It has been the craziest of weeks…or was there two weeks? I’m not sure and my head is slightly spinning.
First of all, Chris incorporated Citizen Agency. Then we had a crazy couple of weeks, meeting with interested parties and potential clients and people who just wanted to figure out what the heck we were up to.
In the meantime, we volunteered to help throw the Microformats One Year Anniversary, we ran a Mashpit, I moderated a marketing workshop at Supernova, we organized and ran a whole weekend of BarCamping in San Francisco, traveled to Seattle to participate in and present at Gnomedex…amongst a few other gigs here and there.
Oh…and then there was that whole signing on of a couple of clients that we really look forward to working with (tba).
Not to mention finishing our gorgeous new logo and some patterns that we are going to really turn into our ‘marks’. I dunno…I like ‘em. All of these designs came from a collaborative effort from our team and from some awesome help from the brilliant team of Emily and Max at Ideacodes (who are really busy, but gave us some great ideas on direction).
And we have another big announcement…but I want to wait until the other party involved gets over his jetlag and is available to respond. 
Today, Chris and I are sitting in a coffee shop in Seattle, working on our website and catching up on life. I look forward to us traveling up to Calgary next weekend to visit my parents, then switch my TN1 over to show me working for Citizen Agency! I’m a little scared, but I think we have all of the paperwork in place.
Citizen Agency’s blog is now self-hosted. Stay tuned for an update on the website and a more clear message, vision and overall picture of who we are and where we are going.
Thanks, everyone, for your support!
The radio silence is because we are trying to get all of that business stuff: like incorporating, setting up EIN’s, payroll, etc. etc.
Once we figure it out, we will blog it so that others out there that don’t know where to turn for this stuff (we’re lucky we have super smart fellow entrepreneurs at Teh Space to give us advice). It’s quite complicated. Or so we think.
Carl Jung talked about the symbolism of dreams and mythology. Logos and brands through the 20th Century began taking those up to rest in people’s imaginations. Although we agree that branding, as a practice of creating a ‘feeling’ about a company is less and less possible in the culture of collaboration (the public will decide), symbols still play a strong role in association.
So, if we are going to create this really great consorgency of collaborants, we should also create a symbol…perhaps starting with a logo, but not remaining rigid to some silly set of ‘logo standards’ guidelines…for people to understand that, “Yes, this is a project of that generation.” Like the ‘Z’ that Zorro left, or the rose that ‘V’ left, or the Obey Giant scattered around city scapes to remind us to pay attention – we would be recognizable by our mark.
And at the same time, the work itself is the ‘brand’. If we do terrible work or unethical work, that symbol becomes tarnished…like many symbols in history. So that the symbol isn’t what people get behind – it is the work…the proof in the pudding. The symbol only serves to give a quick representation so that we can recognize one another in an instance.
So, what is that symbol for Citizen Agency? We need a new symbol…one that hasn’t been used before. One that doesn’t have someone else’s history baked in. One that means collaboration and change and individual and independence and collective and strength and a whole lot of other things all rolled up together. It’s something revolutionary, but peaceful. It’s something that is simple. It’s something that we will know when we see it. You will know when you see it. Some will be inspired by it. Others will look at it and disagree. It won’t serve to polarize, but it will serve to be a strong symbol of this idea that Individuals, working together, can move history.
So, what represents you?
So…here we go…
Chris is still in France and I’m sitting here at Vloggercon, but it’s definitely time to get something solid up in writing on the web.
Let’s go…