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Springbox is a digital strategy agency specializing in web design, user experience, Adobe Omniture & Google analytics, social media. CTO Tom Hudson is known as employee number one at Springbox and is so well respected, the team celebrates Tom Hudson Day every May 13th to honor his humor, honesty and dedication to Springbox. Built In Austin caught up with Hudson to learn more about what's powering Springbox's technology today.
What technologies power your business?
Springbox does custom web application development. We use .NET and PHP backend languages powered by SQL Server or mySQL. We also have a team providing front end development using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Our team utilizes tools and frameworks such as Grunt, Node, Laravel, Angular, Backbone, Foundation, SASS and LESS to assist in powerful front end experience building. We use tried and true content management systems such as Wordpress, Drupal, and Kentico to power content-rich experiences.
What technologies are playing the biggest roles at Springbox this year?
Websites are becoming web applications and end users expect very feature-rich UI elements. This year we are working a great deal in Javascript frameworks providing a rich feature-set for the interface along with a lightweight payload for mobile support. Also, everything we build must be responsive in order to adapt to any screen size.
What are the biggest tech projects your team is working on this year?
We finalized and launched a year-long project for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network in March. The tool is called the Clinical Trial Finder, available at https://clinicaltrials.pancan.org. This tool allows those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, or family members of those individuals, to search for trials they may qualify for and ultimately be connected to the Network for additional help. Health Care Professionals also have their own unique access to search trials and filter based on certain criteria. This tool is part of a larger goal for the Network: Double the amount of pancreatic cancer survivors by the year 2020.
What are the biggest technology challenges you've faced in the past? How did you overcome them?
The largest challenge I faced was in 2010 when Steve Jobs announced the lack of support for Flash on the iDevices. At that time we had a team of Flash developers working on various rich media websites for clients like Disney and Microsoft. Given this news, we felt it was not in our clients' best interest to stay on Flash. We worked to steer them away from use of Flash and onto a supported platform such as HTML5. The hardest part was to convert our team of Flash developers to either designers or front-end developers. Luckily many of the developers are well versed in Javascript and found moving to front-end development to be fairly seamless. We also had one of the developers move to the design team and up that ladder to Associate Creative Director.
What trends do you see happening in the mobile tech scene over the next three years? How are you driving those trends?
The biggest trend in our realm of work is around increased mobile use for browsing websites and online web applications. We have already seen the needle tip towards higher use on mobile than desktop and over the next three years it will only increase. Thus all experiences we build need to be approached using the Mobile First design paradigm. This means we design for the mobile device, then decide how that application will translate to the desktop. In order to drive this need we are working to educate our clients on the saturation of mobile traffic and the need to serve the largest audience the best. We are also working on building in optimizations to our experiences to perform fast from devices connected through 3G or 4G networks.
What are lessons you've learned about working in Austin that other local entrepreneurs can learn from?
The biggest challenge for me given we are in Austin is keeping developers happy and excited about the work they do and not leaving to work at another company. Austin has so many tech companies in the same industry that it requires us to offer something better than the rest. Thus as the leader of your technology department you need to provide an environment where they have the tools they need, enjoy who they work with, and have a voice in the company. In addition, Springbox offers unlimited vacation, bringing your dog to work, flexibility in where you work, and having the opportunity for education and conferences as well as quarterly company/team outings.
Austin is known for having a large talent pool of thirsty, young workers. What are the top characteristics you look for in a potential hire?
We typically describe ourselves as technology agnostic so I look for developers who have a general sense of good programming methodology. Aside from that I look for enthusiasm and a willingness to try, sometimes fail and ultimately succeed.
How would your team describe working with you?
They would say I am very hands off on their work. I would be described as having trust in my team to do their job and do whatever possible to meet their personal needs. They may also mention that I ask two things of them: Make all of your meetings and finish your work on time.
What else do you want the Austin startup community to know about Springbox's technologies?
The great advantage about Springbox is we have the full life-cycle of application and website development in house. From the beginning when covering strategy and user experience all the way through design, development, and maintaining after deployment. Many companies focus on only one area of this life-cycle. We have teams specific to necessary steps when building enterprise web applications for improved speed to delivery and overall higher level of quality.
*Tom Hudson is loved so much at Springbox, they celebrate Tom Hudson day every year!
Have a tip for us or want to recommend a CTO for this series? Email us via [email protected]
