Slice of Lime has been named to The Boulder County Business Report’s Mercury 100 List for the 3rd year in a row. The Mercury 100 event will honor the top 100 fastest-growing private companies in Boulder and Broomfield counties for the past year. Congratulations to the Slice of Lime team and thank you to our wonderful clients.

Thanks to all those who attended who made our 6th Boulder Creative Commons so interesting. We had a good mix of designers and developers at the event who enjoyed microbrews and finger-food over great discussion. We plan to make this a regular monthly event.

It really doesn’t get any better than this in terms of customer feedback. V and Kat host the vkat23 Channel on YouTube and are the self proclaimed “craziest kooko ppl in the world.” They put big smiles on our faces as they talked about the Jibbitz Stylizer and showed off how easy and fun it is to create your own Jibbitz masterpiece - actually, we think they preferred the phrase, “this is so fly.”

The Stylizer is a project that Slice of Lime completed in 2007 and was recently highlighted in the Boulder County Business Report. You can read about our process in creating this section of the site for Jibbitz here.

Thanks V and Kat! We’re honored that you’re enjoying the Stylizer so much that you made it a part of your show. That, dare we say it, is “super-fly”.

The Zenie Bottle project that Slice of Lime recently completed is featured in the Boulder County Business Report in an article titled, Zuzingo bottles media on social networks.

Some of interesting quotes from the article include:

“When it comes to social networks, some can be all about communications, but ours is about expression,” [Paul Berberian] said. “It’s a multimedia collage about your state of mind. It’s a different way to display content.”

“A large part of the success of the site will be people putting the widgets on their Facebook page or their own blogs,” [Kevin] Menzie said. “But from our perspective what was important was to make the site as engaging and beautiful as possible.”

For more information on our work on ZenieBottle.com, you can view our podcast here.

Slice of Lime is sponsoring “breastFEST” again this year. The picture above shows one of Slice of Lime’s web designers, Travis Silverman, next to the eye-catching poster he created for the event. The posters can be seen up and down the Pearl Street Mall today.

breastFEST features music, poetry, and dancing at Trilogy and on March 8th at 9pm. The event supports YES! (Young Empowered Survivors). YES! is a support group for young adults in all stages of cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery.

It’s an honor to be a part of the event again this year. Last year’s experience was amazing. We’d highly encourage you to check it out Saturday night.

Slice of Lime recently created the Jibbitz Stylizer. The Stylizer is a section of the Jibbitz website that makes it fun for kids to decorate any color Croc with their own set of Jibbitz and send their creation to a friend, print it off, or add it to a shopping cart.

Some notable quotes from the article include:

“The idea was to create a site that is engaging to kids but trustworthy enough for parents to click that buy button,” Menzie said. A shoe doubles as a shopping cart, allowing parents to buy their child’s creation.

“We start off any client with a big strategy session,” Rodanski said. The company analyzes its client’s goals and needs and help the client build a business strategy. Potential clients often bring up Jibbitz when talking with Rodanski.

Slice of Lime, in business for almost eight years, strives to build a sense of teamwork with its clients while building their Web sites, Rodanski said, and the company has carved out a niche working with startup companies.

You can read the full Boulder County Business Report article here.
You can read our own blog posts on the project here.

Slice of Lime is sponsoring Venture Capital in the Rockies (VCIR) for a fourth year this week in Beaver Creek. We were responsible for designing all collateral, promotions, and the website. Slice of Lime’s work on Venture Capital in the Rockies has resulted in incremental attendance records every year.

At Slice of Lime, we take on one or two pro-bono projects every year. Recently, an organization named Wish for Wheels approached us and we couldn’t resist. They are a local non-profit that gives brand new bicycles to underprivileged kindergarten kids on graduation day.

During our kick-off meeting yesterday, they started talking about how rewarding it is to see the expressions on the faces of these kids as they exited graduation and found a parking lot full of brand new bikes! I couldn’t help but think of some 8 millimeter footage my parents took of my first bike. I found the video and posted it here. There’s a special place in our hearts for the memory of our first bicycles which I’m sure many of us share.

We’re excited to get started on this project and also to volunteer on graduation day!

TechStars, an organization that helps 10 companies every summer get their startup idea off the ground, has implemented TopShelf, Slice of Lime’s job listing web application.

The application was a perfect fit as they needed a way for their past companies to list job openings on the TechStars website. Each company created an account on TopShelf and the widget code was entered into WordPress for each company page. Since the widget is a simple bulleted list, it was easy for TechStars to style the job listings to match the look and feel of the rest of the site.

