I don’t know if it is the sunny 70 degree spring weather or if I just finally gave in, but I completely lost it today while packing for a tradeshow.

Here I am packing all of our nice, new marketing swag for conference attendees to enjoy to the fullest, all in the meanwhile, up to my neck in old branded swag in the way, collecting dust. There is something mentally engrained in a marketer after a brand overhaul that makes me totally despise everything about our old brand. I just don’t want to see any of the old brand again, ever.

To overcome my troubles, there was only one solution: a good old spring clean of the marketing room. The result left me with utter satisfaction and a stack of old stuff for the first ever New Dawn garage sale. All proceeds from the garage sale going to a community organization of course.

During the month of March, New Dawn employees gathered gently used children’s books from their homes, neighbors, and friends to be donated to the English Language Center (ELC) of Cache Valley.

The ELC opened in 1999 to house and expand a successful, structured English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program. The program has grown from 183 students to over 1,000 annually.

The ELC works with families who were forced to flee their countries with only what they could carry. Books for their children are truly luxuries. New Dawn saw this as an opportunity to assist the ELC with providing immigrant families with English language children’s books.

New Dawn’s efforts garnered well over 100 books, which were sorted by employees before they were delivered to the ELC.

Do you know of an organization, such as the ELC, the benefits your community? Do you think they could benefit from $10,000? If you answered yes to both of these questions, check out the New Dawn Community Grant. To celebrate our 15th Anniversary, we are awarding one community organization with a $10,000.

APPLY at www.NewDawnTech.com/NewDawnGrant

For fifteen outstanding years, New Dawn Technologies has provided case management software solutions to courts, municipal courts, prosecutors, probation officers, public defenders, pretrial services, and other government offices. Our success as a company can be attributed to each and every person that works and has worked here over the years, our tireless dedication to developing the best software solutions, and for our focus on the communities we serve.

To celebrate fifteen years of continued growth and fantastic customer retention, we celebrated with a New Dawn branded cake. The past fifteen years came and went almost as quickly as the cake did!  It is amazing how fast free food disappears around the office—especially cake.

We prefer our eggs unbroken. To ensure our egg shell’s structural integrity, New Dawners broke off into teams to create their most innovative solutions yet, egg carriers! Not only did each team have to engineer a carrier under a short deadline (30 mins), they had to create a jingle or commercial to prove their designs superiority. Watch a few of the teams present their carriers and see if any of them lived up to their claims!

The Talk & The Drop

Which teams were just all talk?

Team 1: EGG-Stream–SR1 & RC1 / Drop
Team 2: SKADOOSH!!! / Drop
Team 3: EggDrop2000 / Drop
Team 4: EggDrop (Formally known as EggDrop Technologies) / Drop
Team 5: New Egg / Drop
Team 6: The Egg Drop Bag / Drop

Halloween at New Dawn is always a “treat” (pun intended).  On the Friday before Halloween, there was a little costume competition at New Dawn’s Headquarters, on second thought, there was nothing little about it!

This year’s participants came to win!  For example, Craig Reese, our burly support specialist, turned his cubical into a duck blind.  Unfortunately for Craig, he didn’t bag any ducks from his desk chair, despite his best efforts on his duck call.

Each costume was voted on by all New Dawn employees.  The decision was difficult, but the winners deserve their status in each respective category.

2010 Halloween Costume Competition Winners

Humor

Jonathan Mitchell, Sales Director, was awarded the most humorous costume award.  We hope this photo does not get out to Reno 911 recruiters!

Creativity

Carolyn Isaacs, Senior Account Executive, outdid herself yet again.  She posted lost dog fliers all over the office as she waddled around frantically searching for her beloved Bruno!

Horror

Eva Gillespie, Proposal Writer, terrified us all in her Gothic dress and facial piercings.

This is a day that we all will remember for a long time.  I cannot wait for next year.  In fact, it’s never too early to start planning for next year’s costume.  Right?

For the Month of July, New Dawn employees competed with companies state-wide in the 2010 Clean the Air Challenge.  The challenge brought New Dawn together to give back to reduce air pollution by finding ways to reduce car travel.

As a result, New Dawn employees created closer relationships with one another by creating carpooling groups with co-workers and got great exercise by cycling or walking to and from work.  Another way New Dawn reduced their car travel was by planning travel to reduce multiple trips throughout the day.

The results of the challenge were shocking…

Overall, all participants reduced over one million miles, eliminating over two million pounds of emissions that otherwise would have been omitted into the air!

New Dawn made the top ten companies list by eliminating 746 trips (2,182 miles), reducing 3,664 pounds of emissions.  All this travel saved New Dawn employees $3,284 in gasoline!

To see the full list of results, check out the Clean the Air Challenge website.

