iD Tech Camps is announcing a new course in digital photography for kids and teens ages 8-17 at twenty university locations across the country.

Campbell, CA (PRWEB) June 12, 2010 — Now in its 12th season, iD Tech Camps, the largest summer technology camp in North America for kids and teens, is offering a brand new course in Digital Photography.

Using high-quality Sony® ± (alpha) digital SLR cameras (models DSLR-A100 and DSLR-A300), the camp is offering Digital Photography at 20 locations in the United States and Canada. Sony’s innovative DSLR cameras make it easy to get the best shot and empower students to easily take creative, high-quality images. As a leader in digital imaging sensors and equipment, the DSLR line of cameras incorporate a range of high-performance features and auto focus lenses that let students capture breathtaking images on the university campuses where the camps are held. Students create portfolios centered around youth-oriented themes.

We’re excited to have students as young as 10 years old immerse themselves in photography with Sony cameras.

“We’re excited to have students as young as 10 years old immerse themselves in photography with Sony cameras,” said Pete Ingram-Cauchi, CEO of iD Tech Camps. “Our goal is to run the best technology camps using the best products. Sony’s cameras give us that opportunity.”

During the week-long summer camps, photography students will learn to master the camera’s high performance features while capturing amazing landscapes and professional-looking portraits, using the university campus as the backdrop. Students get hands-on experience with Sony’s high-quality DSLR camera, and ultimately leave the camp with a professional-looking photographic portfolio.

A curriculum development team of professional photographers has put the final touches on the camp’s curriculum, and the course will be debuted this summer.

ABOUT iD TECH CAMPS
iD Tech Camps is North America’s #1 provider of summer computer camps and technology camps for kids and teens with programs at 60 elite universities in the USA and Canada. Locations include Stanford and MIT. Established in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the company is family-owned and operated. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses including 3D Game Design, Digital Photography, 3D Game Modding, Maya®, Game Development, Programming in C++ and Java, Programming iPhone® Apps, Robotics, Web Design, Flash® Animation, Graphic Arts and Video Editing. The summer camps consist of week-long day camps and sleep away camps, and multi-week teen academies. Courses are appropriate for beginner to advanced learners. The company teaches the latest technologies from Apple®, Adobe®, Microsoft®, Autodesk®, Sony®, Valve® and more.

Summer video game development program for teens teaches young students real-world gaming skills with professional level software.

Campbell, CA (PRWEB) May 5, 2010 — The iD Gaming Academy, a specialized intensive summer game development boot camp for teens, has announced two new locations for its summer 2010 lineup. Now in its 5th season, the iD Gaming Academy has expanded to Seattle and Chicago. The two-week program immerses students in game theory, development, graphics—and other crucial “behind the scenes” aspects of the industry. “We have a lot of gamers who come to us expecting the experience to be easy—but developing games requires patience, the ability to work in teams—and you’ve got to be good. The industry is growing, and the competition is strong. We give our students a leg up,” said Pete Ingram-Cauchi, CEO of the iD Gaming Academy.

The Academy has locations at Stanford University, Villanova University, Emory University, and now the University of Washington in Seattle and Lake Forest College in Chicago. The summer programs are strategically located close to some of the country’s premiere gaming studios including Electronic Arts®, Valve®, Microsoft® Game Studios, Hi-Rez Studios and Big Huge Games. The Academy incorporates tours of many of these studios into its curriculum. “We want to give them a taste for what a real gaming studio looks like and feels like,” said Ingram-Cauchi.

The Academy hires industry professionals with game development experience. Jay Vales is a 3D Modeling instructor at the Academy, and has professional credits working on many well known games including the massively multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft®. Alex Liebert, another Academy instructor, is an indie game developer and owner of Aqualux Deluxe which is a web based action/puzzle game.”It’s really gratifying to see the satisfaction in a student’s face at the moment something clicks—when they’ve wrapped their head around a tough concept and created something they’re proud of. There’s a thrill in seeing your (game) ideas come to life,” said Liebert.