Slice of Lime hosted the 5th Boulder Creative Commons last night. We had about 35 web professionals in attendance and enjoyed great conversation over beer, chips, and cupcakes. Jeff and I also kicked off our first video podcast at the event which will be posted on the blog soon.

Stop by at our next event and check it out. You can learn more about the group here.

Slice of Lime’s job application, TopShelf, rolled out some new features today.

Now, jobs can be set to link to a default TopShelf landing page or a specific URL. This means that when a visitor clicks on a job listed in the TopShelf widget, they will either be taken to TopShelf or a page of your choice. The custom URL is useful for companies that already have job listings on their site, but would like a widget that can be installed on various blogs and websites that points back to their site.

The default landing page is clean and lists your company name, job title, location, description, and application email. If you have more than one job listed, the other jobs will be listed on the right side of the page.

We have plenty of new features planned in the coming weeks and months. Start playing with TopShelf and send us your feedback.

Slice of Lime launched its first internal web-application today, TopShelf. TopShelf makes it easy to manage your job openings and to place a widget with those jobs on any website.

This project is part of an initiative by Slice of Lime to explore Agile Development methodologies. This first iteration of TopShelf took 8 hours and includes a basic set of features. As time goes on, we will incorporate customer feedback and our own list of enhancements into small iterations.

Sign up today and send us your feedback.

Click here to check out The Boulder Creative Commons!

After a nice holiday break, Slice of Lime is resuming hosting the Boulder Creative Commons. This is a great opportunity to meet other designers and developers in the area over wine, beer, and snacks. We hope to see you there! The next one is January 23rd at 5:30.

TechStars fills huge holes in the traditional hi-tech startup model by offering seed funding, advice and mentoring, and connections to 10 young companies every summer. Slice of Lime enjoyed getting to know the 2007 TechStars team this past year and has officially signed on as a sponsor for 2008.

Slice of Lime will be creating the 2008 website for TechStars and will be donating its time to mentor each company on their website strategy and design. We’re looking forward to getting to know the new wave of companies!

Slice of Lime sponsored the 5th annual Culture of Giving Art Awards last night. The event featured inspiring artwork created by Boulder County middle and high school students this year. Each winner shared half of their award money with the non-profit of their choice.

Slice of Lime’s CEO, Kevin Menzie, awarded the 3rd place high school award to Liliana Aguilar from Boulder High School. She shared $250 of her $500 prize with the Family Learning Center.

Congratulations to Liliana and all of the students involved in this event. It was an honor to be involved.

Slice of Lime is excited to welcome Lead Web Developer, Richard Jones, and Web Developer, Chris Brainard, to the team. Both have a strengths in PHP and Object Oriented Programming, putting us in position to take on more web application projects in 2008. Welcome aboard!

Slice of Lime launched the 4th iteration of its website just before Thanksgiving. The site now features an easy way to browse and filter our work using AJAX right from the homepage. It also highlights our blog more than before, which will start to offer articles and videos as time goes on. We transitioned our blog from a Movable Type platform to WordPress, which we’ve been enjoying immensely.

It’s also easier than ever to subscribe to our blog to get our latest news, work, articles, and videos. Just click on the “Subscribe to Our Blog” link in the top right hand corner of every page. A slick drop down let’s you sign up via RSS or email courtesy of FeedBurner.

Enjoy the new site and feel free to leave any comments!

Click here to check outThe Boulder Creative Commons!

After the success of the last Boulder Creative Commons at Slice of Lime, we decided to try to keep it fairly regular. We’ve set it up as a “Meetup” event for those interested in attending. Join us for an evening of discussion and wine/beer with local designers, developers, and web professionals. The next one is October 24th at 5:30.

In an effort to bring the creative community in Boulder/Denver together, Slice of Lime will be hosting the 3rd Boulder Creative Commons. It’s a casual event with beer, wine and good conversation. We hope to see you there!WHEN: Wednesday, September 26th 2007, 5:30-7:00WHERE: Slice of Lime, 1216 Pearl Street, #200, Boulder, CO 80302

Slice of Lime attended the Boulder County Business Report Mercury 100 Awards last week where we were named the 7th Fastest Growing Company in Boulder County (calculated from 2004-2006) with under $2 million in revenues. This is the second year in a row that we received a Mercury 100 Award.

Congratulations to all of the Slice of Limers!

Slice of Lime CEO, Kevin Menzie, is featured in Small Biz Magazine this month.

