The Crew

Steve Badowski

Adam Katzenback

Will Hutson

Tony Briceno

Nick Perold

Dan Sullivan

Bob Whitney

See you at the end of the month!

This article is copyright © 2012 

Last month, we celebrated Carrot Creative’s sixth birthday in our penthouse office with cocktails, a perfect view of the Manhattan skyline, and 200 of our favorite people.

Commemorating our company’s birthday each year gives us a chance to appreciate and honor not only what we’ve done, but also the people who have supported us along the way—the people who make each year possible and even better than the last.

We take a lot of pride in our culture and our space and we were more excited than ever to share it with our friends and family. Here’s a glimpse (put together by our friends at Demonstrous Productions) into the world of Carrot Creative and our very special night.

To everyone who helped make this past year incredible: thank you.

— Bobby, Mike, Chris

For photos from the red carpet, click here.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Dumbo loft, check.
Free Brooklyn beer, check (thank you RRE Ventures).
Everyone in room geeking-out over mobile apps, check.

This pretty much sums up the Monday Mobile Brooklyn event this past Monday night where our very own Robert Gaafar, Carrot Creative’s CEO presented our submission to the NYC Big Apps contest: “Where Brooklyn App?”

In case you missed it, this application allows users to tour key Brooklyn points of interest through an augmented reality lens and create a social atmosphere for other travelers to document their trip.

Data Sets

1. Directory of Historic Houses
2. Directory of Parks Disability Accessibility Facilities and Programs
3. Directory of Playgrounds
4. Directory of Recreation Centers

Integration Features

1. Augmented Reality
2. Google Maps
3. Facebook Connect
4. Twitter OAuth
5. Foursquare
6. Flickr

Where Brooklyn App is not available yet. We are currently waiting for approval from Apple.

Bobby rocked it obviously but there were other fun and innovative presentations like the Sit or Squat public restroom locator. Our friend Phil from PegShot sharing the photo/video application that “pegs” your location with a picture or video. My personal favorite, NYC Broken Meters to help city drivers find free parking but utilizing the city data.

Thanks again to Mobile Monday Brooklyn for organizing another excuse for the digital minds from Brooklyn and Manhattan to get together in one room to share, learn, and well, drink.

Peace out luddites, you don’t stand a chance in Brooklyn.

This article is copyright © 2012 

HUGE , Carrot Creative neighbor (we have a view of their window) and recent Digital DUMBO host, organized an Internet Week event today at the DUMBO Arts Center.

A Job Grows In Brooklyn: Brooklyn-based interactive agency HUGE challenge you to steal their jobs.Think you’re good? Take it to the next level by learning from HUGE’s celebrated senior team. Find out what they’re looking for in the next big talent. Now that you’re a major player, how do you move higher? Where are the jobs in digital going? Developers, visual designers, project managers and interaction designers will learn to become more confident, more marketable and who knows, maybe land an interview with HUGE. We’ll share on-the-job insights and take you through examples of applicants that did (and didn’t) make the cut.

While there was no fighting or throw downs to removing the HUGE staff members from their current positions, the speakers each provided a great overview of their individual disciplines, what HUGE is looking for and what people looking to get a job (or new job) in the digital age should be thinking about.

Some key points for those who could not attend:

• The space is still growing. Digital is growing. Digital agencies are hiring for things that will be super relevant over the next 3-4 years. (Carrot Creative is too!)
• When asked who will be working in digital in 2015, most of the room raised their hand. One thing to learn: Your skill sets are changing.
• Working in digital is like working in dog years. If you’ve been in this space for a few years, it feels like 7 of your life because of how much has changed. (I really liked this quote by Nantini Rauch, Head of Recruiting for HUGE)
• When interviewing at digital agencies, show off your successes and show off your failures.
• Be willing to collaborate. If you can’t, good luck finding a job in the digital age.
  

Joe Stewart, Creative Director at HUGE was definitely the highlight (for me at least) with some tips to Designers:

1. Be terrified every day.
2. Never stop designing.
3. Embrace Arial.
4. Becoming a great designer has nothing to do with Photoshop.
5. CEOs don’t give a s*** about your kerning.
6. Don’t go back to school if you have a job.

In short: Do what you love to do. I’m glad that message came out of the panel as it should be the one thing everyone is thinking about these days. Work in a place that makes you happy, keeps you excited and encourages you to learn. If that’s not the current state, move on. You have to be happy and you can be.

This article is copyright © 2012 

We’re happy to announce today that >carrot creative will now provide social media strategy, design and development work to Complete Control Management, a leading artist management and music marketing company.

Complete Control Management manages top selling artists including Tiësto, American Hi-Fi,Cary Brothers, Misstress Barbara, DJ Dan, Stacy Jones and Greg Collins, as well as new artists, The Downtown Fiction, Working For a Nuclear Free City, Shuttle and Classixx.

