When it comes to content, I’d agree with Josh Clark when he says that it all depends on the audience and their goals. That goes for both mobile and desktop. When it comes to site-building, I’d advocate responsive web design 98% of the time. Furthermore, I might add that whatever a business’s goals are, the more content that you can have available, the better. The catch is that with the small screen real estate on mobile devices, all that content needs to be well designed and usable. This might be the single greatest challenge when it comes to mobile design.

Content is Not Code-Specific
As I just mentioned, the most important thing to remember when planning out and deploying a website build and mobile strategy is that no matter how device-specific your content is, that does not mean you need to build it one way or another. Responsive websites can easily hide or show content based on the same media queries that rearrange the menu or change font size. Just because your website is responsive does not mean it will look/be the same on smaller screens (you could argue quite the opposite, actually… if you look at our website, brolik.com on a desktop and on a phone, they’re very different, even though our site is responsive).

Since planning your content is required either way, I’d advocate a responsive approach to save time and money building and updating, and I’d throw out the idea of two or more separate versions of the same site.

More Reasons to Love Responsive
Beyond the “save time/money” argument, there are more mobile-related reasons to choose responsive web design. A big one is url structure. Have you ever been emailed a link to an article that sends you to a truncated, mobile version of that article even though you’re on your desktop? Or have you ever clicked on a link in Google from your phone, only to get redirected to the generic mobile homepage? These aren’t minor annoyances, they are relatively serious issues that can lead to frustrated users and bounces.

Another negative of separate site versions stems from the widespread recommendation that additional “non-mobile” content should be accessible through a link to the “full desktop version” of a website. This means that while users get the benefit of a streamlined, fast-loading mobile site, they get “after-thoughted” into a cumbersome and slow full site on their small device if they want some specific piece of content. The full site may even have a look and feel that’s different enough to be confusing, and users will need to “re-learn” the navigation. Plus, getting back to the mobile version of the page they linked from is likely a confusing task.

More Than Mobile
If you look a little beyond mobile, the same mobile vs. full site argument applies to tablets and any other “future devices” that we’ll inevitably see over time. Adding a third (or more) version of your site requires the same content planning as it would otherwise, but now the issues involving url structure and additional desktop content are multiplied. Then there’s the maintenance and content management of a site, which also get tripled (or more). Not with responsive, however.

Even though we don’t see as many articles written about tablet-specific content, we surely will. (And it’s not like they don’t exist). With responsive design, we can actually focus on the task of planning content, instead of the task of recoding.

So Please…
It’s important to keep reading and writing about the best ways to structure content for different devices and locations. This topic is incredibly pertinent to businesses and is often overlooked, even in 2012. But don’t confuse the content with the code. Build responsively for the plethora of reasons to, but don’t do it because you think your users deserve to see all of your content no matter where they browse from (although they do deserve that). Give your users all of your content, but give them what they want, when they want it. And please, make it easy for them. In the end, after everything is planned and executed, all the user cares about is that they can quickly and easily find the content they’re looking for, where and when they’re looking for it.

Try thinking about a few of these key points:
(1) Where do you see clients feeling the greatest cognitive dissonance with your brand and process?

(2) Where do your clients feel the most connected with the experience you’re delivering?

(3) Are you structuring your communication to make your clients an integral part of projects?

(4) What are the most common emotions associated with your projects upon completion? Let’s go back to what may be the most important focal point, the dissonance.

Where are the biggest disconnects with your clients?
We’ve all been in situations where things turn out well in the end, but in the thick of it there seems to be a fair number of misfires. Shaw suggests a simple solution for this. Creatively ‘mindmap’ your process and identify the ‘pain points’ where customers feel disconnected. More times than not, you’ll identify areas where clients feel left out, having unanswered questions, and negative emotions toward your brand. While these feelings may not always occur, when they do, make sure to take note and plot them on your mindmap. As service providers we can’t expect our clients to understand all the small details, and it’s not their responsibility to. Instead, we should do our part to recognize signs of confusion and frustration, and do what we can to help foster understanding and positive emotions. The more aware we are of these areas, the less likely they are to happen, and the better prepared we are to handle them when they come up.