In an article titled, “It Runs in the Family,” Kevin, his father Charles, and Uncle Joe talk about their experiences as entrepreneurs..

You can read the article here.

The Girls’ Wilderness website, designed and developed by Slice of Lime, is featured on “The Daily Slurp” today. The Daily Slurp is “a daily list of beautiful websites”.

Thanks for the recognition! This was a pro-bono project we did for the Women’s Wilderness Institute in Boulder, Colorado which encourages girls to get outside, learn new things and make great friends.

Slice of Lime is sponsoring “breastFEST” this weekend. The event will be raising money for breast cancer research through Young Empowered Survivors (Y.E.S.) and will feature several bands at Boulder’s Trilogy on March 10th, 9pm.

Slice of Lime created posters and flyers for the street team to plaster around town.

If you’re in town this Saturday, come on by!

We’re extremely excited to announce that Slice of Lime has received an investment from the fine people at The Foundry Group.

The brand new Foundry Group is made up of Brad Feld, Chris Wand, Seth Levine, Jason Mendelson, and Ryan McIntyre - all of whom are coming from Mobius Venture Capital.

Slice of Lime has done numerous projects for Mobius Venture Capital’s portfolio companies. As a result, we have gotten to know the Foundry Group team over the past 6 years. They are an intelligent group of people who have a unique hands-on (or hands-off when appropriate) approach.

Here is a quote from the Foundry Group website:

We view ourselves as activist investors and, in addition to providing the necessary capital, we are committed to leveraging our experience in starting companies, our expertise in the technology industry, and our network of relationships to help great entrepreneurs turn great ideas into great companies.

This investment and partnership is intended to grow Slice of Lime to the next level. We have already added more infrastructure to the team, including an additional designer and developer. We will be fine-tuning our process and business strategy throughout 2007. This translates to even better service to our clients and a continued focus on our “strategy-first” approach and “results-oriented design.”

We’re also welcoming Chris Wand as a board member. You can learn more about Chris here.

Here’s to the continued success of Slice of Lime and our clients!

More news on the investment:

• Feld Thoughts
• Tech Rockies

One of Slice of Lime’s clients, Jibbitz, was just featured on Oprah. Their founder, Sheri Schmelzer, headlined the “Million Dollar Moms” episode. This is a great success story. Just a year after Slice of Lime designed the logo and designed and developed the website for Jibbitz, they sold to Crocs for $20 million dollars.

The story quotes:

Then, Sheri launched a website, and after just two weeks, she was overwhelmed with requests for Jibbitz of all shapes and sizes. Retailers caught on and began ordering hundreds at a time.

You can read the full story here.

Congratulations to Sheri, Rich, and family. We’re proud to have been a part of this project.

Slice of Lime has been nominated for the 2007 Spark Awards. Sponsored by The Boulder Chamber, these awards will honor small businesses in the community that have fueled the fires of small business success.

Slice of Lime has moved offices! Don’t worry, we’re still located in the heart of downtown Boulder. Our office is in between Pearl St. and Walnut St. on Broadway. Our updated contact information is as follows:

Slice of Lime
1909 Broadway, Suite 200
Boulder, CO 80302
303.413.0701

The move offers some extra room to grow in 2007 and a new, creative workspace of our own. Stop by and say hello if you’re in town.

Slice of Lime will sponsor the Fifth Annual Contemporary Art Auction for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA).

The auction will be held on October 19th and is an exciting evening of cocktails, bidding wars and fun. It will feature former Christie’s auctioneer and PBS’ History Detectives host, Elyse Luray. This is a major fundraiser for the museum. We hope to see you there!

Slice of Lime is sponsoring “Moving Mountains with Mary Wilson”, a Women’s Wilderness Institute event.

Mary Wilson is one of our nation’s foremost advocates of women’s leadership. She is president and founder of The White House Project, co-creator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, former director of the Ms. Foundation, and author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World.

Wednesday October 11, 2006
Seawell Ballroom, Denver Performing Arts Complex
Tickets: $100

To RSVP, call 303.938.9191 or visit womenswilderness.org/events.html

Slice of Lime is featured in the Summer edition of Easy Chair Magazine.

Slice of Lime weaves “Web” of volunteerism

Slice of Lime is nothing but sweet in the eyes of Boulder nonprofits. While the Web design and development company was recently honored as the Mercury 100’s fourth fastest growing company, owners Kevin Menzie and Jeff Rodanski know that building a business is also about building a community.

