When it comes to organizing content for your website, pretend you’re a composer or an arranger. You write for various sections in an orchestra to make a piece of music—a symphony or maybe an orchestral soundtrack—that’s pleasing to the ear. You have some idea about what you want it to sound like. You think of ways to break that idea into meaningful, memorable parts. Your goal is to fit all the parts together into one harmonious whole.

When you’re coming up with content for your website, it’s no different. You want to keep in mind what’s going on elsewhere so your information isn’t redundant or missing or overemphasized. Like a concertmaster’s solos, or recurring themes in a piece of music, you’ll want your messages properly positioned and linked or reinforced in ways that readers will intuitively understand.

When you’re at a concert, do you think about the structure of the music that you’re hearing? If the composers have done their job right, you won’t even be aware of structure. Your attention will go straight to the music.

Likewise, if the navigation and content of a website are well thought out, users (readers) will be unaware of the architecture and go straight—and effortlessly—to the information they’re looking for.

Comparing web writing to music is just one metaphor for web content creation and development. The important thing is to jump in and look carefully at everything you want to say and why, where and how you want to say it.

Presuming you do cover these topics somewhere, will our intrepid investor find what you are providing? How hard will this task be for him? Is your website effective in informing, or does it make it a challenge? If it is a challenge, well… why are you allowing it to be a challenge?

It seems IRO’s usually strive for communication effectiveness in ways suitable to the form they are delivering meesages in:

-    for required filings and releases effectiveness is in accurate reporting, a transparent writing style, and balanced treatment of opportunities and challenges;

-    in presentations they shoot for nicely designed PowerPoint slides, hopefully with legibly-sized type and some consistency in visual style;

-    in speech delivery or one-on-ones they practice-up the executives for an engaging and credible delivery.

Yet investor sections of corporate websites are not getting the idea of “effectiveness”. They may be getting the idea of ‘completeness’, but they are just not getting the ‘Internet’ part.

Not many of your favorite websites would consider their efforts to engage their audience complete with the addition of a PDF. Frankly, I can’t think of any good (non-investor related) website that would trust key messages to only PDFs. Well, maybe government websites, but they’re not really in any sort of competition based on effectiveness. Oh, and they’re not trying to achieve a fully and fairly valued stockprice based on informed investors. Oh, and they’re not worried about their cost of capital.

So, back to the idea of considering whether you are communicating foundation material on your website effectively. Ask: “Why should someone who doesn’t know my company invest in it?” “Can my website answer basic questions that will engage them in our story?” “How difficult does my website make it to find these answers?”

Get your visitors, especially potential investors, off to a strong start when they visit your website. (Please Note: I didn’t say “When they visit your Filing Cabinet”).

Don’t make the task of evaluating your company more work then it has to be. Don’t make them convince themselves of your worthiness. Don’t make them play BattleDecks with your sans-remarks Investor Slideshow.

Get your content strategy together. If you’re interested in doing better talk to us at zu.

The further we have dug into this research the more we have come to realize that governments need to change their online approach as well as the way they do business. With shrinking budgets, aging employees and a skeptical public that is becoming more educated, governments need to adjust quickly or risk further tarnishing their credibility.

Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital, wrote the foreword for a new book called Open Government. He says, “it is the next wave of innovation that presents a historic occasion to fundamentally redesign how government operates; how and what the public sector provides; and ultimately, how governments interact and engage with their citizens. It is truly a time when either government will play an active role in its own transformation, or change will happen to it.”

For governments to control their own destiny online, they will need to follow the three pillars of a good website which I presented at zu’s One Government sessions last week (#1gov).

The first pillar is to adopt human-centred design. Too many government sites are built around the structure of government. Citizens do not care who the Deputy Mininster is or who reports to the Mayor. They care about booking a camping spot or paying their power bill. For One Government to work, websites need to be developed from a user perspective. Focus should be on the user, not the technology.