Where do clients find the most value in your process?
It’s equally important to note the times where excitement and positive emotion run high within your process. How come? People enjoy feeling connected and knowing they can have influence in the decisions being made. This is especially true for those who are highly invested in the success of a project. Increasing a customer’s perceived value and awareness of their ability to contribute will positively affect their overall outlook. Rather than using a linear model of providing value to your clients, think about what their expectations of value are and what you can do to increase that value. Taking it a step further, think about what customers desire from your brand and pinpoint areas that can deliver value above their general expectations. Delivering in these previously unidentified areas becomes easier because there was little expectation to begin with, but there is great potential to affect the perceived value.

Structure communication to have one, cohesive voice
Reflect on how your communication makes others feel, and how that in turn pushes them to react to what you say. Take a simple example Shaw used: the pens at your local bank. More times than not, these pens are chained to a desk. What kind of message is this sending to their customers? Do they anticipate their customers are planning on stealing them? You may not equate the communication you have on a daily basis to pens at a bank, but in many cases the ways we choose to correspond can have a similar effect. Service providers should structure these messages in ways that ensure the trust and appreciation they have for clients is understood. This idea operates on a more subconscious level, but in facing facts, we find more times than not our subconscious governs how well we ‘play with others.’

How do your clients feel when a project has ended?
The ‘peak end rule’ shows us that we should look at our process and design it in ways that leave our customers with positive emotions when things come to a close. Admittedly, this is not an easy thing to do. At times things become skewed, communication lacks, and a project is left feeling abandoned. What can we do to change this perception and give our clients what they ultimately need and are looking for? Rather than focusing strictly on the product or service we deliver, we can alter our focus to think about the emotion surrounding the end of a project. Do clients leave feeling valued and pleased or disappointed and neglected? Completely separate from the end product, we should pay attention to our client’s emotional levels. If customers feel as though they’re being supported and cared for, they are more likely to consider interacting with the brand that delivered those emotions in the future. Ultimately, this helps to facilitate the mindset of a long-term partnership. And, really, shouldn’t that be the end goal?

This is part 1 of a 2-part series, and it addresses clients who hire firms for responsive design. Part 2 will address designers and coders who are building responsive websites for clients.

You’ve heard about responsive design, right? It appears, though, that even with its growing popularity, responsive design is notably absent from almost any corporate website (with at least one exception). Like a lot of design trends, responsive design is extremely popular in design portfolio websites and web/techy blogs. The benefits of this technique (one build, all platforms) could seriously help businesses from a financial standpoint, but I’m not seeing the wide adoption that I’d expect from something so great. Maybe I just need to be patient. After all, it takes longer to roll out a new corporate web presence than a freelance portfolio website, and responsive design is a fairly new practice. Or maybe the lack of corporate responsive design stems from the inflexibility that companies show when it comes to their design ideals and how they translate to the Internet. I’ve been seeing this exact thing happen with our clients, which is what drove me to write this article. Company decision-makers: Please give this a read. You will benefit greatly. Take proactive steps towards a smart and functional website that will delight, not frustrate, your users. (And that seems to be a rarity on the web.)

My company’s been building solely responsive websites for a number of months now, and as the first batch of projects is going live, I can look back on the process with a great feel for where our clients are struggling with it. For us, it’s been positive overall, but there are a few sticky points that are worth noting for real world responsive design.

The In-Between Browser Sizes
Probably the hardest thing to explain (and to fix) with responsive design is the “in-between” sizes. Media queries and percentage-based design can fully cover a desktop-, tablet- and mobile-sized layout, but there are instances where an in-between size, like a smaller laptop, will show broken lines of text or bad margins, for instance. These problems are definitely fixable and should not derail a project. It can be really frustrating from a client’s end to keep pointing out these little bugs, but it’s almost impossible for the designer to replicate every screen situation, so it’s a necessary part of testing responsive design. Oh, and by the way, responsive requires a lot of testing.

Internet Explorer
The second challenge with “real world” responsive design is a browser called Internet Explorer. I don’t like to bash IE like a lot of designers and coders do, but I can’t ignore its shortcomings either, especially in older versions. Example: older versions of IE don’t even respond to media queries (a staple of responsive design) without a jQuery plugin, and once you get below IE8, things like inline-block elements aren’t even recognized! These details are essential for a successful responsive website, but they’re not easily explained to non-coders. Because of IE’s shoddiness, and since a majority of corporate-types still use Internet Explorer, it’s really important to make sure everything works in IE before the client sees it. As a “website tester,” it’s good to have an open mind about IE bugs, because they can usually get fixed or finessed. (As a designer, if you don’t go above and beyond with responsive design IE testing, you’re asking for trouble. Trust me.)

