Business Is Relationships

 

I was recently invited to be a keynote speaker for a business class at the local community college. If you knew my educational background, you would realize how hilarious this is.

I received my Bachelors in Communications, with an emphasis on Advertising. I also received a minor in English. In college, I avoided business classes like they had the cooties. I was going to write commercials and be the head of a creative department for an ad agency. I had no need for business! Business, I deduced, was for suckers.

Then I stepped out of college and into real life, where another education began. I quickly realized that business, in a general sense, is the lifeblood of all we do. But not in the way that I understood “business” in college as a “profession.”

I believe that business is relationships.

As I pulled thoughts together before speaking to this business class, I wondered what insight or significance I could possibly bring to them. I had no formal education about running a business, and I had very minimal practical experience in doing it.

So I began by looking at my career path. In a nutshell, here it is. Out of college, I started working at an ad agency, in a public relations capacity. After a couple of years, I was approached by a friend about a job as the marketing director at his bank.  I was there four years and left when a friend recruited me to work at another public relations firm. Shortly after that, I was at a Christmas party when a “friend of a friend” heard I was looking for something “different.” He hired me on the spot as an account manager for a residential window subcontractor. I was there for a few years when the industry downshifted to almost a halt. I talked to a friend of mine (our sons were on the same baseball team) about the commercial insurance company he worked for, and he invited me to talk to the owners. A few months later, I was hired. A year later an extended family member introduced me to their neighbor, who owned a fascinating company that produced a line of products for treating concrete. We kept in touch, and about two years later, as the economy worsened and many of my insurance customers were shutting their business doors, I was hired by this new company. Then, several months ago, an ideal situation opened up as a college friend of mine called and referred me to Rain, letting me know about a position they were seeking to fill in Account Services.

Almost every employment opportunity that has opened up has come as a result of an existing relationship. A friendship, and hopefully a mutually beneficial friendship. I didn’t start out my career with a philosophy regarding the practice of networking. I also don’t feel I have ever abused or misused a friendship. It just seems that organically, opportunities have bloomed.

I have always felt that there is inherent value in every relationship, that both individuals are improved by a genuine fellowship, friendship, and consideration of each other.  And as a secondary event – as a result of that relationship – doors of opportunity are opened for each other to enjoy new friendships, new interests, hobbies, studies…and business relationships. Business is relationships. That is  my philosophy on what makes the business world go ’round.

 

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Senior UX Designer

Senior UX Designer, American Fork, UT

Rain (mediarain.com) is a small digital agency with offices in American Fork, UT, and New York City. We specialize in mobile and web software experiences, playing with world-renowned brands as well as other agencies. We have passion for awesome software, beautiful creative and innovative ideas.

We’re expanding our UX department in American Fork, UT, and are looking for the right individual to round out our team. So, if you want to work in the mountains of the West, doing what you love, and still have time to spend in the mountains, in the desert, with your family or on the open road, let it Rain.

 

DESCRIPTION

This is a senior UX designer position, but it’s not a place to rest on the laurels of past success. It’s an opportunity to lead, while still being able to get in the trenches and grind out some goods.

As an agency, our work ebbs and flows and sometimes that flow is like a fire hose. You’ll need to be able to cope with quick deadlines and insufficient time. It’s fast-paced, but it’s fun. Our UX designers generally don’t do high-fidelity/graphic design or the software development in our department, but we have a good relationship with and work closely with the design and development groups to ensure our products are useable and an overall good experience for the end consumer.

 

RESPONSIBILITIES

Our senior UX designers are expected to be able to lead experience design on some projects and fill in on production-level work on other projects. We’re looking for someone experienced with designing or creating mobile and web-based interactive experiences and who has experience leading others and working in a team environment.

When leading projects, the senior UX designer will have responsibility to guide other UX and graphic designers, and work with developers, QA team, producers, and management team to ensure project meets client and end-user goals and objectives.

 

IMPORTANT SKILLS

  • Ability to facilitate discovery processes, including research studies, information gathering and analysis, and sharing findings (e.g. surveys, focus groups, usability studies, contextual inquiry, stakeholder interviews, etc.)
  • Ability to communicate ideas and concepts to others in words and pictures. (e.g. Information architecture, wireframes, research findings, presentations, user flows, decision trees, prototypes, etc.)
  • Ability to juggle multiple projects with competing deadlines
  • Ability to facilitate ideation through brainstorms and other creative activities
  • Ability to keep current on web and mobile technologies

 

EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS

  • College degree in one of the following or a related field
    • Human Computer Interaction
    • Graphic Design
    • Cognitive Psychology
    • Computer Science
    • Instructional Design
  • 4+ years in UX or interaction design field
  • Proficiency with Adobe Creative Cloud — particularly Illustrator and Indesign
  • Ability to write clearly
  • Ability to communicate ideas clearly
  • Good interpersonal skills
  • Portfolio of examples that demonstrate breadth of experience with UX design (Not looking for polished, finished pieces, necessarily. We’re looking for the process that helps you get a team to the finished product.)

