And in the midst of tragedy, triumph

So this week our boss was fired. And then I got sick. And then I had to wrap my head around big changes. It's been a tough week.

But then this morning I found out my team won a national Gold Award -- top honor -- for Digital Magazine-General Excellence in the first-ever Digital "Azbees" from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. I had to email everyone who worked on it at their personal address because I'm the only one who still works there. It's weird, but it doesn't take away my pride in our team's winning this award. It was a short-lived project, but the digital magazine concept was brand-new to the industry.

When we started, the few digital magazines around were exact replicas of their print editions with a few links added in at most. But having a cool page flip (see examples below this post) doesn't cut it. They were hard to read because of the lack of design -- print size fonts and design don't translate well to the screen -- and, without including links, audio and video, didn't give you any reason to read a digital magazine other than that it's being online. We redesigned our product for use on a computer and to make the most of digital technology, allowing readers to have direct links to more information and first-hand interviews and other sources of information via audio and video.

And we succeeded, at least in the execution. Housing Giants' hey day came when the industry crashed, advertising dried up and the folks who were advertising didn't want to risk the few dollars they had left on a new concept. Hence, no more Housing Giants.

To win these awards, we had to present two consecutive issues of the magazine that showed, in addition to solid reporting and writing, that we made effective use of digital media in our storytelling as journalists. Feel free to check out the issues we submitted, below. The features really showcase the multimedia technology. There were opportunities to include more A/V, but we had to choose wisely what to include based on time and quality.

March 15, 2009: The 2009 National Sales and Marketing Awards Coverage
March 1, 2009: Profile on Dave Kosco, Bassenian/Lagoni Architects