Idea Market

In a world filled with information, what’s the one thing we don’t know enough about? That’s right: donairs. Specifically, donairs in Red Deer. Idea Market is here to rectify that situation. First, a little background information…

History
According to Wikipedia, donairs are a variation of the Turkish doner kebab and were introduced in Halifax in 1973. At this point it’s worth noting that Carson was born not far from Halifax in 1973. Coincidence? We think not. Eventually, the recipe made its way to Alberta… around the same time that Carson did, in fact. Hmmm…

What is a Donair?
The traditional recipe for a Halifax-style donair is sliced spiced beef, tomatoes, onions and a sweet sauce, wrapped in a pita. This is different from gyros, which typically have lamb and a tzatziki sauce. In Alberta, most places also add lettuce to this recipe. We don’t know why.

Food Poisoning
Yes, it can happen. There was even an E. coli outbreak here in Alberta in the summer of 2008. Since then, new rules on cooking the meat have come into place, though it seems that not all of the places follow them. It should be noted that during our week-long study, Carson only got mildly sick once.

OK, let’s get down to the study. We bought a donair at each of the five primary donair joints in Red Deer over the course of the first week of July. We asked for the same thing at each place: a regular beef donair, with whatever they considered the “standard” toppings and sweet sauce. The making of each one was observed and the final product was weighed, studied and taste-tested. Here are the results:

Cleopatra’s Donair & Pizza (7110 – Gaetz Avenue / 403-341-5282)
price: $5.79
weight: 267g
grams/dollar: 46.1g
ingredients: beef, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sweet sauce
process: meat sliced with an electric shaver, then the whole thing put in a press.
review: not huge, but definitely delicious. A little out of the way from the rest, but worth it. Personal favourite.

King Donair & Shawrama (4942 – Ross Street / 403-356-1800)
price: $6.00
weight: 455g (1 pound!)
grams/dollar: 75.8g
ingredients: spicy beef, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sweet sauce (plus more sweet sauce)
process: meat sliced with an electric shaver, then just the meat cooked on a grill.
review: enormous, spicy and very messy. If you’ve got a big hunger and lots of napkins, this is the one.

Red City Donair & Pita (4949 – 49 Street / 403-343-1219)
price: $6.15
weight: 288g
grams/dollar: 46.8g
ingredients: beef, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sweet sauce
process: meat sliced with a knife, then the whole thing put in a press.
review: very similar to Cleopatra’s, which makes sense since it’s run by his wife. Also delicious.

Sam’s Donair (5020 Ross Street / 403-986-9500)
price: $5.50
weight: 408g
grams/dollar: 74.2g
ingredients: spicy beef, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sweet sauce
process: meat sliced with a knife, then just the meat cooked on a grill.
review: another big one. Sam used to own King Donair and this is pretty close to theirs, including the spiciness level. Not quite as messy.

Best Choice Donair (103, 4916 Ross Street / 403-754-2202)
price: $5.49
weight: 246g
grams/dollar: 44.8g
ingredients: spicy beef, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, homemade sweet sauce
process: meat sliced with a knife, then just the meat cooked in a frying pan.
review: the smallest of the bunch. The sauce is homemade, but either there wasn’t much there or it wasn’t as flavourful. Least favourite.

Lessons Learned
The first lesson is probably that donairs are only delicious 2-3 times in a week. Anything after that starts to get a little less appealing. The other big thing is to time your visit carefully. The ideal time to get the best meat is just after noon. That’s because sometimes they pre-cut slices of the meat in anticipation of the lunch rush – you don’t want that stuff. You want to be there just after that’s gone and you get nice, fresh meat off the spit.

Recommendations
You have two basic choices here: If you want a finely-crafted and lightly grilled donair, go to either Cleopatra’s or Red City. Note that our informal poll of other Red Deer donair lovers picked Red City as the number one choice. If you’re really feeling peckish and/or like your meat a little spicier, try Sam’s or King Donair. You won’t walk away hungry. Best Choice is pretty new to this, but we can’t recommend them at this time.

Please feel free to leave your own recommendations and reviews in the comments!

Because I know you care:

The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – The Golden Age

Pomplamoose – Angry Birds Theme

What’s the first thing you get your new intern to do on his first day? Why, make you coffee, of course. He nervously did his best, but when he delivered the mug to my desk, I slapped it out of his hands and screamed that I don’t even like coffee. Next job: cleanup.

