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.

Points for Participation?

Into the thick of the Olympic sporting competition, Canada is rolling in a litany of 5th, 6th, 7th places ... but with track and field, rowing finals and trampolining yet to come, the Canucks still have a chance to visit the podium.

As Tod Maffin twitter'ed: "Maybe Beijing will at least give us a courtesy Participaction pin?(Dont understand this? Ask a Canadian over 30.)" (ed note: or view this Participaction toque).

In the social media production department, Scales continues to create video at an epic pace despite losing his co-hort Kris who was repatriated to Vancouver in time for a glorious summer weekend. Scales is staying busy by picking up more tickets for varied events at the incredible new venues including the whitewater kayak run (plus visits to the Danish hospitality house).

I'm heading to the hills with tent and beverages so here's a few highlights to enjoy with your weekend viewing:

In this installment of the Beijing Summer Olympics social media report, we join Robert Scales and Kris Krug as they spread their on-the-ground reportage around the world. Indeed, their barrage of videos, photographs and words are deepening the coverage for fans, pundits and athletes' families as their coverage is picked up by social and mainstream media outlets.

Coverage Highlights

BBC's Canadien Correspondent

Robert Scales' second entry from his Olympic diary is up on BBC - this time he talks about the opening ceremonies (video) and their venue reconnaissance (video) with visits to the Birds Nest' national stadium, the 'Water Cube' aquatic centre, the fencing hall and the Yukeson basketball stadium while fortified by snake, silk worms, scorpian and salamanders (videos).

Beijing's Faces in LA Times

Krug's Olympic photos are in the LATimes blog with a photo essay called the Faces of Beijing - the candid photos show KK's skill of relaxing the subject to be themselves - you can almost feel the humidity in the photos.

Cross-posted from: BBC Sport | Olympics | Beijing Diaries

Background: Raincity Studios CEO/Founder Robert Scales and Pres/Ambassador Kris Krug are on the ground in Beijing to document and study the 2008 edition of the Olympic Games. They are publishing dispatches to a variety of news outlets including the venerable BBC. Here's Scales' first installment of his Olympic diary.

ROBERT SCALES, MONTREAL, CANADA

Robert runs a web development company based in Canada

Citizens On the Ground

Raincity Studios Sino-Away-Squad of Scales and KK, are on the ground in Beijing to cover and participate in the Olympic experience as citizen journalism, technology experts, social pundits and cultural ambassadors.

The Glimmer Twins' tasks are diverse and their methods varied so here's a preview:

• participating in the 9th International Symposium on Olympic Studies, in Beijing, August 5-7 with Olympic scholar Dr. Andy Miah's
• documenting the scene for crowd-sourced new site: Now Public, Vancouver radio station: Crave 95, and BBC Interactive - among other media outlets

• shooting Creative Commons licensed photos delivered via Flickr
• extolling about the new, improved Bryght web community hosting product - available in free, cheap or fancy varieties
• meeting up with prospective clients to extol Raincity Studios' status as an approved weblog vendor for Vancouver/Whistler 2010
• cheering for Team Canada at the Archery, Fencing, Women's Softball, BMX and more summer games sports
• spreading international goodwill in the fun-loving/hard-working style they honed whilst at the Torino 2008 Winter Games.