Light at the End of the Tunnel

2007 marked the largest growth in the history of our company. We completed more projects than ever before, grew our revenues, met all of our internal goals, and expanded our service offerings significantly. We even managed to find a sweet new home in downtown Oakland. I don’t think anyone in the company would say it was boring around here. It was also very challenging. In six months we were in nearly every major city in the US, and when we were home, we were gearing up to head back out all while trying to grind out the work we needed to have ready for the next event. You quickly realize how NOT glamorous travel actually is when you have to do it all of the time. Here is a picture of Ted sitting in Baltimore, coming from Boston, going to DC to fly out to Portland, Oregon to do a shoot and then fly home to Oakland to fly back out to Boston and DC one week later.

This is Larhn at the end of a long run in DC.

You get the picture.

The main difference between this year and others was the fact that we dramatically shifted the offerings of the company. When we started, we were just a creative studio that would churn out deliverables and send our clients on their merry way. All too often, however, we would watch those hard earned creative pieces be turned over to an A/V company that would simply butcher all of the hours of effort we would put into it. There is only so many times you can watch your work suffer from poor tech before you will either quit the business or do something about it. We chose the later and started offering our clients the full service of creative services and good tech. This meant a fairly large shift in our infrastructure and equipment inventory. We were very fortunate to have some amazing new partners and new members of our own team come along in the process. The good news is we have come a long way and are really starting to deliver some world class events. We are still fully committed to offering top notch creative services, but now more than ever we know how they will end up.

2008 is proving to be more of the same crazy growth - a challenge we are very fortunate to have. While we will be continuing to develop our event production skills, we see this year as the time when online content will begin to explode. While live events are a great showcase for creative projects, content consumption is changing at breakneck speed. We all desire access to our content 24×7 and instantly. We think the next great growth opportunity for InHouse will be through offering our clients the total content solution. This means doing it just like we have done everything else - reasonably, professionally, and with a personality.

Through all of the past months we have kept a light at the end of the tunnel - some down time doing the things that recharge the creative batteries. We intentionally left our production calendar blank for April to finally catch up and focus on where we are and where we want to go as a company. We also have to take care of internal stuff like those pesky taxes, getting our blog actually filled with content, posting our portfolio of rapidly expanding work and watching movies, reading books, camping, and sleeping. On April 11-13 we will go as a team to the beach in West Marin and enjoy some time together thinking about what is next. We will post some pics for you to see when we get back. In the meantime, it is nice to be out of the tunnel.