Teen students look to the Academy to teach the building blocks of gaming. And it might be a smart choice for those considering the potential of the gaming industry as a career choice. A nod to the long term sustainability of gaming, a recent BusinessWeek article outlined the fact that the video game industry posted $1.52 billion in March 2010 sales, up 6% over the same period a year ago. The growing importance of video games is hard to miss. A recent USA Today article stated that Erskine Bowles, head of the Obama administration’s budget-balancing task force, had contacted Microsoft® CEO Steve Ballmer to see if the company could build a video game that would allow gamers “to take a stab at balancing the budget.”

Fortune 500 companies are also getting into the game. The United Parcel Service (UPS) recently announced they are looking to hire 25,000 truck drivers. But there is one catch. Applicants will need to prove they are ready for the job by completing virtual training through, you guessed it, video game simulations.

And recently, Google, Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt suggested that playing multiplayer video games “ is good training for a career in tech,” and if he were 15 years old, that’s what he’d be doing right now.

The summer gaming camp provides instruction in different two-week courses, and enhances the gaming experience with gaming tournaments powered by NVIDIA®. The teen camp courses include Modeling and Animation with Maya® (the industry leading development tool used in top-selling video games like Resistance 2™), and Programming for Game Consoles, which allows users to develop games for delivery on the PC or Xbox 360®. Other academy courses include Level Design – Unreal® Engine 3, where Teens mod Unreal® Tournament 3 with the same engine used for the Gears of War and Bio Shock series.

So, Mom and Dad, how about all those hours “wasted” in the basement playing video games? It looks like it just might be an investment after all.

About the iD Gaming Academy
The iD Gaming Academy, operated by iD Tech Camps, is North America’s #1 provider of summer camps and teen gaming camps at 60 elite universities in the USA and Canada. Locations include Stanford and , Villanova University and Emory University. Established in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the company is family-owned and operated. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses including 3D Video Game Design, 3D Game Modding, Maya®, Video Game Programming, Programming in C++ and Java, Programming iPhone® Apps, Robotics, Web Design, Flash® Animation, Graphic Arts, Digital Photography and Video Editing. The summer youth camps consist of weeklong day camps and sleep away camps, and multi-week teen academies. Courses are appropriate for beginner to advanced learners. The company teaches the latest technologies from Apple®, Adobe®, Microsoft®, Autodesk®, Sony®, Valve® and more.

Computer Science pipeline being filled by some unconventional entities–like summer camps.

Campbell, CA (PRWEB) April 7, 2010 — The top Computer Science institutions in the country are continuing to experience a steady boost in enrollment, fueled by prolonged economic uncertainty. The pipeline of pre-college organizations feeding the big tech schools–junior highs, high schools, and even summer camps—are seeing the same trends. iD Tech Camps, the largest youth technology camp in North America, recently launched an introductory programming course for kids ages 7, 8, and 9, and a new iPhone® Apps course for teens to complement its existing C++ and Java classes. The company also expanded its pre-college academy, dubbed the iD Programming Academy, to include a new location at MIT.

In an article from The New York Times, a survey quoted “The number of majors and pre-majors in American computer science programs was up 6.2 percent, according to the Taulbee Survey, an annual survey conducted by the Computing Research Association following trends in student enrollment.”

There is a big myth out there that you have to wait until college to learn about programming. And that when you do finally declare CS as your major, you are a nerd.

“We’re seeing amazing increases in enrollment,” said Eric Roberts, a computer scientist at Stanford University. “It’s not that people have forgotten about the offshoring of jobs, but our competition isn’t what it was. There are fewer places to go, and we don’t have Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and Citibank to compete with.” He went on to add, “The ability to make a billion dollars by the time you are 30 years old is a huge motivation.”