The second pillar for effective One Government is to create a unified vision in every department. This has nothing to do with the website, but rather with internal communications. Governments, like large companies, operate in vertical silos where staff communicate with their superiors and underlings. Imagine if they started communicating with their colleagues. They would save time and money, and provide an enhanced user experience.

The third pillar is to go where the people are. Governments that are still publishing print pieces and doing billboard campaigns are wasting money. For a fraction of the cost you can hit a larger audience online. More people, lower cost: makes sense to most people doesn’t it?

Of course, I have glossed over most of the details of the three pillars for an effective One Government. If you want to learn more, drop me a line and let’s talk. We are living in a once-in-a-lifetime period for government right now and we should all try to get it right.

Over the last 8 years, I’ve had the chance to visit a large number of offices. Few are fun, some are tolerable, and some are unbearably dry. “It’s as though they are missing a certain element in their air,” Tony notes. “Or they have too much ‘Bore-inium’ pumped in.”

On a local level, zu has garnered some attention for its culture. If you have done some digging around, you might be able to catch a glimpse of it on the web. Or, even better, you may have heard about it from someone else. But preserving this culture as the company grows has been a challenge that has cost zu a fair bit. However, I like to think the benefits far outweigh the costs and I’ll tell you why.

When I say culture, I’m really talking about the energy that exists day to day in the office. It’s a culmination of the people, physical space, social initiatives and projects that help make getting out of bed every morning a little bit easier.

After observing our efforts and comparing them to other places over the years, I’ve compiled some evidence behind what drives the creation of culture.

1) Try
This may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at how little companies try or how feeble some attempts are at achieving any sort of culture. Rule #1, if your attempt to form any corporate culture comes from an HR textbook, you’ve already failed. We try really hard to look like we’re not trying at all (almost shamefully so).

2) It comes from the top
Now the co-founders, Ryan and Tony, are my close friends as well as my bosses, so I don’t want to sound like a Dwight Shrute, but it really starts with them. Some places really suck the fun out of great people with the wrong management. Their attitudes and personalities really set the tone for the entire company. The fact that Ryan wanted to hire George Wendt from the show ‘Cheers’ to sit at our conference booth and drink with the delegates, proved to me that no idea I could come up with would be off limits. (Norm never happened, but you get the idea.) Though R&T aren’t as involved in the planning of parties as they once were, you can still see their influence at all our functions. If you are the head honcho, it’s as much your job to help create a fun environment as it is those in it, so don’t leave it up to someone else.

3) Hire the right personalities
You don’t need a room full of extroverts to have culture. You just need people to believe in and contribute to the culture. We have many quiet introverted people around here, but when it’s time to bob for apples, everyone’s hair gets wet.

4) Fire the wrong personalities (or don’t fight to keep them)
Get rid of culture killers.  If you are trying to establish or foster culture and someone is actively bringing it down, then find ways to get them to buy in, or get rid of them. It doesn’t matter if they are talented. (Agree, disagree?).

5) Small things add up
On my first day here, I can remember filling out my first timesheet. A stark, one colour grid with one small twist – above the box where you filled in your name, read ‘Groovy Person’. This set the tone from day one and communicated to me what kind of place I was working for. It also made me wonder, “why don’t we ever see more of this?” So at your office, think of ways to spice up everyday things. For starters, change the name of your social committee to something that doesn’t use the terms ’social’ or ‘committee’. You’ll be surprised at how even a little detail like that can have a trickle effect on your organization’s culture.

6) Aim for comfort
Most people have divisions between their work persona and who they really are. Try to foster an environment in which people can be natural. From the dress code, to flex hours, to the office space, to the language used around the office. It’s different for every company, but taking a good look at how to make your place more human is a step towards building culture. This is the service experience you give your employees.

