Part of the fun of leading Rockfish includes coordinating office space and moving (sarcasm).  Next week we'll be adding a second location and moving for the fourth time.  It's not a long-term solution, but it will buy us time as we continue our search to build or buy the perfect long-term home for Rockfish.

The Bentonville Daily Record wrote a story about our expansion for those who are interested.

In the very early hours of the morning, we launched the new Walmartstores.com website.  The new Walmartstores.com website is a consolidation of three major websites (Walmartfacts.com, Walmartstores.com, and Walmartfoundation.org).  There's so much that can be said about this project and we will post a project case study on it very soon.  However, for now let me say:

1) There was a tremendous amount of partnership between Rockfish and Wal-Mart in launching this significant website.  Consolidating three very active websites into a new site is not an easy undertaking.  A lot of people from Wal-Mart and Rockfish worked very hard on this project!  This was definitely a team effort.

2) So much of what I'm most proud of on this website is what you can't see.  It's the engine behind the scenes that is powering this site that really gets me excited!

3) I actually have a small sense of sadness that the original Walmartfacts.com is going away.  That site is an important milestone in our company's short history.  It was the first significant website we launched for Wal-Mart almost two years ago, and one of the first websites we launched as a company.  However, knowing that it has rolled up into the new Walmartstores.com site is a much stronger sense of accomplishment and pride in how far our company has come in the past two years!

Today the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal published a story announcing the partnership between Rockfish Interactive and SVI in forming a new company, Geno.  I’m very excited about Geno and wanted to briefly share my perspective on this partnership.  The next posting is a more formal Q&A that Mike and I prepared together.

I ventured into the world of interactive development in 1995 through developing computer-based learning software for a large health care company in Texas.  Throughout the 90’s I had the opportunity to work on a number of computer-based learning projects for Fortune 500 companies and experienced first-hand the tremendous value and excitement that interactive learning brings to an organization and their employees.  At Rockfish we’ve recently had the privilege to partner with JB Hunt in successfully launching online learning for all of their drivers.
 
Mike and I met and immediately connected.  We share similar values and a vision for the tremendous opportunities that emerging technologies bring to online learning.  Prior to meeting, our companies were independently having the same conversation from the opposite perspective.  If Rockfish was going to seriously leverage our technology expertise in developing online learning for other companies, we were going to need to build our business development team and People Development expertise.  If SVI was going to continue to grow and meet the demands for online learning, they were going to need to build their technology team.  When we met it became quickly obvious to both of us that creating a joint venture between our two companies was the most efficient way for us to meet our objectives.

Both SVI and Rockfish will continue to operate independently.  We will staff Geno with people from both of our organizations that