At lunchtime, I stepped out of the office for a bit and left him to hold the fort down. While I was out, I had a friend come over pretending to be a client. Things started well enough, with her politely requesting some (non-existent) files for her (non-existent) business. As the intern struggled to figure out where they might be, my fake client friend got more and more irritated. Soon, she’s yelling and cursing at the poor guy and he starts to cry a little. Finally, she ends off with “I paid $500 for those files and if you can’t give them to me, I’m taking the TV!!!” And with that, she grabs the big screen and marches out the door. I return a few minutes later and tell him that we’ll just have to take that off his cheque.

OK – neither of those things actually happened. But we really do have a summer intern. His name is Brian, but you can just call him “The Intern”. Stop by and say hi/verbally abuse him sometime!

Louise:

Graeme:

Mike:

1. The session “Techies Can Save the World, Why Aren’t They?” Insight into how techies can translate their app developing skills into solutions for environmental and humanitarian issues.
2. The interesting cross-over of film, interactive, and music at one conference. Plenty to listen to, watch, and interact with.
3. Learning about HTML5 (politics included) and how we can use it to build a better internet.
4. The great taste of brisket straight from the Texas grill.
5. The endless amount of free stuff, no matter where you went.

I know some of you have the attention span of small children in an art museum, so let me get right to the point:

We’re all packing up and heading to the SXSW Interactive Festival in Texas from March 10th-16th. That’s right, no Idea Market for a week! Whatever will you do? Answer: I have no idea, but we’re going to be having a lot of fun in a much warmer place than you! Oh, and we’re going to learn stuff relevant to our jobs, too. Honest. So, yeah – if something is an emergency go ahead and email us, but most everything else will have to wait until we get back.

For those of you who didn’t go chasing a gum wrapper down the hall yet, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who made it to what became known as The Bacon Party last month. It was a great time with our favourite people in the world, eating our favourite food in the world. You can read all about it on our blog.

Unrelated diversion #1: it was 28 degrees in Austin yesterday. Just thought you might want to know that.

Now we’re not really that excitable by design awards, but a couple months ago we decided to nominate one of our clients for the Canadian E-Tourism Awards. Then we forgot to tell the client about it. Oops. Anyway, it turns out they won! Vivien from the Danish Canadian National Museum is in Toronto at the awards show at this very moment to accept the Best User-Generated Content award. Congrats to everyone at the museum on their awesome website!

Diversion #2: I’m going to hang out with Mike Tyson this Sunday! Maybe we’ll get face tattoos together.

Another website that we’re kind of proud of is the newly re-design site for Central Alberta Theatre. As you may have heard, they’re getting ready to move their operations to downtown Red Deer, so they wanted to get the excitement brewing with a new online presence. You can check it out for yourself (and maybe find a show to go to) at: centralalbertatheatre.ca.

Diversion #3: A trip to Texas wouldn’t be complete without a roller derby bout. Unfortunately, we’ll just be going as spectators, not participants. This time.

Remember when I used to try to keep these newsletters short? Ha!

In our last newsletter we talked about the various non-profits and charities we work with. We’re proud to add another to the list: Safe Harbour Society. I’d tell you to go to their website to learn all about the great things they do in Red Deer, but the site really doesn’t say much. Which is why they called us, I guess. We’ll also be re-branding the organization, putting together stationary, designing a brochure and display banner, and whatever else they ask of us. Watch for all that soon!

Diversion #4: Did I mention the temperature? Yes? OK, how about the fact that as a group we will collectively gain 35 pounds in barbecued ribs alone? Believe dat.

This is the point where I give you a little teaser to keep you on the edge of your seat until the next newsletter. OK, so you know how we’re supposed to be focusing on web and not doing so much branding work? Well things don’t always go the way we plan. We’re in the process of re-branding both the Town of Innisfail and the City of Wetaskiwin – coming soon to a giant highway sign near you! Oh, and a centennial logo for the Town of Sylvan Lake. And re-brands for The Leadership Centre and True North Realty. That’s a whole lot of logos for a web company! Watch for at least some of those to be revealed in our next newsletter…

Until then, enjoy a little chocolate-dipped bacon in our honour and remember… we love you.

First off, if that title doesn’t make sense to you, you need to do two things:

1. Read Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow
2. Not miss the next big Idea Market event.

Let me explain. On February 9th, we held our client appreciation Christmas party. Say whaaat? Here’s the thing: if we had held our Christmas party in December like sensible people, it would be just another Christmas party in a string of Christmas parties at a time when the last thing you want to do is go to another Christmas party. So hey! – let’s have ours in February!

