For more than 10 years, Java came to the Insight Designs office every day, taking his job as spirit lifter and security director very seriously. He barked at scores of delivery men and window washers, greeted hundreds of clients, and entertained everyone on staff.

He’s been the Insight Designs mascot since the beginning, gracing all of our holiday cards, having a bio on our website, and of course being the star of our gum packs this year. He took part in staff retreats and was always willing to help, even wearing a web cam during one of our holiday parties. He played endless hours of tug-of-war with Clint and Keith. He licked clean countless post-lunch tupperwares. He almost chased a tennis ball out of our third-floor window when John was playing catch with him. He went hiking with Monica near Leadville, got lost and ended up spending a day at the Lake County Sheriff’s Department. Once, he ate 5 pounds of uncooked pasta and then unloaded all of it on the sidewalk in front of Pasta Jay’s on his way into the office, after which he earned the nickname Pasta Java.

Outside of work, he enjoyed chasing squirrels, fetching tennis balls, barking at deer and just being outside. He spent most of his free time with Beth, running countless miles, hiking 14ers and snowboarding down Loveland Pass.

He cheated death twice – once in 2002 when he was hit by a car and again in November 2007 when he was diagnosed with cancer, a mast cell tumor in his lower abdomen. At the time, the surgeons at CSU said he might only have 2-3 weeks to live if they didn’t remove the mass immediately. But removing the mass also meant removing one of his hind legs, so we opted out of the surgery. He exceeded their expectations 100-fold, living another 4 happy, active years.

Java truly was a miracle dog. He is already sorely missed, especially by me.

Insight Designs hosted our 12th annual feat last Friday at Saxy’s Cafe in Boulder. Despite the frigid temps, more than 100 folks came, including our very first client Ed Cook from National Specialty Lighting. The gang from OIA is always a feisty bunch (see photo above of Ingrid punching Bryan). And several of our newest clients made their party debut, including Jim from Dot Hill, Brendan from Boulder Wave, Frank and Doug from Boulder Valley Velodrome, Luis from ROICblog.com, and Kellan from First Line Data (who’s new and improved site will launch later this month).

We ate scores of paninis (or would that be panini?) and pounds of chocolate.

We took lots of fun pix. See them here.

And we gave away fun prizes from some of our local clients, including champagne from Liquor Mart, a yoga festival pass from Hanuman Festival, and gift certificates to The Med, Brasserie Ten Ten, and Shug’s Low Country Cuisine (which is new to the Boulder restaurant scene).

If you missed the fun this year, be sure to join us for Holiday Party 2012! Mark your calendars now: Friday, December 7, 2012.

In the meantime, here’s wishing you and yours a happy holiday and all good things in the new year!

I ran downstairs not knowing what to expect. He handed me a copy of this month’s Yellow Scene Magazine with the cover “8 Best Places to Work.” I flipped inside and saw that Insight Designs is first. Wow! What an honor.

The article touts us and seven other Boulder companies for “the perks, benefits and respect” we give our employees.

When my husband proudly told my kids last night, my 6-year-old daughter astutely said, “Now everyone will want to work at Insight Designs.”

Check out the article “Yellow Scene’s Top Companies to Work For” on their website, or if you want to print it out and hang it on your wall, you can download a PDF here.

But I was happy to speak with Ryan Dionne from Skiing Business this week for a piece he wrote called “Your Website Might Suck.”

Check it out.

As many of you know, in April my then 4-year-old son Laird was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive, but curable form of cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma. I’m happy to report that after a grueling spring and summer that included 4 surgeries, 10 spinal taps, 5 week-long rounds of chemotherapy, 16 times under general anesthesia, scores of blood draws, and hundreds of oral medications, Laird is cancer free! He turned 5 in August, just started kindergarten and is full of energy again.

I’m forever indebted to Nico, Ellie, Keith, Carlos, Evan, Mike, Clint, Peter, Bryant and Dave for holding down the fort at Insight Designs throughout this ordeal. And huge thanks to Insight’s clients for their patience, their prayers and their words of encouragement.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I had to put many things at home and work on the back burner while I focused on helping Laird kick cancer’s butt. One of those things was this blog. Of course, others at Insight are welcome to post blog entries. But as many companies find, if blog writing is not absolutely required, it simply doesn’t happen.

