Evolution of an Idea – 8 Years Later
Last week was the 8 year anniversary of Digital Avenue. It came and went and I didn’t even notice. It seems crazy that I’ve now owned Digital Avenue for 8 whole years. That’s 96 months, or 2922 days. Even after all this time, I feel like Digital Avenue is really on the brink of reaching it’s full potential.
The Early Stages
When I was 13 years old I found a book in our families bookshelf that really propelled me into the computer technology world. My step mom is a FBI Secret Agent, so it’s her job to watch all kinds of crazy stuff going on in America. As a joke, someone bought her a copy of “A Beginners Guide to Hacking“. It sat untouched on our bookshelf, until one night, the book caught the attention of my cousin Tyler and I.
This book gave me a whole new outlook on the possibilities of computers. Instead of the big gray box that I occasionally played video games on, all of a sudden it was the big gray box that consumed my entire summer.
While hacking has been given an undeserved bad name by the media, I feel it should be taught in every middle school in America.
I was spending my days and nights piecing together intricate puzzles that were never meant to be accessed by the average consumer. I was developing trouble-shooting and problem solving skills that I still use today. I was forcing my computer to do things it was never intended to do. I was also having more fun than any video game could ever provide, and teaching myself things most adults could never fathom.
Eventually I hit a brick wall. There were only so many things I could blow up. I soon turned my focus to the Internet. At that time, the internet was black magic to most people. It worked, and that’s all they wanted to know about it. I was a little different. I wanted to know why, and how it worked.
By the time I was 14, I had begun digging into HTML. At the time, HTML was the king of the castle. HTML was the programming language of choice, used world wide to produce web sites. Few people knew it, and even fewer were good at it. Nowadays, every little kid on MySpace is using HTML to “bling out” his or her profile (the cool kids are using CSS…).
It just so happened that when I was 14 I was involved in a motocross crash that left me with two broken arms. There were very few things I could do, but believe it or not, typing on a computer was one of them.
Mac Web Designs
Now that I had a valid excuse to avoid the sun for three months, I focused my efforts on beginning my first start up business. I realized I had a very good grasp on HTML and web site programming. In an era where this was unheard of, people were making wheel barrows of cash for very little work. Little work for lots of cash sounded good to me.
In August of 2000 I started Mac Web Designs. I took the Henry Ford assembly line idea to the computer world. Instead of working with clients for extended periods of time, I had a variety of “template” sites already produced. When a client needed a site, they purchased a pre-made template for a nominal fee, and I stuck their logo on it. These templates only needed to be produced once, and I could resell them unlimited times. Less time working, more time profiting.
The template idea eventually fizzled out. I realized people wanted brand specific layouts. So it was back to the drawing board.
Meeting Client Demands
Now that people wanted designs unique to their business, I had to find companies willing to trust their identity to a 15 year old kid. The first big notch in the belt of Mac Web Designs, was a web site for long standing Rochester Minnesota hotel. This hotel had a shotty two color, text only web site. I gave them a shotty three color web site, with a couple low quality graphics. However, the selling point was the introduction of online reservations.
When I originally sold the idea of “being able to handle all your reservations online!”, I had no idea how I would pull it off. I had never done anything like it before. As it turns out, necessity is the mother of all innovation. I developed a way which would allow hotel guests to visit the site, fill out reservation details, and it would instantly e-mail the information to the hotel general manager. Nowadays this is in use by everyone from Travelocity to Orbitz.
Sounds pretty lame right? Well it was 2001, that doesn’t sound like that long ago, but in computer age that’s equivalent to 50 years.
With the hotel web site on my resume, I followed up with web sites for Guiltee By Association clothing, Rochester Transportation Services, Viola Creamery Steakhouse, and the Minnesota Ice Hawks.
Around this same time I expanded Digital Avenue into the Graphic Design world. It was an obvious branch that opened the door to many more opportunities. Not everyone needed web sites, but everyone needed logos, banners, fliers, letterheads, business cards, and everything else.
Ooops…
Sometime around here, in 2002 my curiousity got the best of me. I was living with my brother when one day I came home after school. He was little pissed at first, but then surprisingly impressed. Our cable TV and internet had been cut off earlier in the day. He had called Charter to figure out what was going on, when he recieved some interesting news.
