created on Thu, 2009-06-25 13:58

Over the past five years at Raincity Studios, we've built a talented and diverse team of drupalers, open sourcers, travelers, photographers, bloggers, vloggers, innovators, cultural transformers, and social media experimenters.   We've developed and hosted hundreds of websites and in many cases, we've helped our clients achieve their goals.  We've also helped train hundreds of drupal developers and played an active role in helping grow the drupal community around the world. 

We're very proud of our track record, but we're the first to acknowledge that we've also made mistakes along the way.  We've seen projects fail because we weren't being direct about the poor business model or lack of planning. We've seen projects go broke through mismanagement and we've learned many valuable lessons about cost control, communication, project management and accountability. We've watched some communities flourish while others turned into ghost towns.  All of this has taught us a lot about business development, sustainability and our strengths and weaknesses as a studio.

It's also taught us that you can't just keep doing things the same way.  Just as the same development solution is not perfect for every client, the same operational model is not the right fit for every business.  More importantly, we've learned that our operational model needs to be adaptable to accommodate the changing nature and scale of our business.   We've always prided ourselves on being an agile and innovative company and we've never wanted to get too comfortable with our success, so we've been taking practical steps to restructure our operational model and reorganize our offerings.  We've been researching the best way to go about doing this by consulting with trusted friends and individuals for whom we have great respect.  We're very grateful for the advice and support they have provided us and it's made us optimistic about the possibilities we can create for ourselves in the future. 

created on Mon, 2009-06-08 06:45

Lately there's been a lot of changes taking place around here. After the closure of Bryght and moving offices, I've had a lot of people asking me how things are going and what's happening at Raincity Studios.  I'd like to try to answer some of those questions here.

But to understand where we are now, I think we need to look back at where we came from and what we have achieved over the past five years.

When Raincity Studios first started, most of us were recent graduates of BCIT's new media program and each shared a love for open source and drupal. Mark Yuasa and I led the early development of the studio, closely followed by Erik Hermans in late 2004. Will Pate and Mariska Richters then joined the team in the spring of 2005 giving us a solid foundation on which to build a company. Our beginning was humble and our future was exciting.  

Early on we developed a very organic operational model. From our first makeshift office in my poorly ventilated basement to our beautiful gastown office overlooking the Burrard Inlet, people were always the priority and our emphasis was on empowering our employees. We wanted people to not only produce their best work possible, but to sincerely enjoy doing it. We were a lifestyle company, we produced excellent work and we always maintained great relationships with our clients.

And this model was very successful for us. Over the next few years Raincity grew from a young start up with no revenue to an established and reputable development agency with offices in Canada and China. We employed over 40 folks from around the world, from Africa to the UK, Canada and USA. Over this period we also experienced a steady growth in our revenue, from ~480k in 2006 and ~700k in 2007 to ~1.3 Million in 2008.

In late 2007, under an aggressive plan of action, Raincity took on two exciting initiatives. First, we began the process to acquiring our long time hosting partner, Bryght. We had always had a great relationship with Bryght, founded in 2004 by Boris Mann, Kris Krug, Adrian Rossouw, and many other great folks, and our acquisition was part of a plan to revive the pioneering Drupal deployment and hosting business. At the same time, we began exploring new markets in China. With a dual mandate to research the use of social media at the 2008 Olympic Games and to work with the Chinese open source community in Shanghai and Beijing, Raincity expanded our operations internationally and open an office in Shanghai in November 2007.

It was a very exciting period for the company, but along with the increased revenue, came larger projects, an expanding scope of our business operations and increasing complexity. The past year has been a roller coaster for our team; we saw two amazing projects that showed great potential fail to be successful in the market. After delays in our action plan due poor business processes, we were unable to close our second round of funding. We began facing cost over run, lower monthly revenue, a higher need for human resources and an outrageous monthly deficit being generated by our hosting business.

created on Tue, 2009-04-07 16:37

In November of 2007, Raincity Studios struck a deal to acquire, Bryght, the pioneering Drupal hosting solutions company. By combining the Raincity Studios development and design team with the hosting expertise of the folks at Bryght, we hoped to provide comprehensive online solutions to a range of clients. The last year and half has been a great learning experience, however it is with regret that today we must announce that effective April 30th, 2009 Bryght hosted services will be phased out with a plan to be closed completely by May 29, 2009.

Over the past five years, Bryght and Raincity Studios have forged many wonderful and productive relationships with partners and clients around the world. We pride ourselves in being able to create mutually beneficial partnerships.  As two companies that emerged at the same time and grew up together in Vancouver, we have had no relationship more meaningful than that with Bryght. The shared vision and complementary personalities of the two companies made for a excellent fit and we believe the cooperative efforts produced great results. 

created on Wed, 2008-11-19 18:02

Raincity Studios/Bryght Hosting is looking for an experienced System Administrator to join our team.

You will help with the day-to-day operations of our hosting environment, a 30+ server CentOS based Xen cluster. Your average work week will involve working on client issues, server auditing, server updates, server upkeep. You will be expected to be on call for the infrastructure.

created on Mon, 2008-02-04 06:31

Jacob Redding, John Zhu and myself are proposing a session for the upcoming drupalcon in Boston, March 2nd to 6th 2008.

SESSION OVERVIEW

China is beginning to adopt Drupal and since its slated as the next “India” in terms of an outsourcing hub what does this mean for the Drupal world. Join this round table discussion on the state of Drupal in China. Who is using Drupal? What companies are there? How does Drupal fit into the country’s development? Why is Drupal in China important? What are the barriers to entry for a business or a developer?

TRACK

Marketing and Business but also Community and Core. Drupal in China is as much about building a community as it is about business.

AGENDA

• Things will start off with introductions of some of the Drupal shops in China as well as an overview of the state of Drupal and OSS in China.
• We’ll discuss the current community in China and how developers are connecting with each other to work on projects. The use of drupalchina.org, groups.drupal.org, IRC, etc.
• An overview of the translation work being done to help promote Drupal within China.
• The floor will always be open for questions and comments.

GOALS

We hope to encourage discussion about the use of Drupal within China and bring to light some of the challenges and rewards when working with the country as many of the challenges faced in China are faced in other countries throughout the world. If you are interested in how China is using Drupal and who the players are and if China is right for you or your business attend and share your thoughts and opinions.

Please take a second and vote for our session