7) Learn from other great environments
When you hear of other tales of success, don’t be afraid to copy them. We’ve been influenced by ideas employed at some local companies like Point2, VendAsta, EngComp and many of our clients. It’s exhausting thinking of new ideas for staff functions, so it’s good to listen to other fun ideas other companies are trying. Which reminds me, I just missed Point2’s Reggae Party.

So there you have it, piece of cake. I should state that this works better for companies our size, and I’m aware that some things are harder to pull off in bigger and more unionized environments. But to the people in charge, you should be asking yourself, “what’s stopping us from doing this?”

My intention here isn’t to showcase the zu environment, but to share some ideas on what we have found seems to work for us. ‘Real’ things still happen here after all. People get fired, people quit, and there is the odd Debby-downer once in a while. It’s the one side effect of not employing robots. But one thing is that we never stop trying to build up the culture, and I hope we can inspire your company to do the same.

I also hope this was the best thing you’ve read in the last 4 minutes.

These companies provide great entertainment or great products, yet they have become lightning rods for criticism. As the trendsetters, who were their customers years ago, saw the mass market adopt these icons, they moved on to smaller, alternative competitors.

It’s like the ‘alt-rock’ cycle. The XX gets great reviews on Pitchfork and the indie rock crowd eats it up, making The XX one of the coolest bands in the world. A few months later, they go mainstream and all of the alt rockers who loved them in the past move on to Charlotte Gainsbourg.

In Microsoft’s case, you are seen as ‘cool’ if you bash them. The trendsetters want to distance themselves from the mainstream so they use Google Docs, Mac OSX and an iPhone.

We were sitting around zu HQ the other day and we started talking about trends and market dominance. With Google and Apple now joining the mainstream, I asked everyone when it was going to be ‘in’ to start bashing Google. How much longer until it is cool to crush Apple’s strategy.

Albert Jame, our Creative Director thinks it will happen soon. “All of the thirty year olds who went to Lulu ten years ago aren’t doing that anymore because 12 year olds are shopping there,” he said. “When the guys with chunky glasses see the rednecks using an iPhone, they will find something else.”

“It is cool to be uncool and that is what the hipsters want,” zu’s Marketing Manager Michelle MacDonald said. “They want things that other people do not have yet because they are striving to be unique. They want to be perceived as innovators.”

For me, I think that Google and Apple are at the stage where we will start seeing the trendsetters bash them. However, both companies are still perceived as underdogs to Microsoft which is keeping them alt.

I’m interested in what you have to say, if or when, it will be cool to hate Apple or Google.Why?

Every few weeks I find myself making the trek to different corners of the city: north for K&M Sewing, east for the Centre Mall SportChek, and south for Salon Twist. I’ll even tolerate downtown parking for The Cupcake Conspiracy.

Why? Because of the amazing experiences the experts at these businesses consistently deliver. I trust these experts because of what they do, what they know and how they understand that customer service is more than just fulfilling a need. They get what it means to be totally frickin’ amazing.

• Kim at K&M Sewing measures both leg lengths each time and delivers perfect euro jean hems – always with a huge grin on her face.
• Kris at SportChek patiently spends 2+ hours discussing running shoe arch, size and even colour, all to ensure my satisfaction each time I wear the chosen pair.
• Melissa, owner of Salon Twist, uses her UK training and sunny persona to craft precision cuts and ensure a pampered, relaxing escape.
• Christin, co-owner of The Cupcake Conspiracy , sells delectable treats within a lush décor. Her cheerfulness and mouth-watering cupcake goodness create an amazing indulgence that keeps me coming back for more.

Driven by a love for what they do, Kim, Kris, Christin and Melissa combine their expertise, consistent service delivery, and unique selves to craft an intangible magic that makes each interaction amazing.

At zu, we strive to not only deliver this same level of service to our clients but to also extend that experience to an interactive presence. We help businesses create amazing online experiences for their customers and that deliverable begins with our own customer interaction.

