It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s a digital strategist flying through the air.

At an outdoor arena along Chicago’s Lakefront, Kontera’s Kameran Bender recently hosted the HP Enterprise Team from Omnicom Media Group at Chicago Trapeze School. She, Craig Johnson, Adam Gilbert, Callie Moran, Cathy Kim, Toni Baysinger and Lisa Holubik defied gravity, swinging from bar to bar and doing flips in the air.

Let it not be said that online advertising is for the faint of heart.

The idea was first posed by Kameran a few weeks ago and the excitement and anticipation had been growing ever since. No one in the group had ever been on the trapeze before, but everyone was excited to try something new.

The weather was clear, the harnesses secure, and after brief instructions, it was time to fly. Any deep rooted fear of heights would certainly be uncovered from two stories up! Thankfully, Adam agreed to go first and show the group the way. Not only did he grab the bar and flip, he even managed to make it look easy!

For the record, it’s not easy! Climbing the ladder is very nerve-wracking, the bar is surprisingly heavy and your timing has to be spot on. But, the support from the group on the ground cheering helped calm each person’s nerves so they were each able to push through their fears.

As Kameran put it, “I never imagined the sense of accomplishment  I would feel last night.  The sense of pride was unsurpassed.  And I’m so thankful I had this opportunity.  It was exhilarating. I could not have picked a better group of people to experience it with. Our support for each other was unwavering, the encouragement got me up that ladder every time and the laughter kept me from looking down. What a great and memorable night. Thank you HP EB for your guts and courage. I couldn’t have done it without you!”

Stay tuned: next outing, Skydiving

By nature Kontera’s R&D division is curious about new technologies. So when it came time for the Mercury and Solutions teams to go on a group outing, experimenting with Lomographic cameras seemed like the perfect activity. Sasha Abramovich, one of our Software Developers, runs Lomography Israel and provided the cameras for the workshop.

Lomography is both a specific line of cameras and a community devoted to using low fidelity analog to create the type of happy accidents you often find in bad photography. Operating under the movement’s Ten Golden Rules which encourages spontaneity and unorthodox composition, Lomography is often taken with a wide angle or fish eye lens and utilizes a development technique called cross processing. This involves using a chemical solution intended for a different type of film, which produces oversaturated and unusual colors.

Excited to see exactly what these cameras can do, the Mercury and Solutions teams heading out to the beach 10 minutes away from the Kontera Israeli office and photographed everything in sight. Below are some more photos along with a video filmed on a special 35 mm still frame LomoKino camera.

Hope you have as much fun looking at these pictures as we did making them

Kontera San Francisco recently upgraded to a new facility and while long term there are some huge advantages (street parking available!), the transition wasn’t without a few bumps in road.  Longtime SF Office Manager (and move coordinator extraordinaire!) Penny Howie provides the recap:

“With summer in full swing, Kontera SF came up with the bright idea of relocating the office…during the last few days of the month…which also coincided with the end of the quarter. Luckily, we have an amazing IT team who worked diligently to get the job done.

Moving three blocks up the street has opened up a whole new world: we share an amazing courtyard with a few other companies, Starbucks is two doors down along with a few tucked away restaurants, and we’re surrounded by trees. No longer on the 9th floor, employees are more inclined to take a breather outside of the office rather than congregating in one of the conference rooms because we were too lazy to take an elevator nine floors down.

In the first month we’ve been here, we’ve encountered a few drawbacks: the men’s bathroom door was locked for two days, our conference room was missing a door; we didn’t have trash removal for the first week, etc., but as the saying goes “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”. Or we bombard the building’s management office until the problem is fixed.

We love our new digs and look forward to breaking the place in even further ”

Kontera was recently invited to participate in a very exciting, invitation-only event hosted by Procter & Gamble called “Mobile Days”. The event was designed to educate P&G teams about how to better incorporate mobile into their overall media strategy. P&G brands including Olay, Swiffer, Duracell, Crest, Tide and Vicks all attended the conferences which were held at the Starcom MediaVest offices in Chicago and New York.

Sixteen vendors including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple, and Kontera were each asked to present some information about a specific type of mobile targeting available. As a leader in understanding and activating digital content, Kontera was asked to educate attendees about how content relevancy fits into today’s mobile landscape. After demonstrating the value of understanding and activation of mobile, we also had the opportunity to showcase our newest mobile offerings.

At the Kontera table visitors were able to ask questions, compare notes with their sister brands, and experience our mobile ad units on smart phones and iPads. We showcased four unique advertising products for smartphones and tablets, ranging from interactive full-screen ads to highly relevant and immersive social and related content experiences.  Everyone who stopped by Kontera’s table was VERY excited about these products!

The fun continued each night with dinners sponsored by participating vendors, happy hours, and raffles. Among the raffles was a $500 Stub Hub gift card raffled off by Kontera at the New York event. Kontera’s Chicago raffle prizes featured a ‘mobility’ theme, including a pogo stick, a skateboard and a motorized scooter! All in all, the “Mobile Days” event was the perfect mix of education and entertainment.

Kudos to Starcom MediaVest Group for putting on a high-quality premier mobile event that rivals most mobile conferences in depth and content.

For our annual field trip, Kontera Israel decided to explore Bethlehem of Galilee, a little known community with a very unique history.

Bethlehem of Galilee dates back thousands of years, having been one of the first Jewish towns mentioned in the bible, and a Christian one during the Crusades. Modern Bethlehem of Galilee was created in 1906 by German Templars who revitalized it as a farming settlement. They remained until the outbreak of World War 2, when the British placed local Germans into internment camps, eventually either repopulating them to Australia or sending them back to Germany. In 1948, Bethlehem of Galilee was converted into a Moshav, an Israeli cooperative agricultural community, which it remains to this day.

After a filling falafel lunch at the office, we first set off for Alonei Abba, a sister Moshav that also had beginnings as a Templar commune. Braving the brutal 100 degree heat, we visited an Evangelical Church built by the Templars in 1921, took in the view of the beautiful Jezreel Valley, and even watched as a baby owl stranded on the side of the road was rescued.

Next we arrived at Bethlehem of Galilee for the moment everyone was waiting for. While experiencing a new place on foot is fun, getting to explore it in a 4×4 all terrain vehicles is ten times better.  We broke off into groups of three, and taking turns behind the wheel, the caravan departed. Taking the Polaris Rangers on and off the rural roads, we got an amazing panoramic view of the farming community, passing men on horseback, corn fields, grazing cows, and exotic fauna. The group rested at Ein Yivka, also known as the “the horse spring”, and we snacked on watermelon while cooling off our feet in the water.

Driving those ATVs in the blistering heat was an exhausting, not to mention muddy business but judging by all the enthusiastic grins on display, it was well worth it!

There was still the matter of dinner, and while we were given an elaborate buffet everyone was careful to leave a little extra room for our final event, an international beer tasting workshop. Israel is a fairly unsophisticated beer market, with there being essentially three domestic brands and not much else on the radar. Gathering in a circle, our expert, Omer, explained the differences between light and dark beers, alcohol levels, regional preferences, even nutritional information. We sampled a wide variety of beverages both from countries like England and Belgium and he also highlighted some lesser known local breweries.  The workshop was a big hit and before we left, Omer promised to e-mail a complete list of everything tried. Don’t let us down!

It was an extremely memorable day and a huge amount of fun for everyone at Kontera Israel.  To see even more from the trip, we’ve embedded a video collecting the best photos below. Enjoy!