Universities are not the only educational entities seeing a surge in interest in Computer Science. A surge is developing somewhere much less obvious—summer camps. Summer camps used to be about canoeing and archery. Now there are tech camps. “Five years ago, enrollment in our programming courses did not come close to the interest in our other courses like game design and digital video editing,” says Pete Ingram-Cauchi, president of iD Tech Camps, a summer camp dedicated to teaching technology to kids. “Programming is now our top offering—we’re seeing a 24% increase in enrollment over 2009.” The camp teaches young teens how to program in C++ and Java. Advanced students are even learning to develop their own iPhone® Apps.

Even the youngest campers ages 7, 8 and 9 get a taste for programming using MIT Lab’s software program called Scratch, which allows users to program their own games and animations, and then upload them to the web. There have been more than 500,000 projects shared on Scratch’s website. “Scratch teaches our kids some incredible fundamentals. But the most important thing is to keep the kids motivated, having fun” said Ingram-Cauchi.

“There is a big myth out there that you have to wait until college to learn about programming,” said Ingram-Cauchi. “And that when you do finally declare CS as your major, you are a nerd.” That seems to be old-school thinking. The fundamental shift is that students from the 3rd grade, right up to college, now see programming as cool and hip; the buzz surrounding Apple, Facebook, and Google are driving that point home.

The summer camp has also seen the transferrable advantages from camp to the classroom. Sue Cymbalski, the mother of one of the camp’s students, said of her son Andrew, “The instruction he received at the camp in one week was the equivalent to about half a year of his Java 1 class. We’re not waiting until college to have Andrew learn about programming.” Andrew, now in the 10th grade, attended iD Tech Camps C++/Java class at the University of Michigan last summer. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses at 60 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada.

An article from February 22 in Network World substantiated Ms. Cymbalski’s notion that programming and computer science might prove to be a wise long-term move for her son.

“I think the job market is what’s driving the growth,” said Professor Bruce Porter, Chair of the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, which has seen its enrollment increase more than 5% this year. “The government has made it clear that computer science is a growth field, and I think that message is getting back to students and their parents.”

About iD Tech Camps

iD Tech Camps is North America’s #1 provider of summer camps and computer science camps for kids and teens with programs at 60 elite universities in the USA and Canada. Locations include Stanford and MIT. Established in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the company is family-owned and operated. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses including 3D Video Game Design, 3D Game Modding, Maya®, Video Game Programming, Programming in C++ and Java, Programming iPhone® Apps, Robotics, Web Design, Flash® Animation, Graphic Arts, Digital Photography and Video Editing. The summer camps consist of weeklong day camps and sleep away camps, and multi-week teen academies. Courses are appropriate for beginner to advanced learners. The company teaches the latest technologies from Apple®, Adobe®, Microsoft®, Autodesk®, Sony®, Valve® and more.

###

Campbell, CA (PRWEB) April 1, 2010 — With the growing popularity of independent and low budget movies on the silver screen, an increasing number of teens and young adults are seeking the skills it takes in order to produce their own film, photography and web portfolios. This year’s Academy Awards was dominated by Voltage Pictures’ “Hurt Locker,” walking away with six awards including best picture. The budget? Only $11 million. Blumhouse Productions’ “Paranormal Activity” grossed over $100 million worldwide with a reported budget of $15,000. Not $15,00,000. “When we see more diversity on the big screen, it trickles down to our students,” said Pete Ingram-Cauchi, CEO of iD Visual Arts Academy. “The cost of bringing your personal vision to the silver screen is within reach. That’s powerful.”

The iD summer film camps, part of the iD Visual Arts Academy, educate teens on filmmaking and movie production in Montreal, Quebec at McGill University, and in the San Francisco Bay Area at UC Berkeley. The newest location for the Academy is Stanford University in the Bay Area.

The cost of bringing your personal vision to the silver screen is within reach. That’s powerful.

“If you’ve ever seen small film crews in the Bay Area or Montreal during the summertime, there’s a good chance you are seeing students from our Academy,” said Ingram-Cauchi. “What you might not know is that these students are only 14, 15, and 16 years old, and they come from all over the country, and the world. They are making films good enough to get on the film festival circuit.”

