When the UPS man dropped an unexpected package at our office Monday afternoon, at first, no one was too interested. We thought Jayson had probably purchased something new from Amazon (yes, he placed 19 orders on Amazon on Black Friday). Then, when we realized it wasn’t from Amazon and we saw “Eat Boutique” on the box, everyone was intrigued. We knew it had to be good. It sort of felt like Santa had come early.

Little did we know, he had. Or at least his WordPress VIP elf helped the big guy out. We are thrilled to be one of only 10 national WordPress VIP Featured Partners and thoroughly enjoy working with the team at WordPress VIP. To work so closely with the team that has revolutionized how websites are built is a dream come true for us.

We were very excited to try the assortment of goodies from locally-owned New England treateries and thought the cookie bearing the WordPress logo was a super cool touch. The WordPress sticker was a quick favorite, promptly being snatched up by co-founder/WordPress fanatic/Amazon-addict Jayson. This was by far our coolest Christmas treat so far.

So, WordPress VIP, not only are we thankful for the thoughtful (and tasty) gift, we are truly grateful for all you do for the hacker community and businesses around the world. Without your vision and hard work, the web wouldn’t be what it is today.

So, you are a designer. Print, web, interactive, all of the above — it doesn’t matter. You’ve been at your position for a while.  The excitement of challenging designs, learning a new atmosphere, and yearning to please your boss has rubbed off.  As you float along the day-to-day river of corporate life, you realize you’ve begun designing for one reason and one reason only: completion.

How do you break through the monotony?  Where can you find inspiration? And more importantly, how do you remember to keep finding it?

As a designer, creator and communicator, your best work happens when the concept and creative process inspire and challenge you.  Below are a few tips that you can insert into your daily, weekly or monthly schedule to keep you thinking, inspired, and excited for each new design challenge:

1. Find Your Morning Cup of Joe.
   There is a whole world of design blogs, trends and how-tos out there. You may have to put on your Sherlock Holmes hat at first, but once you find your inspiration sources, sign up for their updates.  They’ll be waiting in your inbox to inspire you each morning, like a good cup of morning Joe.
2. Before you hit the “GO” button …
   It’s easy to take your manager or creative director’s direction and hit ‘go.’ But how often do you stop and ask yourself, “Is this the best way to represent the information?” Sometimes, it may be. In those instances where it may not, it’s a chance to stretch your visual communication legs, think critically, and come up with a different solution. Then take that idea or two and pitch to your uppers. Whether or not you curve the direction of the end product, you’ve shown that you are an active part of the intelligent creative process and are dedicated to the best end-product possible. Not to mention challenging your problem solving skills along the way.
3. Change Your View
   A change of environment can work wonders on a creative brain. If you find yourself stuck or drained, ask your boss if you can work from another location for a few hours, whether that be your local book or coffee shop, or another favorite location. The act of getting up and moving will get your body working again, stimulating your brain and your concentration.
4. Meetup
   So, you’re not the most social creature. Or, maybe you are, but you are busy. No excuses. Look up design Meetups, put on your grownup pants and try some out. “What’s a ‘Meetup’?” you ask? Take a look at Wikipedia’s definition of a Meetup.  You don’t have to be a social butterfly to reap the benefits of meeting with other creatives. You may even prefer to meet with others that are not in your exact design area. Brainstorm, share thoughts, bounce ideas, discuss trends, and most importantly, have that connection available to you.

Do you have any daily, weekly or monthly tips you use to stay inspired and creative? Send them my way, I’d love to hear them.

This Thanksgiving evening as we all reflect on the things that we’ve been blessed with, loosen our belts an extra notch and slip deep in to a food coma, the team at inSourceCode thought it would be fun to share our Thanksgiving feasts. Can you guess whose plate is whose?

If you’re not sure who’s on the team, check out A Week of Thanksgiving: Part 1. From the entire team at inSourceCode, Happy Thanksgiving (and be safe if you’re braving Black Friday)

Yesterday we talked about why we love our team so much. (Let’s face it, they’re rockstars!) Today, we are highlighting 10 things we are especially thankful for. As we sat down to write this list, we realized that finding only 10 things to be thankful for was quite a task because we are so blessed! This list isn’t things that we are thankful for personally (good health, loving family, etc.) but instead, a list of things we are thankful for as a company.

So, grab a cup o’ joe, sit back and enjoy the read.

10. We are so grateful for all of the many mentors and advisers who have helped steer us on this fun path we call inSourceCode. Our friends at RareBird helped us get our feet when we first started the company a couple years ago and have remained a fantastic sounding board of advise ever since. Thank you.

We’re also thankful for the quiet, constant mentors we have in our families (wait, I promised this wasn’t about personal thankfulness. Oh well.) Each momma, pops, sister, brother and papaw helped inspire and steer us personally to achieve great things and push forward which in turn, pushed inSourceCode forward. Thank you.

Most recently, we’ve been blessed by the friendship and support of our friends at Imavex. Plus, it’s pretty cool to be right next door to their team and to have been able to partner on some streaming video projects via their Streamotor technology.

