The benefit of having two offices is that they will consistently try to overdo each other in fancy colours, rare posters and ingenious lighting solutions.
Now, Copenhagen has officially taken the lead. One Saturday, a bulk of pizzas, X litres of Coke and a key to our basement was what it took to get our Copenhagen office up to a shining level.
See more shots here.
Disclaimer: The author is located in Copenhagen and may not have an entirely objective viewpoint.
Copenhagen
What: Spoiled Milk / CPH #2
When: Fri. 03/04/09 – 2000-0200.
Where: Street Shop, Nørrebrogade 32, Copenhagen.
Sign up here.
Zurich
What: Spoiled Milk / ZRH #5
When: Thu. 26/03/09 – 1900-2300.
Where: Salento Gourmet, Zurich.
Sign up here.
(illustration by our gifted Creative Intern from Germany – Isabel Seiffert)
We sent out our Monhtly Digest in the morning every second Tuesday of the month. This March edition went out just a few minutes ago, so in case it’s not already placed in your mailbox, be sure to subscribe here in order to receive the next edition in April.
Our aim is to cover the following:
* Goodies about our latest projects
* Updates on our innovative efforts
* Insights into who we are and how we work
* Our views on the evolution of the industry
* Plus monthly surprises
And why we have chosen to do something as old-fashioned as sending out an electronic newsletter? Firstly, you can’t complete a full-scale revolution by preaching only to the crowds of RSS-subscribing like-minded. In other words, you need to include the actual crowd of today when sharing your view on tomorrow. Secondly, e-mail newsletters are quite nice for highlighting news pieces, generating an audience and measuring the readership.
Sometimes all you need to kickstart a foreign branch and light up the pipeline is a simple dashboard, 140 character status updates and immediate interaction. This is the story of how Spoiled Milk fell in love with Twitter.
Exactly one year ago Spoiled Milk was a small, vibrant 5-person new media agency situated in inner Copenhagen. Our trademark was bringing analogue real-life elements into the ever-present digital media formats to produce a combination between the classical artistic expressions and nowadays language referred to as new media.
One evening the three partners – Russell, Casper and I – stepped inside a small restaurant to do our weekly strategy talk. Here Russell dropped the bomb: “I’m moving to Zurich in 2-3 months”. His girlfriend Lucy had been accepted to conduct her Ph.d. studies in Zurich and the dissolution of our company structure as we knew it was inevitable. Quickly, it was decided to continue running the company and aim at establishing Spoiled Milk in Zurich – possibly to reach a similar 5-person team within three years.
In the end of March ‘08 Russell opened a Twitter account – joining the existing 1 million Twitter users – and in late May ‘08 he moved to Zurich – twittering: “Grüße Zürich. Ich bin Russell.”. Only two days later the Zurich-based media professional Gustavo Salami twittered his half-joking message: “stalking @russellquinn”. A relationship was born, though neither Russell nor Gustavo knew where this would lead.
During the following weeks a tech-related conversation grew between Russell and Gustavo and one month later Gustavo hired Spoiled Milk to deliver a customised iPhone application for CITYGUIDE. In early July, Casper and I visited Zurich and met up with Gustavo plus two of his CITYGUIDE co-workers – David Luisi and Christian Vollenweider. The atmosphere was high-spirited and as we rounded off the night in a club Russell, Casper and I whispered to each other: “We’ve got to hire these guys”.
Only two months later (September ‘08) the strong trio was part of Spoiled Milk. Counting the concurrent addition of developer Andreas Zecher Spoiled Milk had formed a 5-person branch – not in three years – but in four months.
Twitter’s role in our evolution is not to be underestimated. Since Twitter helped us form our Swiss branch, the social networking tool has brought us several projects of significant value, Twitter has connected us to qualified employees and freelancers – and generally Twitter helps us spread the word about who we are and what we do.
