Eleven years of work worth doing

In short: Dthree Digital, the consultancy I co-founded, turned eleven on September 29. We made a short film to say thank you, and putting it together meant looking back at the work and the people. This is my own thank-you, and a few words on why I still think this work is worth doing.

Looking back

To make the film we went back through eleven years of projects and team photos. There are more than 500 projects, big and small, and a lot of faces. Some of those people are still with us and some have moved on, and every one of them built part of this. It took longer than I’d planned, because I kept stopping to look.

The people who trusted us

A client hands us something that matters to them: their name, their institution, sometimes years of their own work. I don’t take that lightly, and eleven years in I still feel it at the start of every project.

I’m grateful to every client who gave us that trust. I’m grateful to my co-founders, Imat and Mon, and to a team that cares about the details as much as I do.

Work that reaches people

I’m glad I get to do this for a living. I like the work itself, and I like it most when something we built ends up in front of a lot of people who need it.

Ateneo de Manila University’s website serves students choosing where to study, the students already there, faculty and alumni. We helped untangle years of accumulated pages so each of them can find what they came for.

The International Rice Research Institute is a global leader in rice research. When it turned 65, we rebuilt IRRI.org so that decades of science could be read clearly by people around the world.

Probe Media Foundation builds media skills and opportunities for practitioners and creators across the Philippines. Its site makes those programs easy to find and follow.

Drive Electric. Love Pinas. was a national campaign by ACMobility, BYD Cars Philippines and the Department of Tourism: a 22-day, 3,500-kilometer electric road trip from Laoag to General Santos, to show that EV travel across the country is possible today. We built the site that carried the journey and the route.

That work is theirs. Our part is making sure people can find it, read it and use it. For many people a website is the first place they meet an institution, and sometimes the only one. That’s why the craft matters to me.

The everyday work matters too

Many of our projects aren’t causes, and I’m just as grateful for those.

Everise is a global customer experience company, and its site has to earn the confidence of enterprise buyers. Spinkie is a store for moms and babies, built around giving mothers a sustainable livelihood, and we’ve kept supporting its online shop since it launched. A business that runs well keeps people employed and its customers looked after. I enjoy helping with that.

Salamat

The film is our thank-you as a company, and there’s a note from all of us on the Dthree blog. This one is mine.

To every client, partner, and teammate, past and present: salamat. I hope we get to do a lot more of it together.

And if you’re planning something of your own, my door’s open.