We want to give our clients the entire ‘zu’ difference, and to wow them each and every time with our expertise, consistency and passion for the interactive world. This helps build trust in what we do and in what we deliver. It’s all part of the magic that happens at 303 Pacific – we strive to achieve Job One so we can help you be totally frickin’ amazing.

This screen capture from the I-Metrix brochure displays the concurrent presentation of financials for Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, and Dell generated from the XBRL feeds from Edgar Online. This type of tool will greatly accelerate the data gathering process for potential investors from hours to minutes.

Soon the ‘go-to’ description of your enterprise will become the equivalent of a food label nutrition chart in a ‘just the facts’ approach to providing information.

Here we can compare two brands of chocolate chip cookies.

But is this how we buy food? By only looking at these measurables? We all know that, despite the similar make-up of these products, they don’t taste the same and one will be more successful than the other.

The reasons for success may be better explained in the story that goes with the product then in the nutritional performance data.

When XBRL allows your company to be compared side-by-side with its peers in a generic GAAP-compliant view, such as those provided conveniently by I-Metrix, then what is the next step in the analysis? What’s missing?

What will increasingly matter on the Internet and on your website will be the ‘other stuff’, not the financial reporting. It will be the story the CEO tells investors in person. When he’s running the conversation he isn’t reading XBRL to the audience, he’s adding the context, the long-term strategy, and the positioning explaining markets, outlook, competitive advantage and so forth.

When the quantitative XBRL filtering and screening is over with, and the analyst or retail investor visits your website, are they going to get what’s missing? Or is it just out-of-date, coffee table book statements about the company with links to PDF financial reports that are rather superfluous to the slicing and dicing already done by XBRL readers?

Will they find current high-value materials provided in an engaging way? Will they see the clarity in the plan that fosters a corporate culture that will win in their chosen field and create shareholder value? Will it bring to life the recipe that makes a company a success?

When widely disemminated XBRL viewers focus attention on your last quarter’s earnings blips, are you ready to show an engaging version of why your company is a worthy investment?

Even as we integrate new communication forms and technologies, let’s keep our eye on the website.

Here is a little history for those of you who are new to the browser wars. The first major battle was fought in the late 90s between Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape Navigator. The result was a decisive victory for IE and what followed can be described as the dark ages of the browser world. Microsoft had over 90% of the market and as a result decided to stop developing IE. IE6 was released in 2001 and we never saw another major browser release from Microsoft until IE7 was released in late 2006. IE6 was a decent browser for its time, but it did have a number of quirks and bugs. These problems didn’t matter much since IE had such a dominant market position so everyone just assumed that was the way the browser was supposed to work.

There were other browsers available. Netscape was still around, Mozilla, which was the open source version of Netscape, and Opera were all other options. I was not a big fan of any of them, especially their interfaces. When I began working at zu, Shane introduced me to a browser called Phoenix. It was essentially a stripped down version of Mozilla. I started to use Phoenix on a regular basis and it opened my eyes to how IE-centric the web had become. Phoenix eventually grew up and became Firefox. Other browsers were starting to be introduced. Apple had the audacity to make their own browser called Safari and Google eventually introduced their own browser named Chrome, which is based on the same rendering engine as Safari.

Each of these browsers offered their own strengths. Opera has always been fast and feature-rich while Firefox has always been lean but had extensions which allowed you to add the features that you wanted. Safari had excellent CSS support and pushed standards groups to add new exciting features such as CSS animation. Chrome had a lightening fast JavaScript engine and each browser tried to copy and improve upon each others innovations.

This has created rapid and dramatic improvements in browser technology over the past couple of years. Standards began to pick up steam too. HTML5 started gaining steam and browsers began to eagerly implement features like the canvas tag. CSS3 development roared back to life after a long period of stagnation. JavaScript performance has increased dramatically which has allowed JavaScript intensive websites and JavaScript libraries to proliferate.