And how a tool as simple as Twitter can do all this? In my view, because Twitter removes all the communication filters typically applied to professional industries and instead focuses fully on simplicity, user-friendliness, spontaneous interaction and democratic access to all people and all information.
We’ve been using Campfire (37signals’ group chat application) for quite some time now and it has helped our internal communication when working together. But we’ve also sworn to a proper desktop client to use its extra features. A new player is on the market and it’s called Propane, which basically is a simple desktop client for Campfire.
Propane adds more functionalities to easily use Campfire – with features such as drag’n'drop images and files to upload, name auto-completion and a smoother interface, Propane is what we’ve found to be a better alternative to running Campfire through the browser.
Check out both Campfire and Propane to experience how your internal communication can be improved.
We are truly delighted to announce the addition of Jamie, Anders and Isabel to our Copenhagen office. With their superb skills within tech, strategy and design, this highly anticipated trio are taking Spoiled Milk to the next step.
Jamie Appleseed – Developer
Our new addition to the tech team was born and raised in Hareskovby in the region of Værløse in Denmark. Here he attended primary school in Hareskov Skole and followed a business program at Lyngby Handelsskole, HHx.
Jamie has a long record of entrepreneurial projects starting out when he co-founded a small web development company 3-4 years ago with a friend. The small team developed a handful of websites for realtors, etc. In 2006, Jamie co-founded GMin (a charity organization distributing mosquito nets in Sierra Leone, Africa) with three friends. Today the organisation has grown to an impressive 40+ members. Also, Jamie was the brain and developer behind Burden Butcher.
Among Jamie’s main interests is making the Internet more simple and obvious to use (and develop!), browsing and discovering coffee, tasting wine and diving into the Italian cuisine. For warming up the auditory meatus Jamie prefers putting on records from Jack Johnson’s record label Brushfire Records.
And Jamie’s plans for the future? He wants to live in the States for a year, run a marathon and taste a cup of Kopi Luwak coffee.
Anders Fredsø Olsen – Strategic Consultant
Our three-months strategic consultant Anders was brought up bonafide small-town with approximately 200 souls near the extravagant metropolis of Grenaa with such cultural gems as The Kattegat Center, a larger tank of sharks and such, The Grenaa Kino, the local movie theater showing Hollywood’s finest and of course The Gyldne Krus, (The Golden Mug) where you could get an honest beer and a good old bar-brawl if you were in the mood. “I rarely was”, Anders admits.
After high school Anders attended the Århus Business Academy, followed by the Århus School of Business and finally went on to become a “chaos pilot” (2006-2009). During his relatively short life-span Anders has taken on a wide variety of jobs, incl. cardboard-boy, vegetable-refiller, strawberry-picker, bottle-collector, home tutor, dishwasher, assistant teacher, B2B Salesman, mens wear seller, sofa seller, bartender, consultant, music manager, business owner and event manager.
His interests include funny words, longs lost proverbs and weird music that irritates you in some way. For the future Anders wants a world where politicians think further than the next election and actually do what they are elected to: Make tough decisions on behalf of the people. He prefers “a world where over-consumption and greed is replaced with a fair distribution of resources and wealth and a world where the most obvious thing is to think about and act sustainably”.
Isabel Seiffert – Design Intern
Our new Design Intern was born in the DDR and grew up in the Eastern und Southern parts of Germany. In 11th grade Isabel travelled across the Atlantic to experience the (very) United States of America for a year.
Isabel is currently doing the 5th semester of her Visual Communications studies at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart – intended to be of a more practical sort. Previously, she had a fling with the fashion industry – studying Textile Technology. Spoiled Milk happens to be the first station of Isabel’s promising working career.
Of Isabel’s major interests you would maybe have been able to predict taking photos and drawing illustrations. However, it may come as a surprise to you that Spoiled Milk’s first ever female team member (excl. freelancers) also happens to be our first ever motorcycle rider. Yay!
Knowing this, it seems like the perfect combination when Isabel explains her future dreams: “I would like to travel the world and document my impressions with camera and pen”.