Many of the young promising filmmakers end up pursuing careers in film and broadcasting. One such graduate from the iD program, Cristina Frenzel, directed a documentary which aired on HBO—all by the time she was 15 years old. Sibling to a brother with autism, Christina produced “The Third Parent,” applying personal knowledge to share her concerns and life experiences in a visual way. She later went on to graduate from the USC School of Cinema-Television.

“The caliber of instruction we offer at the iD Visual Arts Academy is something that is hard to find for teens” said Somer Lowery, Program Manager for the Academy. “Our students use professional software like Apple® Final Cut Pro 7® and learn from accomplished faculty.” Jazz Tigan, a long time iD instructor, has recent film credits which include working as a Character Technical Director on Dreamwork’s “Madagascar 2.” Another instructor, Kristopher Kasper, is a Visual Effects Editor with ten years of experience working in the film industry. He has worked on over 20 films with directors including Ridley Scott, Stephen Spielberg and Tim Burton. His film credits include “Planet of the Apes,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Black Hawk Down.”

The iD Visual Arts Academy at Stanford University opens its doors summer 2010 to students with both limited knowledge and extensive experience in filmmaking, photography and web design.

ABOUT iD TECH CAMPS
iD Tech Camps is North America’s #1 provider of summer camps and technology camps for kids and teens with programs at 60 elite universities in the USA and Canada. Locations include Stanford, McGill and MIT. Established in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the company is family-owned and operated. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses including 3D Video Game Design, 3D Game Modding, Maya®, Video Game Programming, Programming in C++ and Java, Programming iPhone® Apps, Robotics, Web Design, Flash® Animation, Graphic Arts, Digital Photography, Video Editing and film. The summer camps consist of weeklong day camps and sleep away camps, and multi-week teen academies. Courses are appropriate for beginner to advanced learners. The company teaches the latest technologies from Apple®, Adobe®, Microsoft®, Autodesk®, Sony®, Valve® and more.

iD Tech Camps and iD Visual Arts Academy, are registered trademarks or trademarks of InternalDrive, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may are trademarks of their respective owners.

###

When we say we are a family company, we mean a lot of things.  I’m the CEO of iD Tech Camps, and Alexa, my sister is the CFO.  We’ve been labeled “an inspiring brother and sister team,” but there are other longtime connections that run deep and help make up our ‘iDNA.’

In the early days of iD, circa 2000, we were fortunate enough to bring on Andrea Ajemian and Jon Artigo as summer staff members who would later join iD full time as Regional Managers.   These exceptional individuals eventually left iD after many years of service, to pursue their dreams of making movies full time.

Since then, this talented duo has collaborated on many award-winning films.  Freedom Park is one of those films.   It was created in collaboration with other iD Tech Camps colleagues including Chad Meserve, Julie Fletcher, and Kevin Painchaud.

With light-hearted and fast paced scenes, Freedom Park is an ideal film for our students who want to learn video editing with professional content and professional editing software Apple® Final Cut Pro 7®.  The challenge and experience of editing raw footage to meet the vision of the film is “on the job training” at its best.  Curriculum for our film camp course is titled Video Editing & Special Effects.  The curricuulum has been developed by Jon Artigo, Writer and Director of Freedom Park, who is also currently Assistant Chair and Teacher for the Film Department at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.  Student projects will ultimately be posted on YouTube at iD Tech – Freedom Park.

These days, Andrea Ajemian, Co-Founder and Producer of Artigo/Ajemian Films, is busy with promoting their latest film, BoyBand BoyBand, starring Hollywood talent, is a teen comedy about the formation of the world’s first boy band in 1982.  The film recently screened  for distributors in Beverly Hills and is awaiting distribution news.