Even IE, the enemy of web developers everywhere, has finally begun to catch up. IE8 still lags in many of the advanced features that other browsers have, but IE9 looks downright promising. There are many web developers that think Microsoft should just replace IE’s rendering engine with WebKit (same engine as Safari and Chrome) or even drop the browser all together. I cannot agree with this point of view. Competition is good, especially amongst web browsers. When Microsoft conquered the browser world, they abandoned browser development. However, if Mozilla, Opera, Apple or Google had achieved the same type of market share that Microsoft did in the first part of the decade, I have no doubt that they would have stopped innovating as well. Long live the browser wars.

What’s the dirt? Well, last Thursday at their iPhone 4.0 event, Apple announced a shiny new iPhone operating system and the fact that they will no longer accept iPhone applications in their store that were developed using non-Apple software development kits.

For some time, Flash lovers had been lamenting the lack of Flash support on Apple’s mobile devices. This was most noticeable in their web browser but also affected the stand-alone applications in the app store.

Then Adobe announced a breakthrough: their new CS5 Flash applications would be able to compile iPhone-compatible apps! Flash and Flex developers around the world (count me in with them) rejoiced like teenagers invited to the cool kids’ party. We all waited in eager anticipation for the party to start (i.e. the shipping date of Adobe’s CS5 Suite) until ‘daddy’ Steve Jobs came home and grounded us, probably forever.

So now we’re in the midst of an uproar. Forums, tweeters, bloggers, and Facebook groups are all weighing in on the issue. Many are very insulted. Even Adobe’s own platform evangelist directed some very colourful language toward Apple. People love to hate the guys with the power, especially when they use that power. Thankfully there are a few level heads out there at the same time.

Maybe if we hadn’t been staring at CS5’s iPhone development carrot for so long we wouldn’t be so mad that Apple is taking it away. As a professional Flash developer, I respect the intention behind many of the arguments wanting Apple to allow for a more open platform. I also respect the passion of the Flash developers, because many of us would likely compare ourselves to artists, with Flash being our medium of choice. We feel hurt when someone wants to take away something that gives us so much creative freedom.

But let’s not take it personally. Apple is not anti-developer and anti-consumer as the Facebook group would have you believe. They’re not out to get anyone, offend anyone, or destroy any particular platform. They shouldn’t be expected to do things “for the common good” as some people want. It would have been nice if they would have developed this new policy sooner, certainly, but it does take time to get decisions made sometimes. Apple is a shareholder-held company that exists primarily to make money.

They know how to make money by using market positioning. When their ’suits’ sat down to figure out their official policy, they knew there would be an uproar. They also knew they didn’t want the iPhone to be just another platform that plays the same applications that every other platform plays. Apple has historically prospered when they strove to be different. So, as the level-headed blogger pointed out, “it makes sense from Apple’s perspective — and it was Apple’s decision to make.” They chose to be the ‘other’ platform, and to reap the consequences.

The Facebook group goes so far as to accuse Apple of being anti-competition. I ask them: isn’t every company that wants market share anti-competition in some way? You can’t paint Apple as the bad guys just because they are winning the smart-phone competition right now. In the same way, you can’t fault Adobe for being tops in the web multimedia game. If you want competition, go out there make products that are better than theirs which attract their own market share. That’s real competition, and that’s what Apple is trying to do.

So whether you agree with Apple or not, let’s just see how it pans out. If they were wrong, then their market share will suffer and they may or may not change their policy. If they were right, then iPhone will remain a popular product with a user base that actually wants to be different, and maybe Adobe will have to face the fact that Flash isn’t supported as widely as they would like. Either way, technologies will continue to change until the end of the age. May the best product win, and may the best developers adapt.

The iPad is my first “living room” computer. I have a laptop at home, but usually sit at a table or desk to use it. The iPad does almost everything I need to do at home but it is much lighter than a laptop which means I can use it on the couch, much like I would a book. I use the iPad for late night emails, keeping up-to-date on tech blogs, RSS and to follow the world on twitter.

