Emakina Blog

We already explained on this blog how cool it is to work at Emakina. Not only because of the offices or because of the people, but also because of the worker-friendly environment providing basic facilities (banks, supermarkets…) as well as nice leisure places to hang out (parks, bars, restaurants…). This Google map, created and updated by Emakinians themselves, shows the numerous cool locations around our Brussels headquarters. Microsoft has the Redmond campus. Google has the Googleplex in Moutain View. We have the Watermael-Boitsfort neighborhood ;-).

Designed by Emakina labs, of course.

Yeah, some agencies do great Office Lip Dub, but Emakina always tries to go further. During our  New Year’s party at CityScape, between a Junk Food walking dinner and a Geek Casino contest, we had a great live concert from our in-house musical talents !

The Emakina band line-up :

• Lead Vocal : Willem (Tridion Developer)
• Backing Vocal : Antoine (Account Manager), Gerrit (Tridion Developer) and Benoit (Project Manager)
• Lead Guitar : Marc (Project Manager)
• Rythm Guitar : Jean-Thomas (Project Manager)
• Keyboards : Olivier (Account Director)
• Bass : Vincent (ColdFusion Developer) on track 1 and 3, Laurent (Java Developer and Architect) on track 2
• Drums : Pablo (Strategic Consultant) on track 1 and 3, Yannick (Web Developer) on track 2

Track One : “Rockin’ in the Free World” (Neil Young)

Track two :

Track three :

I’m sure you loved it, please let them know by adding a comment below!

The Geek Casino with black jack, poker and roulette…

Win an iPhone, iPods, Xbox 360 Elite, PS3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Nabaztag, …

Nobody knows what it means exactly but it started on the blog of my colleague Christian. 3 Emakinians and a few other bloggers already did it.

It’s time to add your boss, your colleagues, your banker, your mother-in-law… to your friends on Facebook. Vincent and Nico have developed a very singular application that inaugurates the concept of “asocial networking”.

At Emakina, we don’t need to hire new people: we produce them ourselves. Longer but cheaper (and, let’s be honest: much more pleasant) recruitment process. Two arrivals have been already registered this month and our pipeline is not empty yet with the next two scheduled at Emakina for November (Brice himself shows the example to the troops), one at SunTzu and one at groupe Reflect. But, even if they combine their efforts, these three agencies will need a lot of time to catch up the folks at The Reference who seem to be particularly good at… well, you see what I mean. Have a look at their impressive delivery rate:

PS : if you’re over 18, we may be interested in your skills anyway. Just check out our open positions here.

Friday 10th August will probably remain as a milestone in the young history of Emakina Group. For the very first time, all the collaborators from our European network (B. On The Net, Design is Dead, SunTzu, groupe Reflect, The Reference and Emakina) gathered up in Brussels to meet their colleagues working in other agencies. First at Flagey (former Belgian radio broadcasting house, we could not dream of a more symbolic place), then at Emakina’s offices for a party all together and finally, at Café Central in the city centre for an ultimate drink that some are not about to forget. To see this more pictures of this event, follow the the “emakinagroupday” tag on Flickr.

With his 15 Cannes Lions won in 2005, no need to say that Belgian creative Erik Vervroegen belongs to the greatest talents of the advertising industry at a worldwide level. When he’s not a the office, Erik Vervroegen is also a painter who will show his work for the first time at the Jonas Gallery between 27th April and 22nd June.

We proudly support this exhibition and hope to see you at the vernissage scheduled on 26th April in the presence of the artist.

Pierre de Nayer from Citobi often says there’s a gap on the job market between the offer (the profiles the agencies are looking for) and the demand (the job seekers who want to “work in the Internet industry”). I fully agree with his stance and, in my humble opinion, I also think part of the problem is young graduates simply don’t know the main interactive agencies and, more deeply, what an interactive agency is. It’s why this year, we participated to the OpenDoors operation organised by ACC to show that, yes, there’s actually a human being behind the computer.

During the last two weeks, we’ve welcomed a hundred students from the Ephec for a guided “tour” including a quick overview of our activities, a practical case presentation (VW EscapeTV), a chat with our Project Manager Benoit (who is also involved in the education & training task force at IAB) and, to round it off, a quick walk through our offices. Hope these visits in the backstage of our agency have made our business more “tangible” in the mind of these young people who are, after all, the future of the interactive industry. And maybe my next colleagues ;-) ?

Psst… There’s a hidden sect inside Emakina. The members gather every Thursday at 12.30 pm in our attic to practice yoga. They even built their own website (have a look at the illustration below) on our internal network. At this moment, the course is for beginners only. The master is Benoit, one of our sales develoment managers.

When he’s not at the office, our web architect Laurent Goffin runs Blog-Appetit, a “gastro-aggregator” on cooking blogs. He just released a new version of his baby. The result is an amazing mix between Digg and Del.icio.us that lets you tag your favorite recipes and add them to your personal bookmarks. Check out the other new functionalities here and find your next menu among the 650 blogs and 15.000 recipes gathered.

By the way, a recent study conducted by Technorati and Edelman rated Blog-Appetit as the 22nd most influential blog in the French-speaking blogosphere. Congrats and good luck for the future, Laurent!

Last week, we had the pleasure to welcome David Boschmans for a presentation of the Microsoft AJAX (aka ATLAS) framework. Our guest explained what Microsoft offers in comparison with integrating AJAX technology in ASP.NET 2.0 environment. Reaction from an attendant : “A big part of what we’re doing in AJAX can be done with the framework, but for more subtle integrations, we’ll still need our javascripters…” The debate is open in the commentaries below.

Our company has now its own mobile blog on the platform we just released for Proximus (see also the Photo Bar on the right menu). An amusing glimpse into our web factory  located in Brussels, Belgium. As our British neighbours say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating…

What do people at Emakina studio when they are “on the beach” (i.e. between two projects) ? They invent hilarious viral things like Angry-Gram. Enjoy… and don’t hesitate to share your best subtitles ideas with us : http://angrygram.emakina.com.