Stay tuned to the >carrot creative blog for more news about this exciting partnership and the work we’ll be doing with their team.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Photo courtesy of Kelly Samardak and Just an Online Minute.

Last night Carrot Creative co-hosted the second drinks gathering for Digital DUMBO. This was another hugely successful event with not only local DUMBO companies represented by HUGE, The Jar Group and Free Association but our friends from across the bridge. Tim Nolan, an extremely talented flash artist displayed his work on the flat screens kicking off a new trend of featuring an artist or display from the DUMBO scene.

As I said last night and in a previous post, this is the Digital District of New York. DUMBO is the place where the magic happens from the digital minds. These are events are the perfect place for us to come together once a month.

We also announced the next phase of Digital DUMBO as this is not just a place for us to come together for cocktails. Don’t get me wrong—we’ve been having a good time but there’s an opportunity for more. The new site, digitaldistrictnyc.com will be the hub for all things Digital DUMBO. From brown bag lunches for us to discuss the latest and greatest to news announcements that keep each other informed about what’s going on in our community. This will be the place to host everything.

Kelly Samardak from Just an Online Minute posted a great recap of the event here along with a set of photos.

We’re encouraging others to get involved in Digital DUMBO and look forward to hearing as much feedback as possible. Feel free to leave comments below and we look forward to seeing you at the next one!

Digital DUMBO Facebook

Digital DUMBO on Twitter

This article is copyright © 2012 

Photo courtesy of Nick McGlynn

Carrot Creative co-hosted the first Digital DUMBO Drinks event here last night at ReBar where the digital elite of our quaint little neighborhood mixed and mingled under the bridge, talked Java scripting and new media strategies in addition to enjoying some cocktails and Outside.in cupcakes.

I’ve been saying this for awhile that this is the “Digital District” in DUMBO. So many digital companies are here with talent but we never get together. We’ll walk by someone in Peas & Pickles (the local food joint) and they could be the next Flash Developer we need to help with a new project or someone we want to chat tech over coffee. We knew there was a need to change the lack of interaction and bring this community together. Digital DUMBO once a month is perfect for that and we were happy to help kick it off.

Companies in attendance included reps from HUGE, Animation Collective, Gothamist, Objective Subject, drop.io and Special Ops Media in addition to our co-hosts Outside.in and The Jar Group. We even had some of our our friendly DUMBO supporters from Manhattan crash the party as well including Path 101 CEO Charlie O’Donnell, Gillian Reagan from The New York Observer and the New York Yelp office (Brooklyn Community Manager Peter DeNat we look forward to seeing you around here more often!) came to show support for the community. And of course we can’t leave out Nick McGlynn who was present to take some great photos.

For those who missed it, Digital DUMBO will be a monthly event on the last Thursday of every month with some new twists added to keep the community connected. There is already a Facebook page and Twitter account created to keep everyone up to speed on the next happenings. (Come on you had to expect this from this group!)

Some fun “Overheard at Digital DUMBO” chats include:
-”Why haven’t we done one of these before?”
-”Is there really a dog here? COOL.”
-”Awesome companies are here. Who knew they worked in DUMBO?”
-”I just went to the bathroom and people started asking where I worked. So I came in!”

This article is copyright © 2012 

A big Shout-out from the Couch to Charlie O’Donnell, as he spent a day in the Carrot office last week chatting up the current NY Tech scene, what he’s up to with his company Path101 as well as some fun baseball banter. (Charlie is a Mets fan for the record as notably displayed in the photo.)

Charlie is CEO of  Path101, a career discovery destination. He is also founder of nextNY, a grassroots participant-driven organization of more than 2,000 up and coming digital media and technology professionals in NYC. The Carrot Crew are big fans and members.

It was great to have such a smart and influential leader in the NY community working in our space, coming out for a lunch in DUMBO and just having some good times with the team.

We hope to have him back for a visit soon!

Side note: We also had the lovely Whitney Hess visit us prior to the holiday season. Unfortunately I was on vacation that day and took our camera. I’ll post soon with a shout out and photo from her next visit as she deserves a proper one.

This article is copyright © 2012 

As communications and public relations campaigns continue to mix and social media becomes a more common focus of the overall communications strategy, it’s important for growing agencies to take this into consideration and work together across all of these areas.

So, here I am. I will be the new Director of Communications here at Carrot spearheading the external communications for the company as well as providing insight to communications strategy on all of the amazing campaigns Carrot is currently working on with their clients and partners. If you’re interested, more information about my professional experience can be found on my LinkedIn page, but in the spirit of communicating, feel free to leave a comment and say hi. Or, follow me on Twitter.

Make sure to come back and visit the blog as we’ll be expanding it and continuing to share what the team has been up to.

This article is copyright © 2012 

Of course we did! Newfangled digital tape of course! Today we had the pleasure of overlooking the “set” of Law & Order Criminal Intent and the fabulous NYC based drama Gossip Girl. Our view from the front lines is available on our flickr page.

This article is copyright © 2012