your iPhone:

Regarding seeing your Basecamp milestones on your iPhone the best option is simply periodically doing a physical sync between iTunes and your iPhone. Within iTunes you can choose which calendars you want to sync by going to the info tab> Sync iCal Calendars and selecting them there. This works for me because I often do a physical sync daily to update my podcasts and other content. Frankly we don’t move milestone dates around that often, so doing a physical sync every few days works out fine.

My favorite thing about this setup is that everyone involved in a project has the info they need. All devs and designers know when the next milestone is due for each of their projects. As Mr. Dan Fields would say, “Project Managed.”

BKWLD has successfully had two – but not self-sufficient – offices for about 7 years. When Robert went to Seattle to open our second office out of his bedroom, we always knew it would be our main development hub due to Seattle’s inclination towards tech, while Sacramento would stay focused on design, production and management. The lines have since been blurred, and each office is much more talent varied, but the fact remains that working as one, finely tuned Frankenstein of interactive is crucial to our success, and inter-office communication needed to be second nature.

Here’s some thoughts on how we successfully keep morale high, the work awesome and use our two locations to our advantage when working with out of town clients and agencies.

“Work” based Pros
Having two drastically different locations has lots of merits. Having experience with what it’s like to work across borders internally is good practice for the ‘real world.’ Not having as many great local opportunities for work as we’d like, but loving the lifestyles that Sacramento/Seattle afford us, we’re able to easily work with out of town locations like LA, NYC, Denver etc. because we constantly work with people hundreds of miles apart – each other.

We know all of the tricks and tools to make working ‘remote’ efficient:

• iChat/Adium/Aim etc. – a constant barrage of conversation, sometimes bordering on stream of conscious, but the lifeblood of BKWLD
• Skype/video chats – for when we need some face time
• A weekly status meeting between both offices where we catch up on all projects, housekeeping stuff, etc.
• WebEx/Gotomeeting – for walking clients through CMS trainings, creative presentations, alpha builds of sites
• Basecamp – the best way we’ve found to house all files, pertinent messages, client feedback etc. It’s the nucleus between our offices and a client.
• JIRA – for testing and QA of a site, we’re having great results with JIRA and it’s bug reporting and classifications
• www.supportdetails.com – no more “what browser and version of flash are you running?” it’s the perfect way to find out the client’s boss is still running IE6 and Flash 5.

In an economic climate where a traditional agency in LA/NYC/London wants to test out a digital shop in a new location, since we have working remote on lockdown, it’s an easy sell to an out-of-towner why they shouldn’t be worried one bit to use a non-local agency. In fact, I have some clients who I just adore, and have actually never met in real life.

Furthermore, the pros of having multiple offices from a ‘business’ perspective are pretty obvious – multiple markets for talent, multiple markets for new business and just the perceived value of having multiple offices. Office-wise we keep morale high by having interoffice get togethers a couple times a year, and having a handful of internal ‘mailing lists’ that serve almost like forums. For everything from ‘check out this awesome website/article’ to video game reviews to funny viral videos, the inner office banter is always going on.

“Work” based Cons
It’s certainly not all rainbows and cupcakes, there are some things that aren’t wonderful about working with clients and coworkers across the country.

Some people are more visual, and just NEED face time to connect, to be held accountable, etc. It’s pretty easy to be a ‘telephone tough guy’ or hide behind emails, when just going out to lunch or grabbing a drink in person could have helped solve an easy problem. We always have a face-to-face kickoff and launch meeting with clients, but during the middle, some clients might need more attention, and a quick flight isn’t always an option. And sometimes a client wants someone local, no matter what.

Another con is something I call “Island Syndrome.” Suppose a project is being managed and designed in Sacramento, but only ONE person in Seattle is developing on it. It can be easy for this Seattleite to feel isolated and alone on a project, since no one in their direct vicinity is working on it or talking about it in passing conversation. We try hard to not let this occur from a resource standpoint, and the nature of our offices tend that people always want to know what everyone is working on, but it can still occur. Additionally, there’s nothing like some “designer-developer-one-on-one” when it comes to hashing out whether a design is possible, whether an idea is too big or just arguing whether or not flash is dead (which of course it isn’t).\

Lastly, sometimes we get “Sacramento? Why would anyone want to live there?” We shouldn’t be so quick to forget it is the capital of the greatest state in the world! It takes little explanation to prove why we love this quality of life, it’s proximity to Lake Tahoe and San Francisco, etc. But other people might want the gloss and glitz of a NYC or LA agency.

Overall, it’s more rare these days to find a successful company with just one office – it just makes sense to have a bicoastal presence. I think what makes BKWLD unique is our adherence to the west coast, with offices not in the largest of markets, and still finding ourselves playing successfully with the big guys nationwide. To this success I attribute everyone’s adherence to staying nimble, staying connected and staying on top of our projects, clients and co-workers.