That’s the first “purple cow” of our story. For those that don’t know, a purple cow is something that stands out from the crowd; something that makes your head snap back and say “what was that?!” It’s also something that you remember and want to tell your friends about after.

Paeton Cameron - live!

Now if we had served wine and cheese and had iTunes running in the background, the party would still have been largely forgettable, even in February. So instead, we shook it up a bit. As our guests approached our office, they were greeted with a finely-dressed 9-year-old who gave them a blue carnation corsage and their choice of custom-made Idea Market buttons. Once inside, they were enveloped by live music (thanks, Paeton Cameron!) and the sweet smell of bacon. Lots of bacon. Nothing but bacon, in fact: maple bacon, applewood smoked bacon, turkey bacon, bacon dip, bacon chips, bacon & chicken skewers, bacon-wrapped scallops and… chocolate-dipped bacon. That’s right: chocolate-dipped bacon. Trust me on that one; it was a real hit. Finally, we gave a parting gift of a home-made mix CD to each guest with four options to choose from, compiled by each of the four Idea Market team members. (My CD was most popular, but only because I was the only one to include Bette Midler.)

Mike vs. choco-bacon

The result? That evening, both Twitter and Facebook were abuzz with comments about the party, especially the chocolate bacon. Two days after the fact, people are still talking about it with their poor friends that weren’t there. We successfully created a purple cow event: one that was different, memorable and word-of-mouth-worthy.

Was it any harder to put together than a more “standard” party? Not at all. It just took a little creative thinking and the willingness to be a bit on the unorthodox side. Were the results different? Dramatically. Can you apply this same thinking to your own business’s marketing? Certainly. Look at what your competitors are doing. How can you differentiate and truly stand out from the crowd? How can you zig when they zag? How can you ensure that what you’re doing will be both remembered and talked about? Be bold; go where no man (or woman) has gone before. And reap the rewards.

Sometimes even being employed in a creative field isn’t quite enough. Some days you find yourself completely without inspiration. How do you jump-start some creativity? For me, the way to do it was force myself to create something just for myself, every week. And do it for a whole year. 52 week projects are fairly common on the web, and there are many photography projects based on such a concept. I decided to create photo composites (I would take photographs, either new ones or things already in my collection, and combine them to create something new and hopefully, interesting) and post them on a blog where I’d talk about the process, what photos I’d used (or where they came from) and other random tidbits. (more…)

Every so often I get these ambitious ideas that find me either sewing curtains by hand into the wee hours of the night or painting some new art an hour before I have to head out the door. This summer I decided, on a whim, to embark on a photo project titled “100 Days of Summer”, in which I captured a photo for each day on the street where our office is located. It was a personal project set to inspire another side of my creativity, and one that would challenge me to connect with the eclectic culture that has welcomed us on Ross Street. Initially daunted by the length in which I committed to, the desire to see things that I wouldn’t normally notice far outweighed my reluctance.

As it has now drawn to a close, I was encouraged to reflect upon the experience. It was both way harder than anticipated and way easier than I imagined. There were days that I hit creative roadblocks and Carson had to kick my butt out the door to take something and others that I couldn’t walk a few steps without seeing something new. I met individuals that changed my view: Keith, whom I now call my friend; Alec, who liked getting a rise out of me; and Tom, who sits on the corner each day. Much of what I photographed has disappeared with the forward motion of the season and the collection I gathered chronicles not only my journey but also the forward motion that is indicative of how this street evolves with time.

What I didn’t expect in any of it was the community interest. Since the beginning of this project, links to the project have been shared, a great deal of my photographs used in the 2010 Vital Signs for the Red Deer and District Community Foundation and inquiring individuals asking for prints. I have been encouraged, humbled and creatively renewed, both personally and in the work I do each day.

I guess the intention of my writing this is to show and encourage you to look outside the walls of your everyday. You’ll be surprised at what you find.

Well, the Idea Market team has returned from Austin, Texas where for 5 days we soaked up the Texas sun, drank whatever was offered, got smarter (we hope) and probably gained 5-10 lbs each (thanks a lot BBQ). Carson and Nicole showed newbie Graeme the ropes at our second run at SxSW , aka the nerd conference.

Like last year , we wanted to bring you the highlights of our trip… (more…)