At iD Tech Camps, anything is possible!  We are thrilled to have such creative talent on board.  We hope all of our students will have a blast editing real footage from Freedom Park the movie.  This is an extremely unique opportunity–and one I am convinced will be top notch for our budding young filmmakers.  Who knew movie camp could be so cool?  Ready to do something big this summer?

Have a great day!

-Pete

The use of technology from iPhones to Blackberry’s changed forever the way viewers followed the Olympic Games. Now that the Olympics are over and Vancouver is getting back to normal, a Silicon Valley based summer technology camp, iD Tech Camps, is hoping to make inroads in the local market.

Campbell, CA (PRWEB) March 10, 2010 — The Olympics are over. Countries are counting their gold, silver and bronze medals. One Olympian is even counting his self-awarded platinum. But the real winner? Technology. From mobile apps to summer tech camps, technology is changing the Vancouver landscape. iD Tech Camps, a Silcon Valley-based youth education company, is opening its doors at UBC this summer. When you think of camp, canoes, lakes and campfires might come to mind–not technology. That’s about to change. The tech camps, while popular in the US, are new to Canada. The camp has operated at 60 elite universities across the US for the past 12 seasons. Now it is expanding to Canada. But why now?

Smart phone equipped and very well-connected, this year’s Olympic viewer didn’t feel the need to be glued to the TV. Visitors to Vancouver could be seen physically attending the Super G with feet planted in the snow, while simultaneously watching curling from their mobile devices. Even Olympians participated in the social media phenomenon by Tweeting and posting timely updates to Facebook. The 2010 Olympic Games have been dubbed by many the “Social Games.” And for good reason. NBC recently released data showing there were 87 million total mobile page views (coming from NBC’s website and iTunes App) for the Vancouver Games, compared to 52 million views for the Beijing Games.

The propensity toward social media and technology blended with the excitement surrounding Shaun White’s Double McTwist and the stunning victory by the Canadian Hockey Team has caught the eye of people and business new to Vancouver.

“Our young students learn to make video games, they learn to program in C++ or Java, they learn to make iPhone Apps and websites,” said Pete Ingram-Cauchi, CEO of iD Tech Camps. “Vancouver is a great spot for our program. The buzz around the Olympics, the great university system, and the youthful, tech savvy population seem like a compelling match for us.”

“It’s no surprise that the more often kids use iPhone apps and other tech products, the more they think ‘This is pretty cool…how does this work?’,” said Mr. Ingram Cauchi. No stranger to kids and technology, the camp, whose presence is well known in the States, is offering tech courses at the University of British Columbia, and also hosts a Visual Arts Academy at McGill University in Montreal.

With the way things are trending, maybe the next hot new Olympic sport attracting the younger generation will blend both technology and sports. Speed texting, anyone? And now there’s even a summer camp for that.

About iD Tech Camps

iD Tech Camps is North America’s #1 provider of summer computer camps and technology camps for kids and teens with programs at 60 elite universities in the USA and Canada. Locations include Stanford, UBC and MIT. Established in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the company is family-owned and operated. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses including Video Game Design, 3D Game Modding, Maya®, Game Development, Programming in C++ and Java, Programming iPhone® Apps, Robotics, Web Design, Flash® Animation, Graphic Arts, Digital Photography and Video Editing. The summer camps consist of weeklong day camps and sleep away camps, and multi-week teen academies. Courses are appropriate for beginner to advanced learners. The company teaches the latest technologies from Apple®, Adobe®, Microsoft®, Autodesk®, Sony®, Valve® and more.

Hello iD Nation,

This email was just sent to one of our client services reps.  Roque received this email yesterday and sent it to me.  I love, love, love hearing stories like this.  We often hear that students at our summer camps learn more in a week with us than they do at a year in school.  The below email pretty much sums it up:

_______________________________________________________

From: Susan (Last Name Withheld)
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 3:29 AM
To: roque@internaldrive.com
Subject: ID Tech Camp experience 2009

My son, Andrew, attended ID Tech Camp C++/Java class at the University of Michigan in the summer of 2009.  This year, Andrew is in the 10th grade and attends our high school’s math/science program.  One of his classes this year is Java 1 and he is scheduled to take Java 2 next year.  I would like to share with you the progress Andrew has made this year because of the education he received at your camp.

