2012: Doejo Year in Review

2012 was an exciting year for our digital agency. In addition to launching consumer-facing projects like Vicelight, Peckish and Mouthee we also looked into the mysterious history of our office space, opened a coffee roaster and further immersed ourselves within the Chicago tech community on the heels of winning a Best Digtial Agency award.

Here’s a recap of the jam-packed year where we hosted events with Aaron Draplin, Chicago Ideas Week and CreativecMornings, expanded our company blog to cover the local start-up scene and experimented with a new crowd-funding platform to support our growing coffee roaster.

February:
We started the year off with one of our “Doejo Dev Sessions,” an ongoing series where we sit down with our in-house team of developers and try to understand the methodology behind what they do. This month’s post focused on Ruby on Rails, a popular framework for developing applications.

April:
2012 was a year of Zombie Apocalypse Preparation. To prepare for the impending doomsday we launched the Map of the Dead: Zombie Survival Map, one of our most popular in-house projects ever. The viral map lead to a give-away sponsored by the Walking Dead and plans for an upcoming mobile game.

June:
We had the honor of winning Best Digital Agency at the Moxie Awards, presented by Built in Chicago and New World Ventures. Check out our recap of the night, including a speech by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and an overview of the local tech scene.

July:
On July 3rd we hosted the opening party for Bow Truss Coffee Roasters, a Lakeview microroastery and Doejo sister company. In the six months since Bow Truss opened its doors to the public, the staff has rooted itself the local coffee community by partnering with Threadless for a design competition, participated in coffee crawls and latte art throwdowns and hosted weekly pop-ups full of local vendors.

This month we also hunted down six inspiring office spaces in Chicago to profile including 37 Signals, Gensler, The Coop and Flor. These companies have created offices that do more than just look cool—they provide their employees with unique amenities, motivating workplaces and casual places to collaborate. Check them out here

September:
In September we had the opportunity to host a walking tour of Lakeview with Chicago Ideas Week. During “Walk the Block with Doejo,” we shared behind-the-scenes stories about local projects we helped launch. We also partnered with Chicago Ideas Week in December to host a twitter chat on “Scaling Creativity.”

October:
This month we invited graphic designer Aaron Draplin to speak at Bow Truss. Draplin blew the crowd away with his passionate talk on what inspires him, how he started his own design company and the designs he is most proud of. Click here to read about some of the incredible client stories he shared and see photos capturing the spirit of the night.

We also began a partnership with local brewer and designer Eric McNeil this year. Learn more about the story behind the partnership, the ales he’s currently perfecting and the plans for Strange Pelican Brewing Co. in the new year by reading our October Q&A with McNeil.

November:
The month of November was jam packed with events. We hosted the Chicago chapter of CreativeMornings featuring Sara Frisk from IDEO and our co-founder Phil Tadros and Social Media Director Kelsey Kreilling spoke at the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. During the Apple Talk they shared our roots, why we do not employ a sales team and how our work process has changed over time.

December:
Immediately following the announcement of Bow Truss Coffee Roasters expansion to River North, we teamed up with Lendsquare, a new crowd-sourced small business lending platform. We reached our goal within a week! Read more about the future of Bow Truss and our experience with Lendsquare here.

Filed in: Bow Truss, Clients, Doejo