Synonym

The National Government Simulation is now available on Facebook. It’s a small little online app that allows people to add ideas, invite friends and vote on the proposed ideas of others. It’s still in beta, as in, it’s still being worked on. But it doesn’t hurt to let folks know what’s coming.

The original NGS was an online sim that ran in the late 90s into the early part of the millennium and spawned numerous spinoffs. This isn’t anything like that, but it’s got the same concept down, which is, spreading ideas and sharing them with others.

Add it, make suggestions and of course, have fun.

This shouldn’t be a big deal. I mean, everyone these days wants to say they run a pre-IPO startup. It’s like the hottest thing since Hot Wheels in the 80s. And I have no idea why. I mean, don’t folks know how hard this stuff is? For every hotshot college dropout who went to Harvard, there are thousands of bootstrappers juggling family, life and pretty much whatever else they can, all in the interest of pursuing their passion.

They will sacrifice sleep, fun, relationships and spend way too much money on coffee in the hopes that working hard now will pay off big later.

The more I do this, the more I start to realize that everyone seems to think “starting a business” is the way to go. It is, if you really want to do it. But for those of you that don’t, it’s not worth the trouble of printing the business cards and coming up with an “idea” just to waste time energy and money that would’ve been much better spent on actually growing a career.

I try to eschew the CEO title when I can, but it’s an easy shorthand. And people know what that means, but the days of making a big deal out of what you’re doing, even when you feel like what you’re doing is kind of a big deal, are over.

Actions speak louder than words. So just do stuff, make things happen and the rest will follow. That’s the mantra these days.

Dave Coustan is now a Synonym alum, as he joins Edelman in Atlanta as the new VP of Digital.  We appreciate the good vibes he bestowed upon us, but he’s not gone, he’s just a feed away. Congrats to him!

You know those people who buy huge speakers for their cars and then drive around blaring the tunes as if anyone cares? That’s the web strategy that a lot of people employ for their business. Simply turn up the volume and figure that if you’re the loudest, people will be forced to tune in.

It might be effective for a moment, after all, if they’re outside at the right time of day when you’re driving by and the song doesn’t have too much bass, they’ll hear exactly what you want them to. But does that mean it’s a welcome visit? How likely are they to buy that song? Or your product?

Slim to none.

It’s far more important to calibrate your message to those who are poised to listen, who welcome it and want to know what you’re thinking. Maybe they won’t agree. Perhaps they’ll be distracted with other things. But the fact of the matter is, you’ll be far more likely to yield bounty from a crop of willing participants in whatever your putting out there, than those who have been snapped up into it without getting a choice to decide.

In Synonym-land, we’re preparing to unveil two Facebook applications. The first, will be the revival of the National Government Simulation. NGS:F is a spinoff of the success NGS franchise that began with NGS1 back in 2000, one of the first internet government simulations. Members crafted legislation, debated and ran for offices. There were two other iterations of the game that lasted for about four years, before it ended for good. I founded the original and I’m excited that we’ll be bringing it back.

The new National Government Sim on Facebook won’t be like the original in the traditional sense. It’ll be more about 1) networking 2) sharing ideas for change and 3) scoring points. We’ll explain more once its released, but we’re excited about what’s to come. It’s slated for early August.

The other project we have coming to Facebook won’t be released until September. It’ll be a Facebook application of our Jobmurmur project. The idea is still under development, but we hope to use it as a way to connect passionate people to each other.

Stay tuned, as usual.

I was strongly against the idea of Synonym being “just another web design company” when we got started. The foundation of the company that began before we “became Synonym” was precisely that and it worked okay for us. But there is something impersonal and perfunctory about serving clients in that manner.

We’re not McDonalds. There is nothing fast-food like about the design experience, at least from where we sit. And at this point, I see that there are so many deficiencies in the way that we approach web design and development from the perspective of a client, that it has become more evident where we can best fulfill our passion for “something more.”

The whole idea behind Synonym was based on a formula that I came up with. It went something like this:

1. Find smart, talented people looking for something more than they’re getting.
2. Partner with them and find complementary talents to each other.
3. Collaborate on awesome projects.
4. Do cool things.
5. Make the web a little better than it was before.

