CMS Suggestion

Trying to find out if the London office of ePrize is open or closed, I've come to the conclusion that ePrize would really do itself a favor by instituting a CMS across their various sites. ePrize has a lot of pokers in the fire these days -- "The Power of e", the ePrize Blog, eprize.com, eprize.net, etc -- and it would be smart to give these sites a bit of a cohesive look as well as consistent content.

That would probably help prevent differences in the footer from one site to another. For example -- the "Power of e" site still has London in the footer:

An update to the ePrize.com site, overall, is desperately needed. The back end may not run on the same technology (ASP) but it's still a crappy table-based layout with graphical text. Worse, it's the same antiquated front end interface from 2003. Meanwhile, the few updates that are visible leave a lot to be desire. I'm still harping on the slipshod RSS feeds on pages like the portfolio feed which is sorted alphabetically rather than historically, invalidating the whole RSS idea of updates. If anything, there should be a CMS in place for easy updates of news, promotions, contact information, etc. with a simple transform that could make sections into RSS feeds where applicable. Likewise, the blog and other sites could be folded into one umbrella with a cohesive look and codebase.

Regardless... what happened to the London office?

Facebook?

If anyone's interested, I started a group on Facebook for ex-Prizers. Click here to see. I don't expect the turn-out to be tremendous, despite the growing number of potential members.

Great Culture!

This video is so great, I had to bring it back. Can someone give me an accurate headcount of hour many exPrizers there are in this video?

More Job Cuts

Just got this message:

FYI: Round 3 of cuts just hit on Friday (2/6/09). Another 13 people let go. All free pop gone and lunchbox subsidy is canceled. They will of course still have lunchbox to keep the sheep at their desks but now everyone has to pay full price.

I can't wait to find a new job and jump from this sinking ship. What a mistake it was to ever come here.

No word yet if these were more "underperformers" or if Linkner will ever be able to live down his comments about the July firings (20). He managed to keep his foot out of his mouth with the December round (13).

Back in July, 2008, the Oakland Business Review reported:

The company has 350 employees, 275 of which are in Michigan, and the layoffs amount to less than 5 percent of the workforce. Those laid off received severance packages, and there are no plans for more layoffs, Linkner said.

Laid off? Does that mean they'll be called back any time now? There's an interesting discussion of that topic here.

Does this mean that ePrize is down to 324 employees or 304... or have others quit without the press? I doubt (m)any were hired. And, what's the deal with the two sets of firings of thirteen people? It's enough to give someone triskaidekaphobia.

And the idea of severance at ePrize isn't much to sneeze at. Typically it's two weeks pay (at their low rate) and your signature on a document that dispenses of all your rights. I still regret signing mine and encourage anyone who is presented with this document to get it reviewed and amended by a lawyer.

The Big Idea

Without a nod to Donny Deutsch, ePrize is shilling for a "Big Idea" with their latest internal promotion.

To quote the site, ePrize is "giving away $1,000 to one lucky winner among all who submit their ideas. Give us your best shot – you may only enter once."

Now, let's not go into the poor copywriting of that section but focus instead on the strangeness of this skills-based promotion. Are the creative coffers at ePrize so empty that they're reaching out to the world for ideas? Has the employee-base become so sycophantic that fresh thoughts are in such short supply? This just seems like a bizarre move for a company that touts its creative edge.

Special thanks to Anonymous for pointing this out!

Prize Logic Website Live

Slither... er... Prize Logic has its website live. Pretty slick. Check it out here.

Stay Up to Date with Layoffs

Wondering who in the area is getting canned and where sending your resume might not be the wisest idea? F*ckedCompany.com is so 20th Century. It's time to get all "Web 2.0" and follow the news with Twitter. Sign up to follow the firings at twitter.com/adagencylayoffs.

Here's another fun link to visit.

I Think I Just Threw Up In My Mouth

This video is rather disturbing to me.

Thanks to the commenter who turned me on to this inspirational poster:

Slither Returns?

Let's continue to flog a dead horse and bring back Slither... our imaginary rival company. It's not like PrizeLogic isn't a real company that's out there eating ePrize's lunch, is it? Despite what Linkner says in this Fast Company article, there are real threats to ePrize's viability. To deny this is folly.

