Steve St. Pierre, High Road User Experience Designer, was recently interviewed on Attention Surplus – a weekly podcast that explores the intersection of purpose, passion and action.

Steve is known at High Road for being one of the most passionately creative guys around – he’s a designer, artist, musician and public speaker.

In this interview he spoke about his growing philosophy around removing barriers to creative output, or more specifically, “the art of doing” – a talk he’ll also be giving at Ottawa’s upcoming TEDx event.

“To me, a good idea is a bad idea if it is wasted,” says Steve in the interview, adding that often people get so bogged down in their day-to-day that they don’t take the time and energy to let their great ideas flourish.

But where do those great ideas come from – whether they are music, design, or even a powerful PR strategy?

It could start with something as simple as taking the time to “look up,” he says.

“So many people in their day-to-day life just look straight ahead, or look down at the ground on their way to work or home, and they are not really paying attention,” he says. “If more people paid attention to what’s going on in the world around them….we might think about things in a different way.”

To hear the full podcast, please click here. We’re looking forward to Steve’s TEDx speech on October 22!

We don’t think there is a better way to wrap up a five-month long project with TELUS Enterprise than to have the honour of being named Best Telecommunications Website in the 15th annual 2011 WebAwards. The competition was stiff with over 2,000 entries from 96 industries and 45 countries participating in this year’s competition, but TELUS Enterprize. Power to Solve. stood out amongst the competition!

High Road worked around the clock with TELUS Enterprise to develop a five-month e-learning internal awareness program that we only had a month and a half to create and develop. High Road and TELUS Enterprise were up for the challenge, creating the strategy, information architecture, content, measurement plan and technical development in record-breaking time.

The game itself was a mix of Wheel of Fortune and Trivial Pursuit and sought to not only educate its 2,500 Enterprise Solutions team members about its business priorities, solutions, brand and key initiatives but also to create enthusiasm, engagement and a little healthy competition.

In addition to answering monthly questions from May to September, employees were able to earn bonus points for submitting “Power to Solve” Moments – mini-blogs citing how they have used their problem-solving skills and leadership to improve the customer experience at all levels. We then incentivized users to “like” and “vote” on stories to earn further points. It was amazing to see how much support and excitement employees had surrounding the Power to Solve Moments – with close to 300 Power to Solve stories collected!

The program has been so successful that the team has had to move their goal posts for success three times already and had a 42% engagement rate amongst the target audience!

Congratulations to everyone at TELUS and at High Road who worked on this award-winning program!

High Road’s BOATsmart team, a coast to coast ensemble, came together in August to celebrate the exciting results of this year’s fantastic campaign.

And what better way to do that then to safely head out onto the water for an afternoon of wakesurfing with the amazing BOATsmart Canada?

This was a busy season for BOATsmart, which saw an industry-impacting government announcement, a well-attended awareness day at the Toronto Harbour, several long weekend campaign blitzes in the name of safety, and a successful national media tour.

Together High Road and BOATsmart not only told hundreds of safe boating stories, garnering coverage from media outlets across the country, we also saw the impact a powerful PR strategy could have on the actions of the BOATsmart audience. Dramatic spikes in web traffic demonstrated Canadians turned to BOATsmart to both get educated on safe boating practices and obtain the Pleasure Craft Operator Card.

After reviewing the strong relationships BOATsmart had built with media – and discussing the wealth of opportunities we’ll have for next season – it really was time to celebrate.

For those not familiar with wakesurfing, it’s done like this: A boat weighted to one side creates a small wake and the surfer, standing on a small board, is towed forward to gain momentum manoeuvre onto the wake. Once inside the wake, the surfer can let go of the tow rope and ride to their heart’s desire, mimicking the real deal usually only done on the ocean.

It has to be said, BOATsmart made it look so easy.

Perhaps a little inexperienced, that didn’t stop us: Like true, fearless PR practitioners, High Road’s Steve, Whitney and Reena dove right in.

We had a blast! Big thanks to BOATsmart for taking us out on the water! It was a great way to celebrate a successful season of safe boating communication.