What do you think of our new team page? (type "dance" for party mode)

by brendan • 15 years ago

172 62 15 years ago

huhtenberg2• 15 years ago

6 up-votes, so I take even your VP of sales now got the HN account :)

(edit) The page itself - I am trying to like it, but something about it rubs me the wrong way. It might be that it is too personal and overly playful, and people look somewhat unnatural, almost as if they were forced to look having fun. This coupled with sudden image swaps creates the impression of a twitchy teenager trying to look cool rather than a smug bunch of sociable geeks. Also your CEO needs a shave, looks kind of unkempt, and Jeff's photo is of a different scale, so he looks like a person with a small head.

Oh, and the dance mode doesn't appear to be working in FF3 on Windows. Typing "dance" does not do anything.

brendan6• 15 years ago

The benefits of being a big company ;)

csavage4• 15 years ago

I shaved that morning, but I had to chop down a tree and fight a fire on my way into the office. The result: a 10am shadow.

norova• 15 years ago

Nitpicking about the shave? Seriously? He doesn't look unkempt, he looks relaxed and like he's enjoying his life.

huhtenberg2• 15 years ago

Not nitpicking, no. He is a head of the company, and his appearance contributes to the overall company's image. Consider what your first impression of a company would be if its CEO were a pierced dude with dreadlocks. Same goes here, "relaxed" and "approachable" is nice for socializing, but in business context it might be less desirable than "reliable" and "organized".

I will take back the unkempt, but I would still insist on Chris needing a shave. Now, back to the downvoting frenzy.

bmelton• 15 years ago

It took considerable willpower to not downvote you (though it appears that somebody else already has) -- but really? Making fun of somebody's facial hair?

For the record, they all look a little bit unkempt (except Brendan, who I'm guessing is single ;-)). To most people, that's a job perk -- not having to put on a suit and tie and be perfectly prepared every single day.

brendan6• 15 years ago

I'm not single, my girlfriend just dresses me.

acl• 15 years ago

Where did the Jay-Z/Modern English track come from?

brendan6• 15 years ago

It's the last track on Girl Talk's All Day: http://www.illegal-art.net/allday/

peteysd• 15 years ago

Great page, and thanks for the link to Girl Talk. It's massaging my eardrums right now. Creative Commons license FTW!

ditojim• 15 years ago

i liked the page before i typed 'dance'. won me over fully when i recognized girl talk.

num1• 15 years ago

Dance mode made my day. Well played.

eberfreitas• 15 years ago

On my 14" screen I can't see the staff and each profile at the same time.

postit• 15 years ago

Too many chiefs and just one craftsman. This definitely rings a bell. It's such a shame for startups to "enterprisy" their job roles.

ffumarola• 15 years ago

I'm not the only one who noticed that?

Seems odd.

csavage4• 15 years ago

This is a great point and something that has been debated extensively over here. I've got a blog post coming to explain our reasoning.

(edit)

Here's my fresh blog post: http://savagethoughts.com/post/3772138359/whats-in-a-name

russell_h• 15 years ago

I think that can come in handy in a business-to-business situation. For example, if you have two engineers you can either call them each a "Software Developer" or you can have a "VP of Engineering" and a "CTO".

Now when your customer, Huge-Corp(TM), who is going to pay the bills for the next 3 months calls, would you rather tell them "let me put one of our developers on the phone" or "let me put our vice president of engineering on the phone"?

patio11• 15 years ago

In a similar vein, I introduce myself as "I'm in charge of the product" when returning calls.

DTrejo• 15 years ago

Huh?

2 CS, 1 Designer, 3 others. I count three craftsmen.

Shamiq• 15 years ago

Grrr IE....

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3; MS-RTC LM 8) Timestamp: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:39:09 UTC

Message: 'beats' is null or not an object Line: 303 Char: 9 Code: 0 URI: http://wistia.com/about/team

brendan6• 15 years ago

Thanks for the details. I didn't test dance mode in IE. I thought I'd cut myself some slack since it's just an easter egg. I'll see what I can do though!

arnorhs• 15 years ago

Weird how many negative comments you're getting. I for one absolutely love it. I think it's energizing and the awkwardness+energy is fun.

It's definitely not the "typical SF thing" etc, but to anybody outside California, this feels refreshing.

Great job

paul9290• 15 years ago

Agreed definitely something that should and possibly be shared virally and or bookmarked or stumbledupon.

A start-up is about creating/doing your own thing, making a living off of it(hopefully profit from it) and most of all having fun!

temporarius• 15 years ago

>> What do you think of our new team page?