That’s my long explanation for why you haven’t seen anything new here in a while. Now that Laird is well again and I’m getting caught up at the office, I’ll be blogging again on a regular basis, so stay tuned!

And special thanks to Rebecca and the rest of the folks at NCWIT (the National Center for Women & Information Technology) for sending Laird this awesome superhero cape! He certainly earned it.

Since then, we’ve worked on several projects for Connie and Davis and their son, Taylor Phinney who himself has taken the cycling world by storm. Just 10 days ago, Connie called because Davis’ new book The Happiness of Pursuit was coming out and they needed a website for it ASAP. No problem, I said.

For those of you who don’t know Davis’ story and for those of you who think you do, this book promises to be a powerful read. After an illustrious cycling career that led to a budding career in television commentary, Davis was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. The Happiness of Pursuit is the story of how Davis sought to overcome his Parkinson’s by reaching back to what had made him so successful on the bike and adjusting his perspective on what counted as a win. The news of his diagnosis began a dark period for this vibrant athlete, but there was also light. His son Taylor’s own bike-racing career was taking off. Determined to beat the Body Snatcher, Davis underwent a procedure called deep brain stimulation. Although not cured, his symptoms abated enough for him to see Taylor compete in the Beijing Olympics. Davis Phinney had won another stage. But the joy, he discovered, was in the pursuit. With humor and grace, Phinney weaves the narrative of his battle with Parkinson’s with tales from his cycling career and from his son’s emerging career. The Happiness of Pursuit is a remarkable story of fathers and sons and bikes, of victories large and small.

With Connie feeding us content and great photos, we were able to get the site launched yesterday — www.davisphinney.com. Check it out. You can read excerpts from the book, see what folks are saying about it, check Davis’ speaking appearance schedule, and of course, order your own copy of the book.

So when the National Ski Areas Association met with me in January about having Insight Designs redesign and redevelop the Lids on Kids website, I was all for it.

Since then, we’ve put together a kid-friendly, fun site filled with helpful information for parents and games for kids — all with the goal of encouraging helmet use. The new site, which launched last week, is built with a WordPress content management system, making it easy for NSAA staff to add, edit and delete content.

NSAA’s Lids on Kids Campaign urges skiers and riders to wear a helmet on the slopes – but to ski or ride as if they are not wearing a helmet. Good stuff. Learn more at www.lidsonkids.org.

Enter PayRight Health Solutions, LLC, a Delaware-based firm that creates online tools to help medical practices more easily collect payment and to help patients understand the payment process.

PayRight, which was founded by health plan veteran Jim Bridges in February 2010, tapped Insight Designs for logo design and website design and development.

According to the PayRight website that Insight launched last week, the company’s product “acts as a payment portal in a physician’s office. As a patient departs each visit, office staff use the PayRight portal to create estimates, collect payments, and record patient payments. In addition to office collections, PayRight tracks the patient’s claim and using PayRight PayComplete and PayPlan automatically collect any balance the patient owes after insurance has paid. PayRight makes patient payment easier and faster than before!”

Learn more, and check out Insight’s latest work at: www.payrighthealth.com.

In addition to creating this upbeat web design, we also created Deal Nation’s banner ads, HTML emails and their booth design for use at trade shows and other marketing events. Ellie Childs, who will celebrate her 7th anniversary with Insight Designs this fall, was the mastermind behind all of the visuals. Kudos Ellie!

Check it out: www.dealnation.com.

That’s exactly what happened with our new client SurveyConnect, a Boulder-based company that specializes in creating 360 degree assessment and survey solutions. SurveyConnect had the in-house resources to build a site, but not to design it. So they came to us. We went through our custom design process, which includes:

• defining required elements for the home page
• creating 3-5 unique designs
• making two rounds of revisions to the chosen home page design
• creating 2-3 unique designs for the internal page template
• making two rounds of revisions to the chosen internal page design.

Once we had the home page design and the internal page design just the way the client wanted it, we simply handed them the design files, and they did the rest of the work to bring the site to life.

Check it out here: www.surveyconnect.com