 

BONUS ROUND

  • Digital agency experience
  • Graphic design experience
  • Experience with HTML/CSS
  • Experience with software development
  • You understand statistics
  • Internship in related field
  • Research experience

 

BENEFITS / PERKS

  • Competitive salary
  • 401k matching
  • Health and dental insurance
  • Gym membership
  • Flexible schedule
  • Yearly company retreat or other bonus
  • IP ownership/creation opportunities
  • 15 days PTO / year
  • Additional week of PTO end of December if sales goals are met

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Android Developer

Rain (mediarain.com) is a digital agency located in American Fork, UT. We specialize in mobile and web software experiences. We play with brands and other agencies all over the world, but we’re Utah-grown and home-town friendly. Developers are drawn to our perfect score of 12 on the “Joel Test” (look it up). We have passion for awesome software, beautiful creative and innovative ideas. But we have passion for living, too. If you want to work in the mountains of the West, doing what you love, and still have time to love the mountains, the desert, your family or the open road, let it Rain.

RESPONSIBILITIES
Interact with clients, exploring and advising technological possibilities, discovering solutions that fit their goals
Architect and develop large-scale, well-written applications
Write clean, structured, object-oriented code with change and reuse in mind

EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS
Proven experience in writing native Android applications using java
Knowledge of using the related development tools (e.g. Eclipse, et al)
Advanced knowledge of the Android sdk

BONUS ROUND
Application deployed in an Android Market
Demonstrated experience with other mobile platforms such as iOS, WP7, etc
Experience with multi-platform solutions such as AIR for Mobile or PhoneGap
Game programming experience
Cloud Messaging experience
SEO, PPC, or Social Media Marketing

BENEFITS / PERKS
Competitive salary
401k matching
Health and dental insurance
Gym membership
Flexible schedule
Yearly company retreat or other bonus
IP ownership/creation opportunities
15 days PTO / year
Additional week of PTO end of December if sales goals are met

Please send resumes to: jobs@mediarain.com

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Congratulations Rain2O!! The first intelligent, green-friendly sprinkler system

Hate watering your lawn? Well, we are excited to announce that Rain2O, the first intelligent sprinkler system, has been selected by RainnovationRAIN’s internal products accelerator! Rain2O helps consumers and businesses save money, and drastically reduce water consumption through intelligent watering schedules.

More about Rain2O

The smart and friendly Rain2O sprinkler system reduces water consumption by 40%, and cuts water bills nearly in half. Along with enabling users to schedule waterings with their mobile devices, Rain2O is “weather smart”, and adapts based on forthcoming precipitation and weather patterns. Think Nest for sprinklers.

Who’s on the Rain2O team?

The Rain2O team is comprised of two exceptionally talented problem solvers – John Webster and Bryant Robertson. John, the Director of iOS development at RAIN, has nearly two decades of software development and program management experience. Bryant, Creative Director at RAIN, has over a decade of experience as a leading creative director and interactive designer in the digital space.

“Rain2O is going to radically change the way people care for and think about their lawns and water bills.”, Webster proclaims. “It will be the first solution to allow anyone to intelligently automate addressing their every watering need.”

“We’re beyond excited to be the first team to go through the Rainnovation accelerator. This is an incredible opportunity to solve a problem we’re both passionate about.”, noted Bryant.

What is Rainnovation?

Rainnovation is RAIN’s internal products accelerator. We incubate new products and services that originate from RAIN employee ideas (We’re Hiring!). Upon vetting ideas through an online submission process, the top teams are invited to pitch their product ideas at Rainnovation Pitch Day. Following Pitch Day, the top team selected has three full months to build a minimum viable product, and develop successful customer development approaches. RAIN will invest in teams which have success executing upon their product ideas.

Other products from Rainnovation Pitch Day

  • Go SCUBA! –  Go SCUBA! is a dive logger, equipment tracker, and dive site identification tool. With it, users can inventory their gear for inspections, track what gear has been used for which dives, calculate length of dives and provide dive sites based on users’ location or vacation destinations.