> Weird how many negative comments you're getting.

That in itself is a feedback too.

eykanal• 15 years ago

Nice page, but you won't be able to read the text on smaller screens. You may want to consider making the height of that huge graphic dynamic (within limits).

Also, the dance thing is just awesome.

kuahyeow• 15 years ago

The transitions can be a bit smoother and less instant

yeahsure• 15 years ago

Personally, I really liked it. The only thing I didn't was how the pictures are cut at the bottom when you "dance", looks a bit weird to me.

spencerfry• 15 years ago

I like yours!

Here's something polar opposite: http://carbonmade.com/about

csavage4• 15 years ago

Thanks, we like yours too!

Keyframe• 15 years ago

FYI Dance does not work in Chrome 10.0.648.127 on Win7-x64

knackers• 15 years ago

Same prob on osx.

hussong• 15 years ago

Same prob on Ubuntu.

chopsueyar2• 15 years ago

I think you need to prepare for your DMCA take-down notice.

ugh• 15 years ago

I very much doubt that Gregg Gillis will send them a takedown notice. (They are technically violating his copyright since the track is under a non-commercial/attribution Creative Commons license and they seem to violate both those terms. Gregg Gillis, however, doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would send out petty takedown notices.)

chopsueyar2• 15 years ago

At least put the attribution in the HTML as a comment, no?

This company arbitrarily decides what copyrights to acknowledge and violate?

So I am supposed to host my video with them, but how will I know they will respect my intellectual property?

If you are a good coder, do creative commons licenses not apply? Is this the tip of the iceberg?

Help me out here.

dskhatri• 15 years ago

Really digging your Company Overview video too: http://wistia.com/about/company

csavage4• 15 years ago

Thanks. It was made by Chris Lavigne at http://www.crlvideo.com He's UBER talented.

fletchowns• 15 years ago

Ditch those S107s and get yourself some Blade MCX2s!!

I'm diggin' the company profile page as well as the team page, nice work!

keegomaster• 15 years ago

Keep up the good work!

dangoldin• 15 years ago

Awesome and fun!

Who else looked at the source to see what other words you could type in? Only to discover that it's just dance =(

mrleinad• 15 years ago

Absolutely love it. Great work.

sportsTAKES• 15 years ago

I think it's cool.

Good for you guys for posting something creative and fun on your site. (No idea why anyone would be critical of this.)

Coincidentally, I opened a Wistia account just last week. Very cool service, keep up the good work.

adamzais• 15 years ago

Thanks for your kind words.

david_a_r_kemp• 15 years ago

It's pretty nice, but you might want to look at the edge refine too in Photoshop CS5 to get the cutouts a bit neater.

hellweaver666• 15 years ago

It's awesome. You might want to consider preloading the hover states though, it seemed to take a while for them to load on my screen.

scotth• 15 years ago

Love it.

alexkay• 15 years ago

Doesn't work vimperator, the first D deletes the tab ;)

joes_shack• 15 years ago

Why don't you learn how to use it? Ctrl+Z to enable pass-through mode.

atlantic• 15 years ago

Great stuff. Well done. Had a good laugh there.

bhickey• 15 years ago

I've added Brendan Schwartz to the 'where-people-are' file on the Brown CS filesystem...

buzzfarmers• 15 years ago

Haters are gonna hate! Keep pushing forward!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QePjIIBI-sI

sp4rki• 15 years ago

Did you guys remove the 'party' mode easter egg?

jtheory• 15 years ago

Note: if you have flashblock enabled, it won't run; you have to enable flash for this site first.

I realized why it was probably breaking after seeing comments here about the music.

brown9-2• 15 years ago

What happens when you hire someone new?

brendan6• 15 years ago

I made hi-res cutouts of each person. The plan is just to shrink everyone slightly and add the new people to the left and right. I'm not sure how it will look, but that's the idea at least.

Also, at first I was worried about matching the lighting in the new photos, but these cutouts are all from different photos and the lighting was quite a bit different between each shot already. I'm no expert, but I just played with the levels in PhotoShop until things looked right. I think it came out looking pretty good.

Mz• 15 years ago

Jeff Vincent: You can always finding him listening to good beats.

I'm thinking this is a typo. I mention it in hopes of helping you present a good public image. God knows, I can't proof read my own crap.

jeffvincent• 15 years ago

Hey Mz - good eye :) much appreciated.

brendan6• 15 years ago

Mz, thanks again for spotting that and taking the time to let us know. Just fixed it on the website. You rock!

What do you think of our new team page? (type "dance" for party mode)

Related Stories