We congratulate all those who participated in the challenge.  We challenge you to reduce your trips and clean our air!  To help you get started, here are some travel trips:

Carpooling & Vanpooling

• Ridesharing, vanpooling and carpooling offer many benefits, including reduced travel costs for gas and general vehicle maintenance.  Other pay-offs include more personal time while traveling and less driving-related stress.  Travelers using these options often experience shortened travel time as they can utilize High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes.

Public Transit

• You can make efficient use of your time throughout your day by using public transit.  Fringe benefits include extra time to relax and be comfortable, saved money on gas and car maintenance, free time to respond to emails or review material for work, or even time for a little reading.  The cost savings to you include not having to pay for gas, parking, or maintenance, and reduced wear and tear on your vehicle.

Biking & Walking

• Biking and/or walking can provide you with health benefits while they reduce travel costs.  Not only can you reach your destination relaxed, you can reduce the stress generated by driving in congestion, having to find a parking space or purchasing gas.  In addition to personal health benefits, active transportation helps the environment by reducing your carbon footprint.

Teleworking

• Teleworking decreases your work stress, eliminates your commute and related costs and can increase your participation in local community activities.  By teleworking, you don’t have to go in to the traditional office ever day.  Just think of all the time you will save by not commuting.  You will have more time to spend with your family and friends or be able to pursue other interests.  You can work in a telework center or from home, based upon the options your company provides.

Trip Chaining

• By trip chaining, you can save vehicle trips by simply planning before you get in the car.  Trip chaining is consolidating trips you take throughout the day.  For instance, if you are at home and need to travel to two destinations in one day, you can travel from home, to the first destination, to the second destination and then back home again. By doing this instead of returning home after each trip, you have saved one trip.  The more trips you chain together, the more vehicle trips your can potentially save.

Tips provided by TravelWise: http://travelwise.utah.gov

New Dawn was lucky enough to be honored during the Utah Genius Awards recently (we had to wait to post anything until we had pictures! duh!). UTAH GENIUS recognizes the creative people, companies and cities behind Utah’s economy. The awards are based on objective statistics from the US Patent and Trademark Office, not votes.

Marlene and Dru headed down to Salt Lake City to receive the award and rub elbows with some of Utah’s brightest minds, including Governor Herbert!

Another great product from Cincopa Send Files. Also read about Cincopa best wordpress plugins for your website.

We hope we qualify again next year!!

Read the press release here

Mother Nature really out did herself this year. We’ve been enjoying beautiful spring weather all week until April 1st. April Fools day.

This is what we woke up to:

and it kept snowing the rest of the day.

Not funny Mother Nature. Not funny. It’s officially April so let’s see some sunshine and blooming flowers.

Were you the victim of any great pranks? Or did you dish it out?

Last week our sales department went through some pretty intense Sales training. And I mean intense.
Not only mentally but physically. Our sales department split into 4 different “countries” and between retreat sessions they competed at the New Dawn 2010 Olympics.

The Countries: The Evil Empire, Shizbeckistan, Republic of Coconut, and LarBarJonistan all competed in several mind and physical challenges.

Events included:

• Gertaround: the ancient art of successfully guiding an office chair around tables, a giraffe, and corners; all while beating the opposing team
• Flonkerton: the icelandic sport of paperbox racing
• CreativeCat: using ones brain to create or draw something from around the office
• Figure Skating: the majestic art of dancing on skates
• MindJam: the brain buster event involving naming all 50 states in a timed period
• ColdToss: the brutal event taking place in the snow and challenging participants to toss a briefcase as far as one can

Our Countries, The Evil Empire, Shizbeckistan, Republic of Coconut, and LarBarJonistan, fought bravely until the end where LarBarJonistan rose victorious.

Another great product from Cincopa Send Files. Also read about Cincopa best wordpress plugins for your website.

The end of the year is always busy - between finishing up last minute work projects, finalizing paperwork, getting your 2010 figures ready, and we won’t even go into all the things going on in each of our personal lives!

This season was no different. Between the lull of the holiday and the end of the year deadlines things quickly went from 0-60 in mere seconds. The result?

Nine New customers. Yes - NINE. Told you we were busy!

Here are the *last* new customers of 2009:

1. 4th Judicial District Attorney, Monroe, Louisiana
2. Edmond Municipal Court, Edmond, Oklahoma
3. Lamb County, Littlefield, Texas
4. Linn County District Attorney, Albany, Oregon:
5. Payette County Prosecutors Office, Payette, Idaho
6. Grand Junction Municipal Court, Grand Junction, Colorado
7. Denver City Attorney, Denver, Colorado
8. Dekalb County State Court Probation, Dekalb, Georgia
9. The Guam Office of the Attorney General (OAG), Hagatna, Guam

We’re so exctied about the THIRTY new customers we added in 2009 - but we plan to beat it in 2010!!

Head on over to the press release section on the website to learn about these new customers and see what else is new with New Dawn!