But the IE issue goes a bit further than testing a site before showing it off. A fundamental part of responsive is that websites look a little bit different on every different screen. Designers can’t have pixel by pixel control like they may be used to. This concept is really important to keep in mind, not just for IE, but for all different browser and computer situations. Just because a site looks different from one screen to another (or one browser to another, or one device to another), doesn’t mean the site is “wrong.” Coding many versions of the same site to try to make every browser the same is a waste of time and money, and it goes against the philosophical concept of responsive design.

On a positive note, though, IE9 (the latest version) is looking good. I’m very hopeful, although its mere existence doesn’t mean that everyone will upgrade.

Complexity
A third reason that some companies don’t make the responsive jump is that there are other popular web design styles that make responsive harder than it already is. Imagine the popular parallax scrolling technique and how hard it must be to make sure it works on the phone as well as the computer… with the same code. Although at times it’s hard, complex and responsive design is 100% possible. In fact, in 2012, with skilled programming, almost anything is possible.

But Don’t Be Scared
So maybe responsive design is harder in the real world than it seemed at first. It started showing up on simple, designer-driven websites, but what does that mean for real world practicality? When my company first started believing in responsive, we used to tell clients how it’s actually not a new skill, but a new way of thinking. So simple! Well, looking back, it’s not very simple at all. But difficulty is no reason to shy away. Find a skilled programmer (or company or team of programmers) and make sure they know a lot about standards-based coding, old web browsers and new tablets. Make sure they know where to make the right sacrifices and then trust their decisions! The payoff is worth it. As a company, you can stay agile, stylish, uber-functional and maybe even below budget. It can be done. But it can’t be done without sacrifices, even small ones.

I have a lot of experience being the voice and conveying the brand of companies online, and the most important thing I can tell you about the websites in 2012 is that it’s time to start trusting the web experts. Years ago, there weren’t enough web experts, and we looked to print designers to shape our web experience. Today, it takes a lot of specialty to launch and run a successful web presence. Instead of fighting the unknown, embrace it (with the help of an expert).

Before I get you thinking that native mobile and tablet apps are becoming obsolete, let me explain the current state of mobile a bit more. Native apps (the kind that need to be downloaded from an app store) utilize device-specific features and can offer a better user experience and better means of payment than a mobile website. While this is true, there is potential for this to slowly change over time based on technology advances and the launch of different and new devices. Jacob notes that, “In the future, the cost-benefit trade-off for apps vs. mobile sites will change.” I agree with this.

To put it simply, there will be more and more mobile devices and operating systems and these variations will only continue to branch out. That means you’ll be building native apps for not only iPhone iOS, iPad iOS and Android, but likely 10 other devices and platforms if you want reach a large majority of your userbase.

When will this happen? Not sure. For now, if you can afford a native app (minimally, it’s all three: iOS, iOS, Android) and your app requires mobile device features, then by all means, develop it. Develop a mobile web experience, too. And while you’re at it, consider developing using responsive design. In case you don’t know what responsive design is, it’s when you code once and that code allows your website content to adapt to fit any device or screen size.

Aside from your native app initiatives, I want to give you a bigger picture approach to your mobile strategy; one that is optimal for today, but will be even more appropriate and rewarding years from now. First, let’s replace “mobile strategy” with device strategy. If you’re thinking mobile, you’re starting too narrow. Consider the future of the web and technology and realize that a few years from now we might be carrying around devices of all different shapes and sizes, and we’ll probably have smart TVs that span our entire living room and office walls. Maybe that’s a bit extreme and probably not very cost-effective for most of us, but you need to think about what’s possible, not what’s right in front of you. No matter how you cut it, in the near future responsive web design will go from smart design to indispensable, necessary design.

Now again, let’s think about device strategy and entertain my prediction that in five years there will be 10 new devices, of varying shapes, sizes and operating systems, each holding a chunk of market share. Responsive web design techniques that you use today will prepare you for these new devices.

Now, think about the native applications that you are considering building right now. You may be building and upgrading for 3 operating systems now, but imagine what the investment will be when you’re building for 10 or more separate devices in 5 years. Do the benefits outweigh the cost? It’s hard to answer yes.

Let’s think outside of digital parameters to define the term. Take a 14 year old girl. Her father asks her to take out the garbage every Thursday night. She moans and groans, even though she knows it’s coming every week, and she is absolutely aggravated that she has to leave her favorite TV episode or halt her texting to take out the trash.