“It feels good to give back to organizations that we believe in,” says Kevin. “And it’s reciprocal because we get our brand associated with positive nonprofits.”

Over the past year, he and his staff have designed or upgraded Web sites for various local nonprofits - including the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Venture Capital in the Rockies and the Woman’s Wilderness Institute - free of charge.

“Everyone here is excited about the new Web site that Slice of Lime has designed,” says Greeley Sachs, Director of Development for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. “They’ve done an excellent job of balancing our need to feature works of art, while making the site more functional.”

Slice of Lime also redesigned the Komen Denver Race for the Cure Web site and email campaign, an event that the company not only sponsors, but participates in as a team.

Kevin’s favorite way of giving back?

“We recently showed Fairview High School students how we design, scanning their artwork into our computers as a demonstration. It was great. We’ve had people help us, and now it’s our turn to be a source of inspiration to others.”

Slice of Lime Partner/Creative Director, Jeff Rodanski, will be featured in the upcoming textbook, “Technical Communication in the 21st Century” published by Prentice Hall. Contributing to the book alongside large corporations like Microsoft and Coca-Cola, Jeff writes on Slice of Lime’s best practices in web design and usability testing.

Slice of Lime’s Founder/CEO, Kevin Menzie, will be speaking on the Boulder Chamber of Commerce’s “Best Businesses” panel on Wednesday June 19th. Kevin will discuss business growth at Slice of Lime, which was recently named the 4th fastest growing company in Boulder County with under $2 million in revenue.

You can learn more about the panel discussion here.

Slice of Lime has been spotlighted as the Boulder County Business Report Mercury 100’s 4th fastest growing company with annual revenues less than $2 million.

Slice of Lime hosted budding artists from Boulder’s Fairview High School by showing them around our offices and introducing them to the world of graphic design.

While student computer-literacy is already light-years ahead of where we were at that age, we were able to take a sketch that a student drew, scan it into our computers, and teach some new applications, tips and tricks.

It was a pleasure meeting the next generation of graphic designers and programmers.

Slice of Lime will sponsor the Komen Denver Race For The Cure this year. The Denver race is the country’s largest and raised over $2.7 million last year to fund local breast cancer programs.

Slice of Lime will redesign the Komen Denver Race For The Cure website and email campaign. We are honored to be a part of such a great organization.

Slice of Lime is sponsoring the 2006 Gear & Cheer, a fundraiser benefitting The Women’s Wilderness Institute. The event will feature a silent auction for outdoor gear, clothing, and vacation packages as well as beer and wine tasting and live music from Wendy Woo. Join us Thursday, April 20th from 6pm-9pm at the Millennium Harvest House in Boulder.

To purchase tickets, call: 303.938.9191 or visit www.womenswilderness.org.

Slice of Lime is volunteering its services to the Boulder-based Woman’s Wilderness Institute to design and develop their new www.GirlsWilderness.org website. The program promotes strengthening the courage, confidence and leadership skills of girls through the challenge and support of wilderness and community-based experiences.

Slice of Lime will create the Girls’ Wilderness logo, design and develop the site, and create a viral marketing campaign to quickly (and inexpensively) spread the word about their summer programs.

Slice of Lime was featured on the front page of the January 2006 issue of the Boulder County Business Report. This article covers Slice of Lime’s use of Ajax, a web coding method that helps optimize the user experience. It highlighted Slice of Lime’s latest in-house application, SALT. SALT is a tracking and analytics web-application that Slice of Lime will be offering its clients this year.

Slice of Lime has moved to their new location at 1035 Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado. This puts the company in the heart of downtown Boulder along the walking mall and near many of our clients. Come by, check out our new space and grab a coffee with us next time you’re in town.

Slice of Lime has been selected by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) to redesign their website. Slice of Lime will be volunteering its time to create a brand new user experience for the museum that will leverage some of today’s cutting-edge technologies. Slice of Lime will also be building a custom back-end content management tool for the museum so that they can easily update featured exhibits and performances.

Slice of Lime will sponsor Venture Capital in the Rockies (VCIR) for a second year in February 2006. Slice of Lime will be responsible for designing all collateral, promotions, and the website. Slice of Lime’s work last year on Venture Capital in the Rockies resulted in their highest attendance ever.

Slice of Lime, in cooperation with NewsGator, designs “News Hound”, a branded RSS Reader for the Denver Post. Slice of Lime created the information architecture and the design for the reader, working side by side with the Denver Post’s new media team and NewsGator’s technology team.