The instruction he received at your camp in one week was the equivalent to about half a year of his Java 1 class.  His computer teacher would like him to work aggressively through the remaining modules so he can complete Java 1 and 2 this year.  I would like to commend you on your dedicated and talented instructors that provide such an excellent education.

Sue (Last Name Withheld)

_______________________________________________________

Sue, thanks for writing to us!  It is great to see that Andrew had such a positive experience at our summer camp for teenagers.  He is now on the fast track.

Best,

Pete

For Immediate Release

San Francisco, February 9, 2010

As a featured guest at the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Pre-G-20 Forum this past fall, Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt was asked what type of training young people should pursue to gain the skills necessary to work in the tech sector of the future.  Not surprisingly, he wants kids and teens to learn programming.  But the idea that surprised many in the room?  He thought playing video games had value too.

“The game world is good training for a career in tech,” said Schmidt.  “It teaches players to build a network, to use interactive skills and thinking.”

Schmidt’s words may come as a shock to those of us who weren’t born with a laptop or a smart phone in our hands.  His comments directly contradict what popular culture has been telling us for years; that video game playing is only for entertainment value and doesn’t lead to any long term benefits.  We think of gamers as chip-eating, soda-drinking couch potatoes destined to work minimum wage temp jobs for the rest of their lives.  We haven’t connected the dots…that gaming can actually be a valuable stepping stone leading to better results for surgeons, athletes, computer scientists and engineers.  An AP Article covered a study from Beth Israel Medical Center with the title “Surgeons may err less by playing video games:  Three hours a week decreased mistakes by 37 percent, study finds.”

“It’s refreshing to hear somebody like Eric Schmidt address the topic,” said Pete Ingram-Cauchi, President and CEO of iD Tech Camps, the nation’s largest youth summer technology program.  “We’ve been preaching that same sentiment for years and have actually seen the positive effects that programming and video game design can have on students.”

The summer camp uses gaming as a vehicle to build critical thinking skills.  Students work with gaming titles like Unreal Tournament^® 3 and Half-Life^® 2, along with the 3D modeling package Maya^®, and game development software from Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer ^®.

“Our students want to learn how to create video games—to learn game development skills.  But that’s the head fake.  Along the way, they gain problem-solving skills and teambuilding skills which are absolutely vital in the tech field.” said Ingram-Cauchi.

Are the days behind us where kids and teens are treated as outcasts for having a keen interest in video games?  Probably not.  But Mom and Dad can now rest a little easier after spending $50 on a video game.  It just might be an investment.  And who knows, it might lead to fulfilling the dream of attending Stanford, UCLA or MIT.  Or even getting that lucrative dream job.  Eric, you still hiring?

###

Written by Ryan Barone

iD Nation,

Last week I received in the mail a box of candy from a student.  I was moved by the hand-written card, the thoughtfulness of the gift, but also the reminder that what we do (run summer computer camps for kids) changes lives, one student at a time.

Braden attended our Villanova University location and took a course that is now titled Adventures in Programming – a course that is fun and great for summer learning.  He really excelled and he has a very, very bright future.

Braden – I personally want to thank you for the card and the candy.  I really love the card.  Your grammar and spelling and penmanship are really, really top notch.  And the picture of the computer that you drew is really cool too.  Thanks for taking the time to write me.  You made my day.  And my week.  And I am so glad you enjoyed our summer camp!

Thank you!

Pete

PS, the i in “iD” and T in “Tech” fell off the bottom part of the card, but that makes it even cooler!

