If there’s anything we’ve learned over the years, it’s that there is no “right way” to standardize the creative process but, instead, that the process varies based on the individual and the project. It’s important to our leaders that our teams feel empowered to get their work done in a way that makes them feel fulfilled by their creations. There will be times when we struggle to find inspiration in the moment, but one thing we remind ourselves of to help us push through is to simply trust the process. 🚀
🎟️ Webinar Re-Cap
This month, we hosted our first webinar - Client-Side Chats: Leveraging Custom Applications to Drive Growth. The speaker panel featured Maurice Ferrell from the University of North Carolina’s School of Government (UNC SoG) and Savas Labs team members: Maddy Closs, Taylor Tice, and Marc Herschberger. We discussed the process for how our team built a custom book importer that allowed UNC SoG to release their publications online for easier access for their customers. If you weren’t able to attend the webinar but would still like to watch it, you can do that here.
However, if you are interested in learning more about the technical aspects of the project that weren’t covered in as much detail during the webinar, you can read the case study here.
The Brand New Blog is one of our designer’s favorite places to visit when they are in need of inspiration. Brand New covers redesigns and new designs of notable products, companies, services, and organizations across all industries.
This article features sixteen small tasks you can do each day to nurture your creative side.
Emma Taggart, Vectornator
🌮 Featured Work - Tacolocation
We’ve officially launched our first Labs™ project of the year! Tacolocation is a taco finder custom application that we built for the local taco junkies of Raleigh, NC. The idea for the app came from our Business Development Coordinator Riley, whose love for tacos inspired the rest of our team. At Savas Labs, we enjoy building custom applications because it allows our development team to flex their creative muscles and find unique ways to bring our ideas to life. Together with our developers Hong and Niharika, we used APIs from Google to display the location and ratings of local-based taco shops. They also custom-built an API to calculate the distance between our office and the selected taco shop. We invite you to check it out!
Our Front-End Developer Darrin “Lemon” Mack has been on quite a journey this month, speaking at numerous conferences all over the world. We asked Lemon a few questions to talk to our subscribers about his experience!
1. What countries did you travel to earlier this month?
The first destination was Porto, the second biggest city in Portugal, and a place where all the wine is €2, and all of it is the best you’ve ever drank. My daughter and I flew there on her birthday because she’s a very good negotiator.
Twenty-four hours before we were scheduled to fly back to Minneapolis, we took a PCR COVID test and it came back positive, which barred us from entering the United States. We canceled the flights and idly waited to test negative.
Meanwhile, NDC (who organized NDC Porto) said, “Well, we’re doing one in London; why don’t you just come here?” While the same flight restrictions didn’t apply, I still waited seven days after the positive test when I felt we could safely be considered non-transmissive, and then took a flight to London to speak there.
While I wasn’t able to attend a few other conferences due to my condition, I was able to speak at the Webinale in Berlin this past Sunday.
2. What are the different topics of your talks at the conferences?
The main one I give (and I gave in Portugal and London) is called “I’m Gonna Make You Stop Hating CSS.” It’s specifically meant for an audience of experienced but backend-focused developers who probably already have a negative disposition to CSS and I try to win them over. The other ones I’ve done:
CMS Speed Dating - A presentation of different CMS options as tinder profiles. You don’t need to find a soulmate forever, but you just need something to keep your content warm at night.
How To Make Your Website A Progressive Web App (And Why You Might Want To) - I’ve always hated the title of this one, but it’s a talk about creating PWAs using existing site structure
Shrink The Web: How To Get Happier By Removing Crap - a talk about web performance
“Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.” - Malcolm Forbes
Closing thoughts —
We are planning to host more Client-Side Chats later this year. If you have a suggestion for a business process of ours you would like to hear more about, feel free to send us an email - info@savaslabs.com!
![[TACO] Tacolocation_Open Graph](https://hs-21460480.f.hubspotemail.net/hub/21460480/hubfs/%5BTACO%5D%20Tacolocation_Open%20Graph.jpg?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=%5BTACO%5D%20Tacolocation_Open%20Graph.jpg)