Here's a link to the PrizeLogic sweepstakes for NWA. Note that to enter you need to enter your WorldPerks number to begin. Doing so eliminates the need for putting in a user's information in for registration. I seem to remember suggesting this same thing about, oh, four years ago. It's always nice to see one's ideas come to fruition, especially when they were deemed "impossible" by one company and made possible by their rival company.

The Unemployment Mambo

It's no big news these days that a Detroit-based company is cutting its workforce. It is surprising when it's a company that claims to be doing as well as ePrize. Despite cuts made in July, they've undergone another round of pruning this week.

The real surprise comes when, out of the settling dust, comes the name of some of those folks summarily dismissed. Amongst the score of people let go are at least three people that have been there three or more years, including one employee who helped extensively retool and build upon the infrastructure created by the last guy who did the same thing (before he was fired). Also amongst the bodies was an employee who came in with huge ideas that were warmly embraced by the company, displacing rogue elements... like me. Between him and another useless ass-kissing joker, this was almost a karmic sacking.

That these guys were longer-term employees may lead some to posit that this was more of a cost-saving measure to dismiss those who have higher salaries in favor of keeping lower priced hires. Yet another sign, too, of the lack of loyalty from the top all the way down the line. It seems that even if you're part of the family or a long-term hire, you can't count on ePrize sticking with you.

To all the folks fired - You may be devastated by the disloyalty and disservice from ePrize but, believe me, this is the best thing that could ever happen to you.

Are You Passion?

Check out the video over at the ePrize Facebook Fanpage

And, no, Robb Lippitt, I will not be your Facebook Friend.

Sorry, This Has Been Bothering me

I know that there are a lot bigger fish to fry but I have been monitoring the use of RSS on the ePrize site for over two years now. While I was happy to see certain sections get RSS-enabled, I'm not too happy with how shoddy this implementation has been.

The idea of signing up for updates to promotions has been tossed around for years (I believe Keith Simmons brought it up). Once the "Portfolio" page got an RSS feed, I threw it onto my iGoogle and have been looking at it ever since. Unfortunately, whoever (or whatever) is spitting out that feed doesn't seem to realize what RSS is all about. The list should be in order of last to first chronologically, not alphabetically. That is, when new promotions go up, the list should be updated with those new things. Also, a description would be nice as well rather than just a link. And, best of all, the RSS should be VALID.

Valid code and ePrize haven't been friendly for years. Looking a the table-bound ePrize site should clue you into that. But, gosh, how hard is it to make a simple XML file? Pretty tough apparently. Look at how nasty the code comes out when running a simple validation against the feed. This is even a Feedburner feed and they probably cleaned up some of the mess. So, you get an A for effort but an E for execution. That averages to a solid C for contemptible.

Speaking of C....

Today is Your Lucky Day! Massive Layoffs!

Time for the ePrize bus to let off a few more passengers. How humiliating for the people fired to be described publicly as "underperformers." But, then again, tact was never an ePrize strong suit.

Is it a bad sign that a good number of cuts came from the business development sector? And howasbout losing the COO? In all, over thirty people have been terminated in the last month, one of the biggest purges in a while, though I'm not sure how that compares with the attrition rate. The churn rate used to be something that ePrize could boast about in their sales deck but now I doubt it gets mentioned.

PS... Looks like it's time to update the website.

The ePrize Fund

Per a comment yesterday, it almost sounds like Dwoskin was in charge of this year's Holiday cards... This year recipients received notice that a donation has been made in their name to the ePrize Fund.

Afraid that this was akin to George Costanza's "Human Fund," I did some googling and found these links:

• ePrize: a true SE Michigan success story
  "The company also recently launched its ePrize Fund, a nonprofit charity intended to promote and help grow creativity and entrepreneurship in the area and around their other offices, located in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and London."
• E2newsletter · Issue No. 11
  "This year, we started the ePrize Fund, a 501(c)3 charity that provides fund and volunteer time from our team members to local organizations that support the ePrize philosophy by fostering creativity and entrepreneurship."

That's quite a bit different from the usual ePrize year-end gift of piñatas and bats or other garish tchotchkes of years past. I'm curious if ePrize employees got any kind of holiday bonus for 2007. Also, I'm wondering if there are any holiday pink slips being put into the stockings hung with care... that's been a long standing ePrize tradition. "Get off the bus!"

Video Time

As promised, below is the video for the MEDC commercial spot. Indeed, it is rather embarrassing.

And here's a recruitment video for ePrize disguised as a clip about the Schoolcraft college Flash event that they co-sponsored a few weeks ago.