The iPad has great video quality that allows me to watch video podcasts from the patio, couch or basement. Before the iPad I was tied to AppleTV or a laptop. I think the quality of the video is my biggest surprise.

A smaller surprise was the battery life, which has exceeded my expectations. I should also mention that the keyboard is easy to use and the iPad is fast, much, much faster than the iPhone which I find oddly slow now.

We purchased an iPad at zu and have already started to develop some apps for it. Currently there are a relatively small number of iPad apps available and I can’t wait to see what innovative tricks other iPad developers will come up with.

I drew this picture using the app ‘Draw’. You can draw anything with your fingers and easily export it to your photos. Also on this app are the games Dots and Tic-Tac-Toe for those times when you’re sitting on the couch with a date watching Dancing with the Stars.

The iPad is a winner and I can foresee a time when it dominates the market much like the iPhone does. Don’t believe me? Stop by our office for a test drive.

The navigation drives home SIAST’s primary messages of diversity and workplace rewards suited to individuals. The primary needs of site users—viewing current opportunities, and finding SIAST careers—are also addressed at this top level.

With the site as part of SIAST’s “Total Rewards” campaign, the accompanying content was put at the forefront. Integral to the campaign are the stories and testimonials of current employees. Knowing that pages titled “testimonials” get very little traffic (users see them as inauthentic and overly promotional), we instead designed the site’s architecture around providing the stories as a primary part of the site design, available on every page. The implementation keeps the stories close at hand and avoids constantly overwhelming the user with text. Typical user apprehensions over testimonials are lessened by the sincerity of the stories, which focus more on personal growth than on marketing catch-phrases, and are augmented by the photography, which is professional but not polished and uses actual employees rather than unrealistic stock photo models.

SIAST’s stories of Total Rewards have been worked consistently throughout the site, with the diversity of experiences in the testimonials tying in to the overall message. Unlike many corporate careers sites, SIAST has kept the content fresh by adding new testimonials regularly, ensuring that anyone repeatedly checking career postings will see a new story every time.

Common to many institutions, SIAST is tied to an existing careers system that has been outside the scope of the website work to date. Job postings are currently viewed as PDFs, creating problems with searchability and reuse. An eventual reworking of this system will facilitate the spread of job postings to aggregators and allow individual job postings to be dynamically pulled to relevant areas of other SIAST websites.

One of the main points of my presentation was the increasing pace of change in technology. I cited numbers that showed that radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users; tv took 13 years to reach the same point; the Internet took four years and the iPod took three. Facebook reached 100 million users in only 9 months. The iTunes app store did 1 billion downloads in 9 months. The point is that technology is no longer taking years to develop, only months.

For a computer science student, this is good news as there are more jobs available in more fields. For businesses the increasing speed of technological improvement is something that you cannot ignore.

Organizations need to start spotting the technology trends earlier to remain ahead of the competition. Monitoring hardware blogs will let you know about new advances in devices. Following social media will provide you with real time information and allow you to stay tuned in to the world’s social network.

So as these students enter the work force and carpe diem, they should have faith in the outlook for technology. Maybe one of them will invent the new ‘Facebook’ and vastly impact the direction of information technology. Either way, they have finished their degree in an industry that is always changing and evolving. The future looks bright for these kids and for those of us who employ them.

In zu’s webcast Tuesday, Another Brick in the Interactive Wall, we discussed best online practices using a wide array of Canadian examples. But the interactive options – ranging from enhancing online services to incorporating social media – can be overwhelming. So where to start?

Here are some zu recommended engagement exercises your team can explore to build an interactive strategy to attract and support your students.

Complete application process with students: Walk through the online process with high school and current students. Are there any hiccups? Any reoccurring problem areas causing the students to quit? Do you have an online application or do you ask your potential customers to download a PDF, fill it out, then fax it back?