A couple days before this I had been playing around with some “tools” and gained access to some areas of the internet that apparently were not meant be accessed. AOL Time Warner got wind of this and banned all of Charter Communication users from accessing any AOL site for a whole 48 hours. That means no one in Rochester, or most surrounding areas, could access any AOL News, mail, or dial-up services because of me. I guess they thought I was trying to steal user information in some sort of Identity Theft/Terrorist Ring (afterall, this was 2002, right after 9/11/01).
I got a stern talking to, but that was about it. After a couple of days, Charter gave us our internet back and things were good, although I know they were still watching us… bastards.
for the record, I was not doing anything illegal, it was all in the name of education….
Digital Avenue Is Born
In March of 2005, Mac Web Designs underwent a complete overhaul. With a more streamlined appearance, less clutter, less confusion, and more services, came a new name: Digital Avenue.
I had recently enrolled at The Institute of Production and Recording in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While at IPR, I was engrossed in the analog and digital recording technologies. Web and Graphic Design was one thing, but audio production is where my true passion lies. During my time at IPR, I was able to work with Mason Jennings, Slug and Ant from Atmosphere, the Copperheads, Desdamona, and Lucinda Williams. This provided me with great real world experience that I would need to make it to the next level.
With a new foundation, and a Pro Tools 6.X Operator Certification, I expanded Digital Avenue to the Audio Production and Engineering world. Now we were able to offer Recording, Editing, Mixing, and Mastering services all under the same roof as the Web and Graphic Design.
Along with adding the audio production branch, we also branched out into clothing. By utilizing online retailers, we were now able to offer our clients unique, one of a kind clothing for their businesses.
Jack of All Trades
Market research proved that many start up businesses were overpaying by requiring many different groups to provide the services they needed. This is the area Digital Avenue decided to tackle. We have found a niche in being able to lower costs for our clients by providing all these services in one place. We were now able to provide nearly everything a new business would need. Web Sites, Graphics, Business Cards, Letterheads, Banners, Clothing, and music, we were now doing it all.
2006 – 2008
Starting in 2006, Digital Avenue began developing new clients. Starting with Siems Like a Dream, and moving on to Castle Productions, things were moving along great. Mid 2007 we relocated to Phoenix Arizona, where we found another strong client in advertising giant, K-Media, as well as Florida based Suncoast Paintworks.
Towards the end of 2007, we moved back to Minnesota, this time to Rochester. Once Digital Avenue was back in Rochester, we put together our recording studio, and we picked up a deal with Land O’ Dreams. We were contacted by Land O’ Dreams to develop a fully functioning online shopping site. With this came Digital Avenue’s first eCommerce site.
2008 has seen many more promising opportunities for Digital Avenue. First we developed RochesterGuide.net, Rochester’s first community driven content site. We were also contact by Mr. USA, Ponce Saysomphou, to start work on a web site for his body building consultation firm. With continued work with artists R-Dubs, Dave Ryan, Clash Boys, Moses, and Hannah Swegarden, Digital Avenue is also making waves in the music industry.
Future
Digital Avenue has a handful of projects currently in the development stage.
Blogphoria is an idea I’ve been kicking around for awhile now. Its a next generation, Web 2.0 blogging platform built on the Joomla core. It is currently in the internal testing phase, and only time will tell if this project is ever completed.
I’ve also been working on a unnamed news feed project. The inspiration for this web site came from my girlfriends obsession with all things “celebrity”. With hundreds of celebrity gossip sites, it can be hard to stay on top of all the breaking news. This inspired me to develop a web site that instantly captured news feeds from the all the top gossip sites. By bypassing advertisements, popups, and server load times, people are able to quickly scan the latest headlines. This project will someday be expanded to include other topics such as sports, finance, business, local, national, music, and many other news sources.
My most anticipated project is currently called “Digital Avenue Music“, which is only a working title. This will be our first jump into music booking and publishing, as well as live music services. A few minor details need to be worked out, but look for this project to take shape in the near future.
Summary
Its been a long ride full of many up’s and downs. Big things are in the works and I’ve got many more ideas I haven’t even begun to develop. Keep an eye on all the happenings around Digital Avenue. You can follow us at this blog, Digital Avenue’s web site, or even at Digital Avenue’s MySpace.
Heres to 8 more years!
Tags: Art, Design, Graphics, Music, Photoshop, Recording, Web