Although extreme, it reinforces a concept that I’ve advocated since founding Brolik in 2004. Designers are experts, and we do things for a reason. I don’t show clients multiple design options. A large number of people consider what a designer does as “art” or “making things pretty,” which are both subjective. In reality, a designer’s job is very objective- to produce a calculated, thoughtful and ultimately “successful” design that is goal-based and function-driven. Design is rooted in extensive research, experience, and learned skill, and it needs to persuade an audience to react emotionally and to do whatever it is you want them to do.

Presenting multiple design options just doesn’t fit that model.

There is always one “answer” that is most correct in any design problem.
Remember that good design is extremely purposeful, and a good designer doesn’t typically use the color green, for instance, just because they like it. They use it because the target audience likes it and will predictably react to it in a certain way.

In Paul Rand’s case, while dealing with Jobs, he refuses to brighten the color yellow as per Jobs’ request. That’s bold, but I can tell you one thing- he used that exact shade of a yellow for a very specific reason. Rand, an expert for decades at this point, was in a unique position to tell a paying client “no,” but most designers aren’t in that position and must compromise design for their client’s whim. To put it another way, the client can make the design less successful.

Furthermore, choice is dangerous.
There’s a TED Talk about happiness where a study group is asked to choose one of two different photos. They get to keep the one they choose, and the other is sent away. Half of the group is told they have five days to change their mind, and the other half gets no chance to rethink their decision. A few days later, participants were surveyed about how happy they were with their photos. The group that could not return their photo loved their choice. The group that got a chance to swap their photo was less satisfied. They all wonder if maybe they’d be happier with the one they didn’t choose.

That’s some crazy psychology, but it’s worth noting. There was no explicit quality difference between the actual photos. You could argue that having a choice alone made participants less happy with a product that they would have been (and should have been) content with in the first place.

Iterate!
Unlike Rand, I don’t believe that designers are always right and that they should be the final say when designing for someone else’s business. I do believe that instead of giving choices upfront, the best and most successful designs are arrived at through a solid discovery phase and then iteration. Show a working, functioning, real life design and then start discussing changes from there.

Lastly, time is money.
Just in case you aren’t convinced, let’s talk money. Why would you ask a designer to spend their limited hours split amongst three different designs for the same project? You’d be better served to have them spend three times as long on one design.

Furthermore, if your designer puts the required effort into the initial design, they’ll have nothing left but fluff to fill out more options for you. Once you arrive at the “correct answer,” the other designs are simply incorrect!

It all starts with you.
To get what you want from your designer, forget about forcing them to give options. Focus your time on giving them resources. Share links to things you like. Share what your competitors are doing. Show them a random magazine ad you like. Tell them about your vision for the company’s future, fill them in on your company’s history, and ask them questions. That’s how you get what you want. Give them the tools to do their job. You didn’t hire them just because they know how to use Photoshop. You hired them because they’re experts in their field, and they can use their expertise to help you excel in yours.

Let Websites be Websites
We need to rethink websites and how we design and interact with them. We should stop thinking about them like they’re printed material on paper. Let’s embrace the movement and interaction that modern technology allows us to have with our message. Websites should provide the most optimized, quickest and most enjoyable user experience no matter where they’re viewed. In order to do that, we need to employ the principles of responsive web design.

Responsive web design is design that grows and flows within the browser window. Using only one code base, a website can grow to fit the largest screen or shrink and stack to fit the smallest mobile screen, all with elegance and attention paid to design and usability. The trick is to forget about some of the restraints we currently impose on websites while deciding what is “good” and “pleasing” and “efficient” design, and to embrace some new thinking.

Is this starting to sound too philosophical?

Well, OK. Fine. Instead of talking about the design philosophies behind responsive web design, here are a few reasons why a business can benefit from thinking about the Web in a new way.

Adaptability
The Internet is an open and adaptable medium that can show up anywhere, from computers and phones to TVs to vanity mirrors and car seat headrests. Who knows where the next screen or projection surface will be? Content for such an adaptable medium should be able to adapt. This reduces redundancy in planning, development, and maintenance and therefore decreases cost. One code base can serve any and every device at the same time.

Furthermore, there will always be some new device that people decide to start surfing the Internet on. If your site is responsive, there’s no need to decide if it’s worth the cost to build a version of your site for the new device. It’s already built and displaying beautifully.