On the heels of the 2009 summer camp season, our team huddled together in our office in Silicon Valley and we hit on a major theme moving forward.  2009 was a tough year for many companies–and this was true for lots of camps out there–computer camps, sports camps, any type of summer camp, really.  We fared better than most.  Some camps are no longer standing.  We’re still standing–and we might say, thriving.  And we’re appreciative.

We made a little money.  We tightened the belt while still running amazing camps.  But we still had this feeling that we wanted to take our company to a whole new space.  We thought, “We worked hard to survive the Great Recession, so how can we thrive in 2010?  What are we going to do differently to take it to another level?”

One of our initiatives?  POSITIVELY OUTRAGEOUS SERVICE.  Southwest Airlines is one of my favorite companies…and we already have a bit of a whacky culture anyways.  So, we stole the POS acronym from them.  (Full disclosure.)  But I cannot expect my staff to provide POS if I don’t live it myself.  Today, I made Cuban coffee for the team and went around the office with a cart.

That's me, serving my Client Service manager.

We don’t want to feel good about what we’re doing.  We want to feel great about it.  Most of our moms, dads, campers and staff know that we have a passion for service, but we always think we can do better.  In this case, I think my team was excited about the fact that I would go out of my way to make them coffee, and serve it to them personally.  They didn’t ask for it, and didn’t expect it.  And that’s the basis for how we define POS.

It looks staged, but they truly loved the coffee.

OK, back to POS.  Here are some things we already do.  We’ve been doing things this way since iD was born.  It’s just part of our DNA:

• We don’t have a phone tree.  When you call us up, our benchmark is to pick up the phone within 3 rings.
• I personally don’t have an office.  I sit with the client services group.  It keeps me in the know, and close to our clients.  It allows me to listen, and to act fast.
• When a client emails us, I expect the email to get answered the same day. Max 24 hours.
• Out at camp, we expect personalized diplomas from our staff.
• We expect our summer staff to assist with luggage for our overnight campers.
• We expect our technology instruction to be energetic, informative, and unlike anything the students have done before.

These are simple examples of some of our current expectations–and things we do very well already.

So, where do we want to go this year?  Here’s what Positively Outrageous Service means to us:

• We know we want to routinely perform “the unexpected.”  (Think delivering coffee at 3 PM on a random afternoon!)
• We want people to talk about our organization and our brand.  (The CEO of iD made coffee and carted it around!)
• We don’t want to pre-define POS in concrete terms.  It limits our creativity.  (What will I come up with next?)
• We do, however, want to illustrate samples of POS for our internal departments and summer staff, so individuals can visualize what the possibilities are.
• We want our employees to feel empowered to deliver POS–to take some risks and have fun along the way.  (It was fun today.  It gave people a reason to laugh.)
• POS can come in many forms, but the bottom line is to thrill the client in new and unexpected ways.  (It is OK to thrill your employees too!)  Sometimes it might cost a few dollars to make a client happy.  But it is not about money.  Is is about going the extra mile on behalf of the client or camper–and not treating them like another number or commodity.

POS, to us, is something that comes to our team naturally.  It doesn’t bend us in unnatural ways.  We can only deliver POS if we already have a strong culture of service–and if all the people in the company “get it.”  So, be careful who you hire!  We have an awesome foundation already.  The team has to want it, and understand it.  And be smart enough, and sensitive enough, to deliver it.

I am meeting with my client service group weekly to ask each individual how they have delivered POS.  I want to see the proof.  I want the stories.  And I want people to talk about us.  This attitude extends out to our summer camps as well.  The spirit of service is partly why we survived 2009, and will thrive even more in 2010.  A lot of companies talk about great customer service.  Most of it is blah blah blah, right.  Truly, few companies get it.  We do.

And, if you have any doubts about POS, please remember this.  You can always call Captain Curry.  The Captain heads up our Client Services group.  Really.  Don’t believe me?  Give us a call.  We’ll pick up in 3 rings or less.  If we don’t, I owe you a coffee!

Hope to see you out at camp!

Sincerely,

Pete I-C

Captain Curry delivers POS