  • Grocery Pal – Grocery Pal is a mobile applciation that helps individuals shop more efficiently at grocery stores. It does so by sorting shopping lists and mapping the physical locations of items in stores

  • QuickBooks Sync – QuickBooks Sync simplifies the ways in which businesses track and process company credit card expenses.

  • Time Agent 88 – Time Agent 88 is an action packed, top-down game in which players solve puzzles using time-travel.

  • Stylesheet.IOStylesheet.IO enables developers and designers to compose stylesheets with realtime feedback from browsers, tablets and mobile devices. Stylesheet.IO seeks to enhance the approach to frontend development without changing the tools developers and designers know and love.

To stay current on all Rain2O and Rainnovation news, follow us on Twitter @Rainnovation and subscribe to our newsletter. For any questions regarding opportunities to collaborate, please don’t hesitate to reach out Rainnovation’s products manager, Doug Crescenzi.

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Looking Back (with a Forward Sort of Slant)

At fifty-eight years and some-odd months, I think I’m safe in saying I’m the old man at Rain. The ancient one. I carry with me the wisdom of the aged. Or at least the battle scars that indicate I should have at least a modicum of wisdom. But as one gets older, one realizes that wisdom is nothing more than a collection of I should haves, but didn’ts. Hindsights we can call them (but never regrets).

When I turned fifty, I realized I’m on the downhill side of this project we call life. I hope, however, that the postmortem is still a long ways off. In fact, there’s a part of me (perhaps the inner teenager), that believes I’m still in the design phase—that stage where the future is still bright, and I still have time to decide what I want to be when I grow up. A stage where some initial concepts have been laid out, basic requirements determined, some high level user stories identified. Now it’s time to drill down and create an architecture that will produce a satisfying, usable, maintainable outcome.

Most of my life I’ve attempted to follow the waterfall approach. A top down approach. Get the big picture. Research. Plan. Get all my ducks in a row. Meet those milestones—those accomplishments that show progress. That show I’m approaching success. Graduate college. Get Married. Get a job. Get a better job. Get another better job. Get . . . Well, you get it. Only, guess what. The waterfall approach doesn’t work so well for life either. At least my life. What works is a more extreme approach. The kind where you create a plan (based on those user stories) that starts with a series of sprints. Hit the first one running (pun intended). Finish it. Evaluate it. Re-evaluate the next sprint. Change it as necessary. Throw it out if you have to and create a new one. But always moving forward, only looking back to check progress. But not to wallow. Perhaps to admire. But never to wallow.

Like most software projects you will never reach a point where you are done. Sure, initial requirements may have been met. The user stories turned into actual things. But, still, never done. The results can always be improved, built on. New stories created. New features added. Oh, and how about keeping up with advances in technology? New platforms? New . . . I don’t know. Maybe whole new life altering philosophies? Or internally, whole new self discoveries?

So, what the heck is all this existential rambling all about? Well, let me elucidate.

My very first computer science class in college was Introduction to Algorithmic Languages. It was a beginning Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) class. Using punch cards (yes, fifty-eight is old enough for that). At the time I was a Psych major. But man! When I took that class and realized that people actually got paid to program? I was hooked. I changed majors right after breakfast, much to the chagrin of my academic adviser. After all, I was two-and-a-half semesters into Human Behavior and Clinical Psychology. Still, I had to do it. And boy! am I glad I did (AND I still graduated on schedule).

Thirty-five years later, I’m still doing it. Programming. But re-inventing myself as new technologies come to the fore. As an industry, we’ve gone from punch cards on mainframes with 256 K (that’s right—K) hard drives to a personal phone that can wake me up, put me to sleep, tell me where to go and when, and buy movie tickets for when I get there. Oh, and play bejeweled.

With the rapid fire changes that have (are, will) occurred, it is so easy to get left behind. At times, I have been, because I’ve been so involved in a current technology (at the requirements of the job-Du-jour) that there was no time to branch out. To explore. Thanks, however, to my job here at Rain, I’ve been able to keep closer to current. To learn new things. To expand my skill set.

The question then becomes, what will be current tomorrow? Or the next day? What platforms/languages/operating systems will I be using then? There’s really no way to tell. Take a guess. Start your sprint. Evaluate. Re-evalute. Re-re-re-Evaluate. Change directions as needed.

Be agile.

Be extreme.

And above all, have fun doing it!

Oh, and one final word of advice. Take up a hobby. One that has nothing to do with technology. I don’t know, maybe bowling or oil painting.

Because obsession needs leavening.

Randall Wright

(very) Senior Developer

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