Consistent Branding
For a lot of companies, online presence is almost entirely a branding exercise. It’s all about being there when your customer is looking for you. A successful brand is one that customers can identify with, relate to, and ultimately fall in love with. It makes sense that after spending the time to bake that brand into a perfect website, it should always look the same. With a responsive design, that brand will form fit to whatever medium it’s being displayed on. There’s never confusion or guessing for your customer, and there’s only one update each time you need to make a change.

Evolution
In a very short time, all of the smartest and most agile brands will boast responsive websites, and everyone else will be clamoring to catch up. Efficiency and good sense will undoubtedly win out, and when that time comes, instead of trying to keep up, you’ll be miles ahead.

It’s hard to tell companies that they should, without a doubt, look at implementing a responsive website. There are limitations. There are drawbacks.

It’s really easy, however, to tell companies that they’d better open up to a new way of thinking about the Web. They’d better be receptive to some big and beneficial change, and they’d better be ready to implement when the time comes. Those who don’t react will fall behind. It’s a lot like when older companies used to argue the importance of a website in the first place… remember those days!?

This article was originally published in Philly Ad News

Two of my Favorite Responsive Sites Right Now
(Play around with the window size to see how these sites shift and rearrange for different device sizes… or open them up on your phone and your computer at the same time.)
http://anderssonwise.com
http://bostonglobe.com

Sure, Why Not Press The Button?
You’re an avid user of Twitter and you’re pushing 2,000 friends on Facebook. You check the box and watch while the application computes your social status. It comes back with a score of 35 out of 100 and offers $5 off your purchase if you share your new buy with friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Decisions, decisions. Do you share your purchase with everyone you know? That’s pretty annoying. If you only share it with your “shopping circle” on Google+, you get $1.50 off. Is it even worth it?

You press the button. The price for the garment drops $1.50 and your transaction is complete. You casually show your on-screen receipt as you pass by the employee at the door. He offers you a bag, and you accept. The clothing brand just paid $1.50 to blast your inner circle with some free marketing. Well, not free, but for a lot less than it would cost to reach the same amount of people with an ad in a magazine or an online ad campaign, and hopefully with more credibility.

It’s Already Begun…
For those of you tech types and marketers who are aggressively driving the engine into this future of purchasing, good for you. Klout, for example is making noise with their social status ranking, the Klout Score. If you go to Klout.com and connect your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, they’ll give you a score and attempt to tell you what topics you’re considered “influential” in. On top of that, they’re already working with businesses to identify top influencers to offer them perks. An interesting example is the promotion of Stephen King’s new book Mile 81, where based on your Klout score, readers receive a free e-book download in exchange for Tweeting out the promotion and the book.

Take this a step further in the future. Imagine every product, every restaurant and every event you’re interested in calculates your social score as you walk through the door. If you want to get in, you better tell your friends you’re at the club. If you want to get in without a door charge, you better have a high social status.

There Are Some Concerns…
There are a few major problems with the future of shopping, as it pertains to social status and buying, and why it may run into some serious push-back. Giving discounts as an incentive to share a purchase on Facebook promotes biased brand advertising (what many would consider social media garbage) jamming up your feed. If your Facebook feed is full of “I bought this and that”, you’re going to stop trusting your friends.

Another problem is the rich and influential get the price breaks while the poor and tech-illiterate don’t get the deal. It accentuates the disparity between the social class that buys every new iteration of the iPhone and the everyday cell phone user that has never heard of a data plan or downloaded a mobile app. But do these people shop at Banana Republic or Victoria Secret anyhow, and do they even exist in 2015? Sure they do. Only 27% of US mobile phones are currently smartphones (according to comScore’s 2010 Mobile Year In Review report). Globally, only 1 of 5 people own smartphones. But, what will that number look like in 2015 and what percentage of people will use their smartphones to browse and buy on a daily basis? Assuming smartphone growth continues at it’s current rapid pace, by 2015 there will be a new value put on each customer, and these brands (the smart ones, anyway) will achieve as much social publicity as they can get from their socially-savvy consumers.

The Truth Is…
If you aren’t carrying an expensive smart phone and aren’t spending time on the social web, people still care about you. You will simply become less and less valuable in the eyes of your favorite brands and will be penalized, paying top dollar for their products. It’s high school all over again. Lady Gaga gets paid thousands for an endorsed tweet. You get nothing…unless you’re one of the cool kids (based on your calculated online social ranking) of course.