Encourage feedback through social media: Whether it’s setting up a Facebook Page or using a Twitter feed, open the discussion doors to allow student feedback. Ask students what they want you to deliver in an online presence. Then, when you launch a new initiative, you’ll already have buy-in from the same audience who provided you with the ideas.

Ask students to rank online services: This will help you leverage online assets that currently work and prioritize areas where there is opportunity for improvement. Again, this will help create early buy-in from valuing your students’ input.

Create blog-based student employment / projects: Hire students part-time to administer your social media accounts, such as a Facebook Page. Your students are already deeply involved in social media – why not use their online experience to promote your school? Also, consider substituting student blogs for required course reports? How can you transform course requirements into engaging, online assets that can be used to attract other students to your school?

Provide cameras for student lifestyle stories: Have students depict their personal school experience through photos or video. Post the photos on Flickr, the videos on a YouTube channel, and tag each asset with your school name. Through engaging students, you’ll create trusted and credible assets for your school’s online presence.

Conduct a website or online presence audit: Consider where your school’s online experience currently is and where you want it to be. Look at competitor schools and best online practices. zu can help you with this engagement exercise as we can provide a complimentary website audit for your school.

The school industry is increasingly competitive, considering the program, location and overall experience options students can choose from. Your main audience is online – that’s where you need to both reach and serve them. What can your school start exploring today to attract and support your targeted students?

Anyways, it turns out the most successful companies deliver an “experience”, in addition to whatever else they are doing. (So please take that as a given or go to the MX conference for yourself). The main dividing point in how brands or companies deliver an experience to their clients is whether it is delivered in a ‘prescriptive’ way or in an ‘adaptive’ way. The former is how Disneyland presents their experience of ‘Magic’: “come here and we do it to you”. On the other end of the scale is Harley Davidson: “Buy this and become a modern day rebel” (instructions not included).

Now, many investors, especially more advanced ones, have a planned experience in mind when they hit your site. With mathematical formulas and ratios set to plug in your numbers, these investors use an adaptive approach to create their own experience using materials you passively provide. Most websites will support this type of experience by default with their filing cabinet of materials.

But can your website provide a ‘prescriptive’ experience? Is your website empathetic enough to less prepared visitors to consider how the parts go together to tell a story? Do you provide instructions and strategy to relate the various departments, performance measures, and operations into a cohesive whole? Or will your site come off as a poorly coordinated set of activities and assets, a somehow-successful holding company communicating little sense of priority, direction or focus to the whole enterprise. While the evidence is there, the vision that unites the actions will rarely be realized by chance without empathy for the naiveté of first time visitors. And everyone who owns you was once a first time investor.

While the big picture view may be found in areas of investor relations ‘magic’, such as a CEO’s speech, the greater whole is an unscripted landscape, good for adaptable experiences and poor for the uninitiated.

I’m thinking of an investor-oriented website as a new kind of taco bar, where all the ingredients are laid out, each in their little bowls and serving dishes; it might be delicious, but I’m unsure how to put it together. How does this work? How do other people do this? What is the key to understanding this? I might be fine after I get through it the first time, but I frankly need some prescriptive advice to get the most out of what is being offered.

So please feel empathy toward your first time potential investors, and make sure they enjoy themselves and don’t feel like goofs trying to figure out why you’re worthwhile eating, I mean buying.

AJ: How many different published sources are you currently in right now? What are some notable ones?
WN: To be honest, I have no idea who is publishing White Ninja. Perhaps this isn’t the best business move. But, neither Scott nor I have any clue how to run a successful business.

You see, we post a link to the latest comic that is free and open to whoever wants to publish White Ninja. I know that there are independent and college newspapers in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada and the USA that are using the link. We also have two published books out that are available at your local bookstore for your reading and purchasing pleasure. And, White Ninja has been affiliated with National Lampoon, Cracked.com, Virgin Airways, and Crave Online.

AJ: Does that blow your mind?
WN: No way. White Ninja is the greatest comic ever written about a White Ninja, ever!