Not exactly rocket science. It’s been refined a lot more since those nascent days. We’re taken a two-channel approach to this. Rather than JUST focus on our supporting clients from a consulting perspective, we’ve decided to step out on our own and develop projects that serve our original goals in a manner that offers more utility than just “playing baseball.”

(Playing baseball is a term I’ve coined for the whole process of pitching for design gigs and explaining to prospective clients why they ought to work with you. It’ll change the whole way you view success, because you strike out a lot, sometimes the umpire looks blind and other times, you’ll be muttering all the way back to the dugout. Of course, you do get to hit home runs sometimes…)

But back to the whole point here.

We are still in a “Wild Wild West” period of the information age. We are just scratching the surface in terms of the ways we can reach out to different audiences, specifically in higher education web design. The field is constantly changing, the end users are diverse and have different needs and wants. What a high school student in a city might look for, is completely different than the parent of a rural kid who didn’t realize college was a possibility. Not to mention their parents or alumni…

Over the next few weeks, we will be focusing more on providing a platform to connecting people to ideas and information. Thought leadership is jargon, but it’s also where I think we excel most as a team. By communicating “big ideas” and honing in on the small quibbles inside the margins, we’ll be able to start some real conversations and create breakthroughs.

Jobmurmur job board is down for now. We’ve decided to spend some time getting to the core of the idea, rather than going directly to redundancy. The idea behind jobmurmur is to really provide a platform for the people who are in the working equivelent of loveless marriages. We’re not painting a picture that everyone can love their job or that they’ll always be happy with what they do, but we do see a trend of more people settling for an okay match, when a good one is still there.

The goal of the site will be to help people market themselves better, to discover what’s inside to help them shine more. One of the other main goals is to give companies insight to how to put their best foot forward seeking out better quality candidates for openings within their organizations. We feel like too many miss the boat with job descriptions written by robots and feigning interest and excitement when authenticity would do.

So for now, it’ll be a blog. It’ll continue to evolve as time goes on though and we’re unveiling something else soon that will tie well with it, too.

In other news, we’ve officially added two new people to our ranks. Jillison and Dave are awesome. When this all got started, I joked that it would be a “like Captain Planet, for web sites.” Little did I realize that the statement was even more true than I originally believed it to be.

More is coming…stay tuned.

We’re releasing our first ebook today. It’s entitled Don’t look, jump!: Ideas and thoughts on millennials, management and life.

It’s one part motivational manifesto and one part prose on doing business and thinking, focused heavily on millennials. It’s directed at folks who need a jolt, as well as managerial types who might need some help understanding their younger cohorts.

It’s short and aligned for easy reading in PDF format. Thumb through it and if you find it useful, pass it on.

Download it here.

Feel free to share thoughts in the comments, too.

So…in the first of several new developments out of Synonym land, we’d like to introduce Jobmurmur.

This came about as most things do — by accident. As more and more people discovered Synonym, they seemed to appreciate what we’re about. That’s heartwarming, but it also meant that other people started to contact us about people that we can recomend for their projects.

We decided to just take a step further and create a full-fledged job board.

The idea behind Jobmurmur is simple. Our job board is actively seeking employers who are looking for ahead of the curve, thought leading individuals looking for a change. We’re pretty confident in our ability to attract talent, so much that we’re not even charging for this service to start.

You can post your jobs for free. What kind of jobs will we post? Those from innovative companies, non-profits and education. What’s an innovative company you ask? Well, we’ll let you decide. But don’t get carried away.

Check it out and feel free to let us know what you think. It’ll undoubtedly improve over time…

It’s pretty exciting when new ideas almost fall into your lap. Later this week, Synonym will unveil a new project. Without letting the cat out of the bag (I know, I know…secrets suck!) it’s an idea that has come through a combination of common sense, adherence to our philosophy and our own frustration with the options that are out there currently.

So with that, gear up and stay tuned. It’s coming soon!