There are so many arguments happening now about this technology and that development language. The battle for supremacy has led to some fairly bad blood between some amazing companies. Listening to the recent debates between Adobe and Apple about flash on the iPad and iPhone has got me thinking. It seems like no matter what, there will be a problem and a battle until we as designers and developers get our heads in the right place.

This is because the debate is centered around technologies and programming languages. This strife is very prevalent in all areas of the web design industry. Should you use Flash or Javascript for that slideshow? Should we connect to this MySQL database, or this SQL server over here? .NET or PHP? There are some very opinionated groups, which is too bad because all of these technologies are amazing in their own right.

At the core of every project is an idea, and that is by far the most important thing to consider. Once the creative idea has been set, realizing that idea can happen any number of unique and innovative ways.

When figuring out how to produce the project, it’s all about what technology is best suited for the design. How much interactivity will it have? Of course you’re not going to utilize Flash for a site that is just plain, static text, and you’re not going to link up to a database when your site consists of two pages.

After these things have been sorted out, then pick the technology that you are most comfortable and efficient with. For example, I work really well in Flash and Actionscript. I am very comfortable with the language, and it comes naturally to me. That doesn’t mean that Flash should be used for everything, but in at the end of the day it’s all about the idea being produced, —not what technology was used to make it. If you need a slideshow, it can be written in Javascript, Flash, or hell even Lingo, as long as you end up with a killer slideshow.

It’s also not about the newest technology; it’s it’s about the best technology. My old college instructor is a professional type designer for a 1st-class graphic design agency. She stands by Freehand as the best tool out there for type and letterform design. It’s not a new program by any measure, but it works for her, and she produces some incredible work.

So we need to relax about the technology debates, and focus on making kick- ass designs, and have fun doing it.

One of the goals BKWLD planned for ourselves this year was to attend more events and conferences.  More accurately: to attend events at all.  In previous years we’ve balked at the cost of most conferences and the expected return we’d get on that money and time.  We decided to give it a chance with the SoDA Click New York event last year, to see whether our assumptions had been valid.  It was a good experience, largely because it got us out of the day to day and thinking bigger picture.  Thus this year’s initiative was born.

We went to StackOverflow’s Dev Days earlier this year.  One big plus of it was it’s cost: $100 a head.  The speakers gave us an overview of technologies that we don’t use regularly (there wasn’t a lot of LAMP love) and the FogBuzz keynote made me realize that some of the issues we’ve faced in the growth of ground(ctrl) and Elastic aren’t unique to us.  Which brings us to SXSW, which 6 of us just back from.

We brought a pretty big team to SXSW and it works there since the conference is so multidisciplinary.  During the day we split up often, so that people could meet with other folks who were there or attend panels specific to their interests.  As anyone who is our friend on Gowalla will attest (sorry for all the spam), we “checked in” to let each other know where we were.  Some of the panels I enjoyed the most were on iPhone UI design, new methods of tactile interaction, and the marketing strategy behind the Bing launch.  I was able to meet some the Appcelerator dev’s at the meetup they held, which was a great opportunity for me to ask them questions.  During the night we caroused between the free parties that different companies held (Pure Volume, Gowalla, etc).

So will we go again? I think so.  In talking with our crew, it sounds like we unanimously agreed that the panels lacked enough depth.  Many were overviews or stated the obvious too much.  There wasn’t enough detail and brainy insight.  That being said, there was usually a tidbit or two I picked up from the panels I attended.  And, there was a lot of value in getting time with coworkers in a stress free environment.  As opposed to doing some extracurricular activity (like our snowboard trip in December), the framework of a conference focused our conversation on work themed stuff, spurning creativity and new ideas.  I think this last point is what would have me taking us back again.  While we could plan a fun activity locally for a much lower cost, having a structure based on learning (even if it fell short) is special about going to a conference and led to growth outside of the sessions.

Next up for us is An Event Apart in Seattle.  If your company is thinking of going to industry events and you want to chat about whether it’s worth the cost or not (I’m still chewing on this myself), hit me up in the comments.

I’ve developed some interesting talents in the past few months.  Tarot cards, deliverable projecting, palm readings, horoscopes, traffic management, mind reading.  You know, the usual.

Surprisingly enough, though I can manage the flow of work through the agency, check on deliverables and remember countless dates and status reports, I cannot, in fact, climb into your head and replay the conversation you just had with your client pushing the project schedule back three weeks.

Please excuse me while I go reassemble the carefully monitored schedule that’s totally shot to shit.

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… but then a really really great one comes along.

We do pro bono projects because we believe in them.  Plain and Simple.  Well, at least it starts that way – a simple, understated design, but a definite step up from our non-profit-of-the-moment’s original site. Months later, hours of design and dev time later, paying-clients-schedules-pushed-back-to-accommodate-our-passion later, we come out with a beautiful project and a terrible story.  But surely I jest.

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