AJ: What’s the weirdest fan mail or suggestion you’ve received? Any good haters out there?
WN: By far the weirdest email we received was a marriage proposal. This girl – this incredibly attractive girl, I suspect – wanted to marry White Ninja and have his babies. It was difficult to break the news to her that White Ninja is not a real person. She must have understood because days later she proposed to both Scott and I.

The second weirdest was simply a photo of a girl wearing a White Ninja t-shirt. The shirt, accidentally, was on a little crooked, and a single naked bosom was showing from underneath. Whoops!

AJ: Walk us through the process of how you guys produce one strip, from idea to execution.
WN: It all starts with a good night’s sleep. Before bed I drink two cups of lavender tea with whole milk. Scott has a warm bath with a glass of red wine. We wake up feeling refreshed and ready to work.

So we each go to work. Me, to my private clinic to do some physical therapy, and Scott to a school to teach children how to learn. When work is over, we’re usually too tired to draw cartoons, and we definitely don’t feel funny, so we put off writing comics until the weekend.

Saturday arrives. At noon or so, when we’ve awoken, we’ll get together over a pot of coffee and stare at blank pieces of paper until an idea strikes us in the brain. Sometimes a half hour will go by with nothing being drawn, written, or even said. And then another half hour. After an hour and a half we’ll pack up our stuff and head to the pub for a “business lunch.”

Magically, by the end of the day, we have somewhere between two and eight comics completed.

AJ: How long have you been doing this? What are your future plans for WN?
WN: We’ve been drawing the comic for fourteen or fifteen years! Holy bananas! That makes White Ninja fifteen years old! Unlike The Simpsons, White Ninja actually gets older with each passing year. When we started, White Ninja was zero years old. We stopped counting his birthday after the first couple years though. All along we said we would stop on the Christmas Eve of White Ninja’s 48th year. In this final comic, White Ninja will die on the streets from exposure. It will not be funny. It will make people re-think the whole White Ninja saga. They’ll ponder, “Was it ever a joke?” “Was there underlying societal commentaries that I’ve been missing?” Bahahahaha! So I guess we won’t be able to retire for 33 years.

AJ: Explain to me how you guys have managed to make money on this?
WN: Well, putting a comic on the Internet, for free, and giving it away to newspapers all over the world, for free, makes us roughly $0.00 a week. Times that by four, and then again by twelve… basically, we make nothing.

BUT, we’ve discovered that people like to wear clothes. Especially clothes which have pictures of animals killing each other on them. Seriously. So what we’ve done is, we’ve used the popularity of whiteninjacomics.com to link to another website that we made where you can buy t-shirts with some seriously dynamic wildlife happening on them. We design all the shirts. Some features Pterodactyls fighting with lazer-beam-eyes…in outer space! And Owls, madly chomping away on a piece of delicious taffy. Heck yeah! And Tigers firing automatic weapons! It has nothing to do with the comic, but we couldn’t sell dumb shirts if we didn’t have the comic first. The website is casasupernova.com, in case you’re interested.

AJ: Is this self sustaining? (i.e. are you working at Starbucks?)
WN: Starbucks?! Just because we draw comics for a living doesn’t mean we don’t have any other skills. For all you know I could be a brain doctor! This interview is over!

But to answer your question, we make barely enough to live on. That is, if we wanted to live on Saskatoon’s dangerous west side. No thanks! Seriously though, I enjoy having a couch, and a box-spring under my mattress, and a variety of cups to drink out of, and all those other novelties enjoyed by the upper-middle class. And for that, we have other jobs.

AJ: What do you have to say to the people who say WN isn’t funny?
WN: “It is too, funny!” Yeah, usually we say that.

AJ: I’ve tried to draw WN before, and I’m horrbile. Any tips for me?
WN: Trace your ‘F’ finger, and then add arms and legs. For the eyes you will need two dots. Practice these on a separate piece of paper first.