9. We are also extremely grateful for all of our wonderful vendors (we like to call them friends). Tommy Rector and his team at Rector Communications always make sure we have the coolest stuff (uh, we gave away iPhone speakers at a conference recently) that truly fit with the personality of our company. Thank you!

The team at WordPress is amazing to work with. Such a fun group of people with such giving spirits and we are fortunate to be able to play in their successful space. Thank you!

There are also a few really cool tools that we use on a daily basis to make doing our jobs easier. We don’t necessarily interact with the folks at these companies on a regular basis but we sure do appreciate what they do. We love Teambox for helping us to manage our projects on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. It’s pretty cool to be able to store all of our outstanding to-dos, client files and chat conversations in one place. We also love Harvest. Just in case you missed it, we did a blog post about why we love Harvest last week. Next, we’re thankful for locally-owned Tinderbox. This software allows us to create proposals quickly and efficiently but the really cool part is that we can monitor who reads the proposal and which pages they spend the most time on. This makes our proposal writing process more and more refined based on what clients are actually interested in. Thank you!

8. We are very thankful for a short work week! This week, in addition to the normal Thanksgiving and Black Friday holidays, we all were able to work from home today (thank you Matt and Jayson!). So team, as I sit at my dining room table, sipping a cup of hot tea writing this post, I hope you are all still sitting comfortably in your pajamas, working away on your laptops on the sofa.

Unfortunately, the fall flu bug has attacked several members of our team. Thinking of you today Katie, Chris and Kelly. (PS. I’ve had my fly-swatter out the past week chasing the flu bug, too. Luckily, I’m on the mend – Allison)

7. We are also thankful for new office space! Over the summer we were fortunate to move from two tiny leased offices crammed full of Ikea desks laden with monitor after monitor, a dorm-size refrigerator, a water machine, 5 whiteboards, two TVs, and a printer or two into our awesome new space complete with plenty of room for our team, an inSourceCode Pop-A-Shot, and a conference room (complete with a ping pong conference table). Wow, what a welcomed change! (Here are some photos from our open house concert event)

6. Number 6 is something that can be very difficult to find and we are very thankful for it. At inSourceCode we have an office culture that everyone loves. We do a lot of big things at inSourceCode but every once in a while, you just need 5 minutes (or a game of ping pong, or a candy bar, or a 60-second lightening round of see-how-many-baskets-you-can-make on the Pop-A-Shot) to clear your mind. Not only do we work hard and play hard, we genuinely love and care about each other (queue the sappy music).

Each time a new person joins the inSourceCode team, we have a team lunch and have an informal game of 20-questions with the new employee. Then after they’ve been thoroughly humiliated, we all share a little bit about ourselves, too. This is just one small thing that helps build a culture that is truly irreplaceable and for that, the entire team says “Thank you”.

5. It’s really fun to have a chance to make a difference in our nation’s capitol. This summer, we moved our buddy Chris out to DC and he’s been doing a great job networking and representing inSourceCode in Washington, D.C. We’ve been privileged to work on some pretty cool projects and meet some pretty cool folks out there. Thank you to everyone who has made that possible!

4. It’s pretty cool when you can say you are one of 7 WordPress VIP Featured Partners in the entire nation. We have worked hard and proven that we know how to do big things with WordPress so, just a few short months ago, when WordPress VIP announced their list of Featured Partners, we were honored to be on that very short list. Thank you, VIP!

3. Where would we be without our clients? Answer: Gone. Special thanks to each and every company that trusts us to design their websites, configure their servers and/or provide server administration, and who outsource their entire web development needs to our company. We wouldn’t be who we are today without the trust you have put in our company. Thank you! (Check out some of our awesome clients)

2. As we are getting closer to the end of our top ten list, we wanted to bring it closer to home. We are extremely thankful for the Indy Community. The local news has been great about covering some of our recent successes. We’ve also been fortunate to join up with some pretty cool groups like Verge, TechPoint, Powderkeg, and WordPress Meetups.

Personally, I’m also thankful for our local Indy restaurant scene where we can have great, local breakfast and lunch meetings (like the delicious Jockamo Pizza, great sushi at 45 Degrees on the hip Mass Ave, and one of our favorite breakfast spots Best Bet). Thank you, Indy for being so awesome!

1. Last but not least, we are thankful for WordPress. Our company is built around developing on the WordPress platform. The WordPress community is a pretty cool place where developers create life-changing plugins and larger-than-life themes are created from some of the coolest designs around. We love WordPress. Thank you!

That’s our list of Top 10 Things We are Thankful for. We’d love to hear yours!

It all started on Monday morning, when Jayson sent out our weekly “This Week at inSourceCode” email. Instead of being ridden with client deadlines and internal memos, it was simply a list of why he was thankful for each of his co-workers.

This started a landslide of email echoes across the entire team stating why each of us appreciated one another so much. Here are a few tidbits into the personalities and lives of the inSourceCode team: