Recently, Kari Scott was interviewed by CBS Interactive Business Network. During the discussion, Kari opens up about a few of MDM's past experiences with clients, competitors and the changing economic tide.
Facebook announced a major expansion of its messaging platform giving each of its 500 million members access to a @facebook.com email address.
How will this change the way we communicate with one another online?
Capitol Nashville recording artist Jennette McCurdy shared lunch with the MDM team today to talk over plans for her forthcoming web presence.
Known to many as Sam from the hit Nickelodeon TV series iCarly, Jennette spent time with the New Media team at her record label and the MDM partners discussing her likes and dislikes, as well as going over details on providing her fans with a fun place to congregate.
When John Nelson from Tennessee Commerce Bank (TCB), called and asked me if I wanted to participate in a bike ride and meet new people, I said "absolutely!" "What do you have in mind?" As he was putting my name on a list, he started to explain the ride in further detail.
After over 7 years at the historic 1800's bungalow affectionately named the "Mad House", we have relocated to a new, larger office space where we occupy the entire second floor of the "Franklin National Bank" / "Pigg and Peach" building at 400 Main. MDM now lives in nearly 3,500 square feet of vibey modern office space, with maple ceilings, cork floors and a lot of glass walls.
Michael Wilson is unashamedly a child of the eighties, and a self proclaimed computer geek.
His parents never understood why their son would rather lock himself away in his bedroom and tear apart a tape recorder than go outside and throw a football. Decades of circuit bending, software tinkering, and rote memorization of virtually every song Devo ever recorded have all contributed to making Michael the dweeb that he is today. And he has the physique to show for it.
It was around the age of 14 when Michael learned that the ladies preferred pop music over Bela Bartok Mazurkas, and at that moment of enlightenment, his extensive childhood training as a classical pianist was completely discarded in favor of a digital sampler and a Moog synthesizer. While many of the ladies that prompted this shift have lost their allure over time, the vintage analog electronic instruments of the era are still so sexy to him, they give him heart palpitations.
A collector of early solid-state pinball machines, Michael is really more into watching their blinking lights than playing them. His six cats, wire-haired dachshund, and passion for Lake Malawi Cichlids have caused Michael's home to sometimes be confused with a petting zoo. Still, none of the lesser creatures make as big of a mess as his son and two daughters do.
Turn ons include trance and breakbeat music, homegrown independent films (particularly documentaries), and living life vicariously via HDTV.
It's somewhat ironic that Mad Dancer's fairer partner, Kari Scott, arrived where she is today since she began her professional journey as a self proclaimed "hater of the web." Of course, that statement was made back in the 90's, when her design concepts couldn't be fully realized on the Internet because of the technical limitations of the day. Now that many of those limitations have been overcome by snazzy new technology, Kari and the web get along quite nicely.
A deep inner conflict exists within Kari - one with which she must wrestle each and every day: "Will I drive the 4-Runner to anger the tree-huggers in their little hybrids? Or will I drive the S2000 and drag race on I-65?" And like a scene from a joke about the visually impaired that is told in poor taste, Kari is known to rearrange her home and office furniture on a whim - or any time there's a good sale at West Elm. Her impeccable flair for design and aesthetics flows through the Mad Dancer Office just as it flows through the projects that she and the MDM designers create.
Knowing no obstacle other than the battery life of her mobile phone, Kari is ready at a moment's notice to catch a movie or dinner and loves it when friends and clients call her to meet up on-the-fly. She and her adventurous spirit have been known to mix beer with firearms, rednecks with yankees, and wasabi with raw fish...all in a day's work.
A few of her favorite things include her Australian cattle dog, Dakota, with whom she shares her home, the music of Jan Terri, and the word "lambaste."
Matt Mosley's fingers once spent their time plucking the strings of a bass guitar around the country, but they now have focused their creativity and nimbleness on manipulating a mouse and keyboard.
Having spent most of his adolescent years pursuing musical endeavors, Matt thought it only natural to major in Musical Education at MTSU. However, after the first semester of his freshman year, he not only saw his interests wane but he also witnessed his GPA reach an all-time low.
One night when Matt obtained a perfectly legal copy of Photoshop, he became hooked and decided to travel down this new road. He changed his major to Digital Media Communications shortly thereafter and continued to explore this new world of multimedia design. Matt never lost his love for music, but after several years of playing in a local band and doing some touring, he was offered the opportunity to join MDM and hasn't looked back. Today, Matt is on a crusade against janky navbars and loves hanging out with his wife Heather and his son, Sam.
In the 1980 film "Somewhere in Time", Elyse McKenna is an actress from the early 1900's who falls in love with Superman who travelled thru time to meet her. The Elyse McKenna that Mad Dancer Media knows and loves spells her name differently and has no interest in Supermen, acting, or time travel. That is, unless your time machine can carry her back to the 70's so that she could go shopping for furniture and clothes.