This article was originally published in Philly Ad News

Turntable.fm originally started as Stickybits, a QR code scanning, geotagging, hodgepodge of a tech start up. They raised $2 million in initial funding. When Stickybits didn’t take off, they pivoted their business and transformed into Turntable.fm, using their remaining money and resources to launch the product into its current state.

How does it work?
Users can create or join rooms. In each room, there are five DJs at any one time and up to two hundred other users who sit and listen.  DJs can then search for songs through the Turntable system or upload their own. The rooms then cycle through the DJs one song at a time while the rest of the crowd listens and “awesomes” or “lames” the song. If a song gets enough “lames,” it gets skipped. The DJs have incentive to play popular songs in order to collect “awesomes,” which unlock bigger and better avatars. This gamification makes Turntable “fun and engaging” for users and gives it a leg up on the competition.

Why is Turntable special?
Because people are far better curators than any algorithm. This is social music. People love music and they love sharing it. There are still some major hurdles for them to overcome, but Turntable has that “it” factor that Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare all respectively have shared since their launch into the world of social media.

Record labels and their attitudes on copyright laws present the last major hurdle for Turntable. Currently, all of their music is licensed through Medianet, a digital content provider, employing the protection of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Turntable, just like Pandora, claims to be a “non-interactive radio service,” which allows it to work under the DMCA. They pay a flat fee to the music owners for each song played. But there are several grey areas within the DMCA that need to get ironed out before Turntable can fixate itself within the social media landscape.

Where is Turntable going?
In the Brolik office, Turntable.fm has replaced iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, Hypem and the other numerous music services we previously used. Although Turntable is still rather young, it has some serious potential. We’ve set up a Brolik Turntable room for the office, and anyone can come in and play a song for themselves and our office via our wireless speakers (fair warning, we’re not always in there).

Once you start thinking about other businesses that can employ it, some real possibilities emerge. Imagine if you could go to your local bar and DJ with other regulars (and a few staff members to keep it organized). Or before you head off to the gym, you jump into your gym’s Turntable room and line up a playlist for the next hour. A few artists such as Ra Ra Riot and Talib Kweli have even started using Turntable.fm to showcase new songs and connect with fans first hand.

Turntable.fm is special. No other site has brought together social networking and music in such a successful blend. Let’s hope that the record companies see it as a beneficial tool that they can use and don’t thwart it before it can grow and evolve. At this point, all that we can do is sit back and watch this small start up begin to address the hurdles that still remain. But for now, we sit, wait, and keep listening.

What will your responsibilities be in this role?
While my main focus will be on the Philadelphia and tri-state area, I also look to bring other national accounts that i have relationships with into the fold. Initial focus will be in the following areas: web and mobile commerce markets, marketing and branding via smart phone applications and social media marketing & advertising.

What particular industries/clients do you hope to work with at Brolik?
I have been in the gaming industry for 12 plus years with the majority of my time on the licensing and marketing side. The mobile industry through app development and social media has created a very viable and receptive market in which key brands can marketed.  I look to utilize my contacts in the video game arena to help expand and grow the Brolik business.

What other positions have you held at other companies, what were your responsibilities and when did you work there?
I run my own independent licensing marketing and sales company.  I have worked with several small to medium size companies in the professional sports and video game areas.  In the past I worked for some very large companies and felt the need to develop my own business.

Have you worked with any noteworthy clients in the past that you would like to mention?
To date I have had the pleasure of working with several great companies: Louisville Slugger, Life Fitness, Everlast, Callaway, Prince, X Games, Sanrio (Hello Kitty), Pokemon, Nickelodeon, MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL and the Arena Football League.

What colleges/universities have you graduated, with what degree and when?
I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania w/ liberal arts degree in 1989.

Do you belong to any relevant associations or groups and do you hold a leadership position within?
I am involved with two charities:  I am a Committee Chair for Alex’s Lemonade Stand.  I have had the opportunity to be involved with Alex’s for about 5 years.  I am also on the board of the David B. Weiss Memorial Foundation.  This is a new foundation that was unfortunately named after a friend of mine who died earlier this year.

Is there anything you would like to include that was not addressed in the previous questions?
I have been hired to add my experience to help gain more presence in the B2B areas in Philadelphia in several key areas: restaurants, wine & spirits/beverages, fashion, jewelry, finance, health.  In addition, the possibility of extending beyond with some key national companies is a goal as well.

What do you do for fun?
I’m married with 3 kids ages 14, 12 and 10.  When I’m not at one of their various sporting events, I enjoy working out, running, playing basketball and I’m an avid Philadelphia sports fan.