The Swedish town of Malmo is a wonderful place.

Some feel it is wonderful because it is the spiritual home of a band that was once cool, the Cardigans.

But now all committed social networkers will think Malmo is wonderful because of its IKEA. You see, the Swedish purveyor of fast-food furniture decided to open a new store in Malmo and didn't really have a lot of money to let people know about it.

So it engaged a rather outre advertising agency called Forsman and Bodenfors to create a rather special launch campaign.

The agency created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Over a two-week period, it uploaded images from of IKEA showrooms to his Facebook photo album.

Then it put out word that the first person to tag their name to a product in the pictures, won it.

Facebook being what it is, word got out and needy, enthusiastic Swedes begged for more pictures so that they could tag themselves to a new sofa, a new bed, or a new vase into which they could stick their plastic flowers or their dead grandparents' ashes.

Before Facebook could take credit for its own wonderful ingenuity in creating the world's most needed Web site, thousands of Swedes were spreading pictures of IKEA showrooms all around the personal galaxy known as their profile pages.

Please look at the video I have embedded, as this idea is, as the best always are, simple and inspired. Which, some would say, also perfectly describes the clever, affordable, if sometimes maddening-to-put-together little things made by IKEA.

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When it comes to web development or design its really hard to judge based solely on a resume. Potential clients are always asking to see some of the previous projects you have worked on. Designers know this very well and right now there are lots of options for designers to showcase their work. This is a great list http://www.blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/articles/10-solutions-to-easily-create-your-online-portfolio. I personally like krop.com and carbonmade.com.

But when it comes to developers, its a slightly different ball game. We are not designers by training and lots of the time, the design of the website might not be something we even came up with. The best way to showcase our talent is to demonstrate it with a live working application. But many a time, this is not possible due to a multitude of reasons. To help, we've come up with a list of the next best things you can do:

1. Show pictures. One of the most important things about the portfolio is the pictures. Most of the people that view these portfolios are going to be non-technical folks and all they are really going to be looking at are the pictures. Hell, even being a developer myself I rather look at the pictures. Make sure you snap some nice high-res images to showcase your work. We suggest 3 per project.
2. Provide a short writeup. Here its good to describe some of the more challenging parts of the project and detail your specific involvement if it was a team effort.
3. List down technical skills. List out some of the more common well known technical terms so that those more technically inclined have a good idea of what was involved. This could include stuff like APIs, Frameworks, Platforms, Programming Langauges and CMS used.
4. Tell us who the Client is. Although lots of the time this might be confidential, if you were able to show pictures. Means you probably would be able to state the client. This just gives your potential clients more confidence.
5. Tell us how much it cost. Potential clients almost always want a quote from you. By stating a rough range of each project, it gives them a good idea on how much you cost and if they can afford you.
   

At Jabfish, the two questions most asked about developers by marketers are:

1. Could we see some of their past work?
2. How much will it cost?
   

(download)

Click here to download:

The_importance_of_a_good_portf.zip (1.14 MB)

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc2009111_312995.htm?c...

A very awesome presentation, co-produced by Ogilvy APAC with WSJ Asia, it seems. Right amount of stats and graphics to make an impact hopefully, on Asian business execs. Check it out here.