Category: ABT Culture

Clients and ABTers Win Big, Eat Pork

When you set up a new client with a standout digital partner, everyone wins—and our referral contest was no exception.

On Sept 24, the Atlantic BT family gathered together at Jon Jordan’s home to celebrate the 2016 edition of Pigstock, our annual company pig pickin’. Amidst the live music, craft beer, and sounds of children jumping on the bouncy house, the drawing took place which would decide the winner of our referral contest. This lucky friend of ABT would win a dream vacation to Jon Jordan’s beach villa in Turks and Caicos. The ABTer who connected this person with the referral contest would receive a $500 reward.

The winner of the drawing was Peter Hayman from Deloitte, who connected ABT with LocalMotion Kids, LLC. As the referee, Mike McTaggert won a $500 referral prize. While Mike was unable to attend Pigstock, he looks forward to spending his prize money on enjoying quality time with his family.

Check out more images from PigStock 2016 here:

What qualities elevate a designer from “good” to “exceptional”?

On Sept 14, David and Mary Sherwin visited Atlantic BT to discuss this question along with best practices for design, business, and everyday life. The couple run their own consultancy dedicated to design leadership and training, and David is the author of the bestselling book Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills as well as Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers; Mary is a longtime educator and writer who has worked on numerous training programs and product innovation systems, such as Kaiser Permanente’s i60 Innovation Toolkit and frog’s Collective Action Toolkit. For more about the Sherwins, see their Hopscotch bio.

What Makes a Good Designer into an Exceptional One?

Sitting in a circle to promote discussion, the Sherwins shared stories and strategies they’d learned from their careers as designers and instructors. The couple devoted substantial time to taking questions focused on their work with team-building and management.

One of the standout moments of the Sherwins’ talk was the discussion of the qualities that make a good designer into an exceptional designer. Their answer included expected advantages like skill and experiences, but the Sherwins also emphasized the need to be a good communicator and listener. According to the Sherwins, the best designers support their design choices with evidence and explain the process behind their decisions; these exceptional designers are also innately curious, leading them to be open about feedback and eager to improve at what they do.

This desire to grow led the Sherwins to discuss another of their best practices—finding a good mentor who challenges you to get better at your design work and professional life. Besides being a good audience for your professional work, a mentor is the ideal person to discuss your daily ideas and inspirations. While conversing over this point, numerous attendees expressed an admiration for the creativity behind STRANGER THINGS, a sci-fi TV series set in the mid 1980s.

The Sherwins concluded their talk by giving away free copies of David’s two books to a pair of attendees. Atlantic BT’s Jon Karnofsky and Sarah Walker were the lucky ones, winning Success by Design and Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills respectively.

Between Pigstock 2016 and Pumpkin Chunkin’, there are a ton of great events happening soon at Atlantic BT. To stay up to date on our latest gatherings, follow us on Twitter @atlanticbt.

On our final Thirsty Thursday of the summer, Atlantic BT held an American Gladiators-style Joust tournament and a cornhole long toss competition to finish our fundraising for The Molly Ann Gries Foundation and the GoFundMe site for Kendall King’s son, Lincoln.

The fighting was fierce on the Joust battleground, with numerous ABTers and friends swatting each other with foam clubs. Ultimately, Nick Wichowski of Comfort Monster emerged as the winner.

“What can I say? It’s almost like being bigger and stronger than everyone is an advantage in hitting people with a huge foam club.” Nick said.

For the long toss competition, few were surprised to watch familiar champion Andrew Bartlett throw the winning sack to win $100.

“I’m just glad we raised all that money for the kids. Really great that Atlantic BT did all this to help two awesome charities. Plus, I got a hundred bucks. Championship!” Bartlett said.

The real champions were the charities. Over the summer, Atlantic BT raised more than $3150 for for The Molly Ann Gries Foundation and the GoFundMe site for Kendall King’s son, Lincoln.

Thirsty Thursday might be wrapped up for 2016, but there’s a lot of fun happening at Atlantic BT this fall. To keep up with the latest at Atlantic BT, follow us on Twitter: @atlanticbt.

ABT Wars Meets Angry Birds on Thirsty Thursday

Last Thursday, the Atlantic BT family gathered for an action-packed evening: the final battle of ABT Wars followed by a real-life version of Angry Birds for our two favorite charities.

Point leader Andrew Bartlett faced off against the Daniel Hooks, the last remaining survivor of ABT wars. After a furious back-and-forth competition with high-flying stunts and trick shots, Daniel Hooks defeated Andrew Bartlett in the final melee.

The devout Daniel Hooks promptly took a Tebow-esque knee in gratitude, then said:

“My goal in this shootout was simply to do something awesome before Bartlett overwhelmed me. That said, turtling up and waiting for him to make a mistake worked even better than I thought. It looks like slow and steady won this race.”

Once the two ABT Wars finalists exited the parking lot arena, the company cleared the space to set up for the company’s first ever Angry Birds IRL experience.

Using a ballista, Angry Bird beanies, and cut outs of members of our management team, players lined up to target the leaders of ABT with plush animals. Birds were chucked at Jon Jordan, Corey Brinkman and even the likes of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The ballista was loaded with birds, targets went down, and Dave Dekker claimed victory with a total of 6500 points.

As Jon Jordan, who came in second place, said,

“Even though we started chucking birds at the very same time. Dekker’s score continued to climb. What can I say? The man is non-stop.”

However, the real high score was the $536 that was raised for our 2 favorite charities, The Molly Ann Gries Foundation and the GoFundMe site for Kendall King’s son, Lincoln.

Got a case of FOMO? There’s just one Thirsty Thursday left this year— on Sept 15.

Check out the full gallery of images from Angry Birds Take Atlantic BT:

One Man’s Revenge Is Another Man’s Donation

How often do you get to launch water balloons at your boss with an industrial-strength slingshot while dozens of your co workers cheer you on? Factor in a megaphone for hurling insults at one another, some craft beer, food fresh off the grill, and a couple of good causes to benefit from the proceeds and you’ve got a recipe for success.

Last Thursday that became a reality. Atlantic BT Founder and CEO Jon Jordan’s homemade slingshot—more similar to a ballista than anything else—reigned watery doom down upon those brave enough to welcome it. And, although accuracy was abysmal, the handful of balloons that found their target were immensely satisfying.

“Getting balloons tossed at me was a blast… at least while everyone was missing! Getting hit was a different story,” said Eric Lloyd, ABT’s Senior Solutions Account Executive and the first participant to get hit with a balloon. “But it’s easy to offer up that temporary sting for such a great cause. It was well worth it.”

Twelve ABT employees volunteered to act as sitting ducks and guests responded by launching hundreds of balloons their way.

Mostly from balloon sales, ABT was able to raise just under $550 that will go to the Molly Ann Gries Foundation and the Legends for Lincoln King GoFundMe. This jumps the total funds raised up to $2,374, closing in on the $3000 goal set at the beginning of the Thirsty Thursday series earlier this year.