WHO WE ARE

 

Tactic 9 is a full service media solution provider designed to help churches and ministries achieve their goals in reaching, teaching and keeping people for Jesus. Our past work is only relevant in what we have done for the culture of those clients. We believe every client is their own unique entity with their own personality, style, stature and deserves to be treated as such when addressing their media needs and desires. We do not impose cookie cutter ideas and solutions on our clients but act as both an amplifier and catalyst reflecting a genuine representation of them. We utilize various methods and systems to capture the true essence of who our clients are and what needs to be communicated to ensure true success. We are your graphic arts cheerleaders.  

Who is Bill Spencer?

Who is Bill Spencer? I am just a guy who does art and likes to take on risk and challenges to make art and communications happen. My professional career opened through faithfulness to helping with a local church. Whatever needed to be done I was there. From running the soundboard, duplicating tapes to building one of the earliest church websites that included streaming sound and video back in 1994. We were even interviewed in the magazine "The World and I" for the streaming content work, soon there after it turned into a professional career in graphic arts. If the opportunity presented itself I took it on. At this time I was running a Navy Occupational Safety and Health program NAVOSH where I was also applying my new found skills to my program. I had no staff and a huge task, I had to take a program that was challenged to get employees compliant and keep them safe. Here is where I really began to apply innovation by establishing new programs to allow individuals to buy safety gear they liked vs the very limited selection our vendors provided. I used this momentum to establish an online training program where my teaching sessions were available via video on demand and required testing was delivered and recorded online. This won a Navy wide award for innovation in safety, which resulted in a new career in new media and the internet developing distance learning solutions, kiosks, cd's and dvd's for the Navy, NAVSEA, ONR and DARPA.  I had the privilege of working with a team of advanced visual information specialists who taught me every tip and trick they knew. I had the opportunity to work alongside world class engineers solving major problems for every kind of system you could think of. I participated on innovation teams and was mentored by the lead innovator for David Taylor Model Basin. I was being stretched, molded and shaped. I got paid to go to work and play. Learning, exploring and innovation became the normal not the exception.

This attitude to take on whatever opportunity is presented has opened doors to do many awesome and wonderful things. In my past life I had opportunity to do everything from author books, public speaking on various topics. I spoke at everything from Flash conferences to presenting at NAB the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas on subjects from Community development to Location Based Services. I have had the opportunity to create art, from logos to information display systems. I was blessed to have lead teams in developing information architecture, user experiences, user interfaces and coding it all to make it happen.

Twice I had the opportunity to lead large efforts that both won critical acclaim. Web Wizard a standards compliant content creation and management system that created and managed content for Carderock Naval Surface Warfare Center and its 3400+ employees. It allowed anyone with no coding knowledge to build and deploy Internet, Intranet and Extranet sites, manage meeting rooms across the enterprise around the world even allowing them to order meals from food service providers for their events and managed VTC systems. It also allowed Parking space assignment and management, Allowed the development of training and recorded the scores. The system also managed all the site content linkage, meaning that pages could be moved within the system and automatically update system wide. We also had the ability to auto fill content and authenticate and save information to a users CAC card. Depending on user role and permissions the various attributes for the system were turned on or off. It also boasted a shared service for all content uploaded to be used by anyone, saving server space, duplication and bandwidth. Web Wizard also housed Publish Wizard that allowed us to publish online versions of any publication but chiefly our monthly internal magazine "Wavelengths". This system was available for anyone, the general public, contractors and employees to submit articles for use and managed the workflow from cradle to grave. It auto formatted the content for submission to the National Archive. We developed a dashboard for the Commanding Officer to view everything from room utilization rates, human capitol to financial states of programs as well as other metrics. We displayed the content cryptically to appear as modern art (a Mondrian painting) so he could view the information at a glance in meetings on a plasma screen mounted to the wall and no one was the wiser but him. We were nominated for the Navy's Grace M. Hopper Award for Business Process Improvement.

The second I lead the effort to combine the very early Navy.mil with Navy News Stand. We created a more robust system out of the original News Stand CMS into a form structured more similar to Web Wizard. It allowed much of the same functionality but focused only on the Internet and not the other two business systems. However we did manage to build solid human interface that won the praise of The Brookings institute for forward thinking looking and reaching out to include both the younger and older audiences and garnered many top military and industry awards listed below. While the display logic changed over the years the core information architecture, content management, human interface logic and interaction remained in place for the next 12 years.

I had the privilege to establish and lead the DMA Innovation program where we strove to establish a culture of innovation and creativity to spur on new and reinvented media products and processes. I was blessed to be a part of a small team who was lucky enough to be trained by Walt Disney Institute on Creativity and Innovation and then bring back that experience and inculcate that into our culture through various efforts from special speakers, sponsoring innovation groups and developing podcasts and policy to help spur innovation and creativity.

My experience has included being a photographer, videographer and even a podcaster. I have had the privilege to lead many teams in creating web experiences, Kiosks, Applications, branding, ad campaigns, large format display systems, policy, developing programs from the ground up. Providing guidance in the areas of innovation and business remodeling and process improvement. And was blessed to have been able to do these things for both the US Navy and many companies around the world. This included being on the team that built one of the largest online developer communities (Flashkit) with over a million users at its peak.

Currently I am providing media leadership and advice to both the CityGates church and Calvary Chapel Magazine serving in the various gaps and holes on an as needed volunteer basis. That leaves lots of time for me and my team... my wife Sherri to help out with your vision. We can do this remotely or in person. Please look around the site at our past work and see if our addition would complement your team. Below are a few links to some podcasts I have produced and some books I was fortunate enough to be a part of as well as clients and awards I have received. I say all this not to impress you but that you can know our passion to make the impossible possible, dreaming and realizing the dream are a normal part of our thinking. We hope to share this passion for both technology and art applying it along side you and your team for the furtherance of the Gospel. Thank you for taking the time to consider using Tactic 9.

 

Innovation Podcast:

Past Clients Include: Zerox, Black Entertainment Television - BET, NASA, Voice of America, US Treasury, Prayer Flag Pictures, FBI, USAF, NAVSEA, US NAVY, Wrox Press. Disney.

 

Publications: (All are out of print)
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Notable Awards:

  • Webby Award Honoree 2008 for Navy.mil
  • NAVOSH Navy Wide Best Light Industrial Program 1996 - Online training utilizing Real audio and Video.
  • Two Davy Awards for Navy.mil and The Great White Fleet Centennial
  • Apex Grand Master Award 2009 for Navy.mil
  • Thomas Jefferson Award Best Flagship Web Presence 2008, 2009, 2010, for Navy.mil
  • Three Communicator Awards 2010 for Navy.mil, Great White Fleet and Course to Midway
  • Finalist twice in the Flash Film Festival for Interactive Underway Replenishment System Kiosk
  • Nominated for the Grace M Hopper Award in 2003 for development of "Web Wizard" a content management system.
  • Is an Associate Member of International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
  • Awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service