updates Archives — Stampede: the strategic design & technology company

The New Kid On The Block

Sani Halid — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 08:34:12 +0000

Hi, my name is Sani.

I believe I just stole Wan’s throne of being the New Kid On the Block in Stampede (not that he minds at all).

My first Stampede getaway involves throwing a surprise birthday party for Wan

I love playing computer games, which inadvertently leads to me joining Stampede (we will get to that part later). Also, when the weather is good I would go jogging or inline skating. I am pretty good at the latter, actually.

How it all started

I have always been interested in learning new things. My free time is spent going through forums, blogs and Youtube channels on coding and programming. On some instances I try to code – most of the times it worked, most of the others it did not. Nevertheless, the experience of learning and experiencing new things exhilarate me.

How I joined Stampede was something I believe a pure chance of serendipity.

A few months ago I stumbled upon Shaza, Stampede’s Creative Lead in a local Starbucks. She was focusing very intensely on something on the screen, until I saw the mouse she was using. It is a Cyborg R.A.T 7, the one I recognised very much because it is one of the best gaming mice out there.

The R.A.T 7 mouse Shaza was using the first time I met her

We sat down and chatted about gaming in general for hours. It is not every day you could find a girl you could talk to about video games.

A few months later, she offered me a job as a junior front-end developer at Stampede even that I am entirely new and will be undergoing months of training to prepare myself for client work.

Challenge accepted.

How new?

I am what you could call completely green in programming.

I was an ICT student in secondary school. I have learned the basics of computing and programming languages such as BASIC, C++ and a number of operating systems.

One of my first experiences using HTML/CSS was customising Myspace and Blogger layouts at the helm of these platform’s glory. At the same time, I learned HTML as my own initiative when I was in pre-university.

And that was it. Joining Stampede is the perfect chance for me to sharpen on my rusty skills in programming.

Personal tuition with The Man

Being completely new, Shaza signed me up for a daily programming and coding training with Dov. We often refer to it as a ‘tuition’ session. It takes place at Stampede HQ, amidst the million books and purring cats. It could not get any better than this.

Violin lesson is complimentary

Apart from that, Iwan also helped to train me via Skype and Gotomeeting and had been very patient in answering questions related to front-end development. In fact, the whole team also helped to devise a series of training ‘modules’ and assessment methods to prepare me for client work.

While I was worried that my progress might be slow and that I make mistakes, the rest of the team made sure that I feel welcome and reassured that it was definitely OK as it is part of the learning progress. The important thing is I learn.

On Stampede culture

One thing that struck me the most after joining Stampede is that how close everyone in the team is with each other.

During my first Stampede getaway, we devised a plan to throw Wan a surprise birthday party. On a couple of instances, Zana was always being extra observant to catch everyone’s blunder and typing mistakes so she could tweet and add it up in this blog. The designers, Shaza and Wan, cooked up graphic mischiefs using any of the team members’ old photos in time for any special occasion, for example Shaiful‘s birthday here.

We call this the act of pwning.

pwn. n ˈpȯn, ˈpän: the act of perfect ownage. Flawless victory. Schooled. Lesson taught. Owned beyond conventional words, and so excited about it, it’s mistyped.

Another thing I noticed is that whenever we are about to launch a project, every single one of the team members help out in any way they can – fix images, point out the styling bugs, help out with the content population, sing (yes) etc. – even though we are not indirectly involved with the project.

Gotta love working with a team like this.

What have I learned so far?

I have only joined Stampede officially for 20 days, but here’s what I have learned so far:

It is OK to make mistakes as long as I learn from them.
Be perpetually hungry for knowledge.
Do not be afraid to ask questions.
A close-knit team is a happy team when working together.

Thanks to Shaza and the rest of Stampede, I have never felt welcomed enough to join a team. It might be too early for me to say this, but I think I have already been enjoying working at Stampede.

(R.A.T 7 picture credit)

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Just Another Day at Work

Dov Nazarov — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:12:41 +0000

Workplace challenge?
Scoff. Get an office cat.

Dov juggles between his New York hours and now Madrid, all the while with ridiculous distractions from this furry little critter at Stampede. The partners are yet to agree on a name – to Dov he’s Luke and Shaza Hugo.

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The Bull Retrospect

Shaza Hakim — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:17:30 +0000

It’s still January. Let me see if can get away with writing about the old times.

I have been hitting Google hard this month planning for another Stampede team vacation this year. We went to Bali in 2008 (was that trip awesome or what?) but missed our window last year with a pace that I can only describe as a speed that will leave you shaking in the aftermath if it doesn’t break your neck already.

2009 was the year that we take in new clients, bigger projects and better work relationship with our existing clients. It was also a year of big commitment from everyone in the team. We now have a full-time project manager who just loves her job, a front-end developer with faster support and we have just added a new web developer to the bunch.