Her mild OCD compels her to browse department stores in an aisle-by-aisle methodical fashion. It also mandates that Coca Cola be served from a fountain, Pepsi be served in a bottle, and Dr. Pepper be served in a can. Yet in spite of this, she considers herself an outdoorsy type who can find joy in more ambiguous activities like hiking and running.
While simultaneously maintaining several other commercial enterprises of her own, Elyse officially serves as MDM's Kapelle Evangelist and is happy to share the finer points of our platform with anyone who comes with an open heart and a budget.
A compulsive problem-solver, Justen became a web software developer largely in order to spite the inferior applications he dealt with as a designer. He now spends his days fighting the evils of obnoxious user interfaces and baffling nested menu systems with nothing but a keyboard, a Linux box, and large doses of caffeine.
When Justen is not hunched over a desk tapping out code at a speed only achievable while overdosing on Red Bull, he is... hunched over a desk, assembling tiny robots at a pace excruciatingly slow by comparison. Once they're finished he will field an unstoppable robot army to free himself from statist oppression so he can grow vegetables and write code in peace.
Until that day comes, he'll find what contentment he can in nitpicking the finer points of libertarian philosophy with anyone who will listen. Given his inability to turn down a good video game or zombie movie it may be a long time coming.
Throw away every stereotype that exists about stodgy iron-fisted Russian men. Dan is more chill than a koala bear in a cannabis patch.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia to his medical doctor mother and civil engineer father, Dan moved to Toronto when he was 10. Thru his high school years in Canada, he formed an appreciation for drum-and-bass, trance and techno music that has followed him into adulthood. His love of electronica managed to persist thru the cultural desert of Cincinnati, Ohio while he earned his Masters in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati.
Dan is the mastermind behind the modular codebase of Mad Dancer's Kapelle system.
When Dan is not deep in the heart of Kapelle writing new tools and features, you'll find him spending time with his fiancee, enjoying his stunning "live rock" marine aquarium, or just hanging out and sharing his coolness with friends over a Venti cup of Starbucks and a pack of Parliament Lights.
Christopher Lynn lives a dual existence as full-time music industry professional and part-time contractual guru for Mad Dancer (this does not mean he suffers from multiple personality disorder or similar, though some less charitable souls might argue the point.)
Not often seen around the Mad Dancer HQ, he stays in constant contact with the Mad Dancer management and legal teams via BlackBerry and business lunch and/or dinner (solely for the purpose of furthering the Mad Dancer brand, of course) and is ready at a moment's notice to respond to Kari's queries re: the fine points of indemnification, terms of service, warranties and the other contract legalese that nearly drive Kari to pounding her head against the nearest hard surface.
An avid reader of varied genres and lover of all things media, Christopher loves to learn and try new things, but would rather drink Clorox on ice than fill out another "25 Questions About You" Facebook survey, and is considering petitioning Congress to pass legislation forbidding this practice.
Laurie Toft was born in the wrong time and place. Instead of 20th century small-town America, her soul is much more suited for 18th century Imperial Russia. As a child, she dreamed of living in the palace at Peterhof. As she grew older, that dream changed to moving to Russia and working as either a diplomat at the US Embassy, or obtaining access to all of the dungeons of the Kremlin.
Dreams set aside (at least temporarily), Laurie's feet currently remain planted firmly on American soil where she spends the 9-to-5 at MDM as Project Manager. Additionally, she enjoys being a mom to her two beautiful girls, being a wife to her "techno-twit" computer programmer husband, being a pen-pal to her family's former Russian foreign exchange student, or being a long-distance mom to the young Moldovan orphan boy who has become the son their family didn't know they needed.
She continues to refuse to teach Michael any dirty words in Russian, no matter how much he begs.
Having been dealt a tough hand from birth, Iggie was the runt of her litter. However, her steadfast personality mixed with her Russian Blue bloodline predestined her fate to overcome. And overcome she did.
Barely old enough to walk, she chose her master to be MDM partner, Kari Scott. Iggie ruled over Kari's household as figurehead and guardian until the mid 2000's when her disdain for Kari's other household pet, (in Iggie's words, "a filthy canine") drove her to seek exile at Mad Dancer Media's offices. Iggie adjusted quite well to her new office surroundings, often interrupting client meetings with loud meowing and purring to announce her presence.
Jumping ahead to 2010, Mad Dancer now occupies fancy new office space. And in her twilight years, Iggie tires of the constant need to keep her humans in line. No longer a good match for the MDM office decor, Little Miss Priss relocates to what will most likely be her geriatric retirement home, a quaint farmhouse near Leiper's Fork, Tennessee (which also serves as Justen Robertson's house). She now lives a somewhat secluded life, and sees visitors by appointment only.
