Dear friends of Substantiv,

I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing holiday season...and didn't break your new years' resolutions on January 1 like I did ;)

This month marks the half-birthday of Substantiv, and we've been very busy! Here are a few of the projects we have been working on...

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The American Council on Education's "toolkit" for higher education advocacy. This has been a very exciting cause to be involved in, and we have gotten to work with some great people. An early comp for the interactive version is here:
http://substantiv.com/ace.jpg

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We're doing extensive production work for the site redesign that Fluke Networks (http://www.flukenetworks.com/) is launching this spring. I was a full-time employee at Fluke--back when I lived in Seattle about seven years ago--and it's been fun to work for my former co-workers again.

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And we've just submitted a proposal to Families Against Mandatory Minimums. It's for a complete redesign of their website (http://famm.org/)-- another great cause with which we would love to be involved.

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Of course the most exciting news to come out of of 2005 is that Substantiv now has an official mascot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leenie/sets/1324186/
Sawyer is a 2-year-old mutt rescued from the Norfolk city shelter. His hobbies include chewing, wrestling, and hiding shoes. When we're trying to seem literary, we say he's named for "Tom Sawyer"...though occasionally we'll admit his name is more likely inspired by the hot guy on "LOST."

Wishing each of you a happy and healthy 2006,

Eileen

Dear friends of Substantiv,

I hope you all had a happy and productive spring season :)

Phewf! Quite a lot has happened since we last sent an update.

Eileen spent the past several months in a project-management role for the creation of AOL's new education portal, StudyBuddy. It was a huge effort, including a lot of different players, AND it launched on time! The beta for StudyBuddy is here:
http://studybuddy.aol.com/

Earlier this year, we launched the American Council on Education's Toolkit for the "Solutions for Our Future" initiative. Both online and print versions of the toolkit were distributed to higher education institutions across the country. The online version is here:
http://substantiv.com/ACE/index.html

Mikael, Shanon and Eileen have been working extensively on the site for Dance/ Metro DC, a non-profit resource for the local dance community. It will feature news, performances, events, and a large database of dance organizations. We have a preliminary version here:
http://www.dancemetrodc.org/front/index.html

COMING SOON...

:::Eileen and Daniel have just started work with Mark Bisnow, of "Bisnow on Business" (www.bisnow.com) to produce his large collection of e-newsletters

:::Betsy and Eileen will be working with the non-profit Community Bridges of Maryland to redesign, and update the content for their website (www.communitybridges-md.org)

::: AND, we are very fortunate to be continuing work with the American Council on Education throughout the summer. Michael and Eileen will be providing content services for www.acenet.edu; Eileen and Shanon will be doing a redesign of www.solutionsforourfuture.org.

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The past few months have been incredibly fun, and busy--as we swing wildly back and forth between trying to build the infrastructure to handle large projects, alternating with panic that no one will ever hire us again :)

Thank you so much for your continued support! I feel so very lucky to be doing the work that I love, alongside such great clients and partners.

Best wishes from,

Eileen, and the team at Substantiv

Last week, we launched the new substantiv.com. In addition to a slight design refresh, the site itself is now run completely on Movable Type, which will make it easier to update our content.

The site is composed of five "blogs": Links, Services, Projects, Team, and the main Substantiv blog where we have news and other types of entries.

Dear friends of Substantiv,

I hope this message finds you well.
Has it really been a year since I last sent an update?... I guess we've been busy! Here are just a few of the projects that we have been involved with since our last update:

www.solutionsforourfuture.org
www.studybuddy.com
www.dancemetrodc.org
www.fcmlcc.org
www.pilatesbodyandsoul.com
www.communitybridges-md.org

Also, we continue to provide full-time content management and web services to the American Council on Education (www.acenet.edu). One of our current goals is to find a way to offer this service to more associations.

Last month, we launched a refreshed Substantiv website which includes a new portfolio of our work. It has a Movable Type backend, which makes for easy updates (and makes my geeky side very happy.)

In March, I went to South By Southwest Interactive in Austin Texas (www.sxsw.com). It was good to meet up with some former co-workers, and old friends. Oh yeah, and to learn some stuff too! Web technology still feels like magic to me, so I always come away from experiences like that even more inspired by my job and the industry in which I work.

I can't believe it has been two years since I first registered the domain substantiv.com, and left the nine-to-five world for the crazy life of running my own business. It is unpredictable and I have had to learn a lot really quickly, but I'm having such a great time doing it.

None of it would be possible without the support of great clients and friends like you.

Best wishes from,

Eileen, and the team at Substantiv