I have been active on Twitter, so does Anita and Shaiful. Dov is yet to be convinced about social media – a pity because his witty remarks would warrant more followers in a day that any of us would.

There were high-profile projects that we can’t mention, smaller projects that turned out huge and picked up by design galleries. We were also honored to work on the UI of JomSocial – Joomla’s own social networking extension. There were also a few big projects we had to decline in earnest because they didn’t feel, well, Stampede material.

And so just like that, 2009 wooshed by.

If you know Stampede, you know that our team is a big deal to us. We’re very protective of their interest. Their challenge and passion are big factors in mapping our growth. And we don’t plan to grow insensibly. But above all, we value the perfectionists in them.

2009 was the year that we recruited most and unfortunately had to let most go too. Call it incompatibility or us being singularly selective, but the truth is a great team is only as good as the weakest link. I believe in investing in our people but I also learned that when the chemistry is not right, you will know it early.

We also extended support and guidance to our people who left to venture out on their own. You don’t work with us and leave without a footprint.

As naive as it sounds, you CAN have both a professional and personal team. I am very proud of our people. If the nurturing and foundation is right, they will have the foresight to do good job and be creative with their own work. Nudge them to the right direction once in a while, then watch how they raise their own bar higher. Once you strip down a company to its bare essentials, good people truly is the best asset you can have to reach new heights.

And we plan to do just that this 2010.

(photo by Questionmarc and I support cool act of creative vandalism any given day)

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Awesome Factor Deux

Shaza Hakim — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:53:50 +0000

The initial idea of Stampede as a place where inspiring people get to practice work they love is still very much the core of what we do. We actively seek the right people to complement our in-house talents and Stampede is happy to announce the addition of two awesome new team members: Anita Zein and See Guo Lin.

You’ll see plenty of Anita in project management and quality review, where every project must pass a set of internal reviews before certified fit for client release. I have a feeling her to-do list will be nothing short of legendary here at Stampede. She can be reached at anita@stampede-design.com.

Guo Lin outshined Stampede’s recent campus interview and by far the youngest in the team. Barely into his second day at work, the guy’s enthusiasm is contagious. Together with Dov and Shaiful, Guo Lin completes Stampede’s own trio of bros. Guo Lin can be reached at guolin@stampede-design.com.

(photo by Sophie0305)

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Updates, Updates

Shaza Hakim — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:59:37 +0000

I’m hooked with Twitter. I tweet in the morning, afternoon and night. I tweet at home, in the office, at my parent’s, in the car and anywhere civilized to do so. How this twittering twit get to me, I have no idea. Maybe I’d twitter it up.

Dov has been working almost full-time on the new (Malin+Goetz) website for the last 6 months. It launched last October with a fully-featured Virtuemart-powered store – far cry from it’s OSCommerce days. It was a long and serious project. And I’m happy it was.

This one opens up possibilities to so many other ways of approaching the management of project and doing it right. We had statement of work revisits, wireframe sessions, design revisions, typography galore, extended e-commerce features, conference, conference and more conference.

And that goes without saying that Andrew Goetz and Matthew Malin of (Malin+Goetz) are particularly fantastic to work with. This is the closest Stampede has ever worked with a client thus far in terms of defining requirements and refining deliverables.

You can imagine our big thrill when it goes live. It was a lot of “la-la-la” and some barely audible “phew”.

On another note, we have started the uphill battle of RainforestAid. To give it the attention it deserves while not diminishing the source of funding from Stampede (!), I now work exclusively on RainforestAid material every Saturday of the week. It’s so addictive that I caught myself trying to steal extra time everyday to do more research and catch up with my reading.

Sounds mundane? Not if you live here on this heavenly island and see it’s beautiful rainforest stripped bare day after day. And then you go to the mainland and apparently all these cutting down forest irresponsibly is all very “normal” and people don’t see “what the fuss is all about”.

RainforestAid is a brainchild of Irshad Mobarak, a naturalist, conservationist and all in all, a great man. It’s a joint-venture between Stampede and Junglewalla and we aim to help reverse the damage done to Southeast Asia’s rainforest from non-sustainable human practices that is so prevalent and sometimes government-endorsed in this part of the world.

Thank you to those who have written their support and offer to contribute as RainforestAid writer and researcher. We now have 4 environmental journalists doing research work and reporting from all over the globe (oohs-and-aahs-adoration goes to Neil, Morgan, Suzanne and Cinnamon) with a few more on the list. It’s humbling to see how this small effort of ours gains so much intellectual and motivational support in such short time.

On a last note, a sad but hopeful farewell to Renee Chung, our xhtml/css extraordinaire who has left to pursue a different path in life. When everybody else would have thrown in the towel and get in their gaming mode, Renee would sit down and plow on until she can’t feel her legs. That’s commitment. So cheers to Renee – may life always smiles sweetly on her. We’ll have you back anytime, girl!

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