Trello, a web-based project management app from Fog Creek Software that can also be synced with a smartphone app, makes project collaboration simple and rather enjoyable. And as of yesterday it boasts 500,000 signups, which is awesome- and the way they decided to celebrate is even awesomer (I don’t care, it should be a word).

All day yesterday they had their mysterious husky mascot Taco (and what a handsome fellow he is) hanging out in different places across their site delivering surprise gifts (trophies) to their first 500,00 users.

What a great way to delight their customers, and thank them at the same time- while celebrating an important milestone.

The lesson here? At a startup, when you’re stretched for human resources and time, it’s often easier to do nothing than to stop and plan out a celebration ahead of time- particularly one that involves more than grabbing pizza together. But it’s so important to remember to have some established meaningful metrics (no vanity here) to work towards and to thank your customers when you get there.

It doesn’t mean you have to spend months planning a million dollar bash worrying about catering, invitations, etc. Try to find something that’s truer to your core. Often times easter eggs on your site, thank you cards, or a bit of swag will do the trick.

How and what have you celebrated?

There’s a lot of GTD and productivity talk in the startupsphere. All fine and dandy, but for most us there’s a laundry list of productivity hacks much simpler than GTD. Things so simple, David Allen would be laughed off the bookshelves if he wrote about them! But since I don’t have any books to sell, let me share my little secret with you…

I’ve been using Gmail and Google apps for years, probably like most other startups.

But for a long time I never bothered to learn the shortcuts. Big mistake.

I was always rushing to get things done, and with a never-empty inbox, I didn’t feel like I’d be gaining much by taking additional time out to memorize them.

But one day I learned that I could simply press the “y” key to archive a message I was viewing.  And as it turned out, this actually saved me a bit of time. Nothing astounding, but it did the trick.

Finally, this year – three years later – determined to master anything that could save me time in the long run, I printed out a Gmail shortcuts sheet and taped it to the bottom of my computer monitor.

While I still haven’t learned all the shortcuts, I’ve found that even just knowing one combination helps me clear out hundreds of junk messages in minutes– which previously took me an hour.  (The secret: while in your inbox, press “x” to select a message, and “y” to archive it. Keep repeating as fast as you can pressing “x” and “y” and “x” and “y” and watch your inbox melt away!)

I found this was the answer to the “everything else” section of my inbox that I didn’t really need to read, and I bet you will too.

So yeah, I’m encouraging you to shake your fears of conquering Gmail’s shortcuts, but beyond that, take some time to reflect upon your daily activities to see if there are additional ways you can be crunching out extra time. If I would have done this three years ago, I would probably have saved DAYS of my life time that could have been put to better use. But I understand, old habits like using the mouse die hard!

If you haven’t already you should check out Alexis Ohanian‘s (he’s the guy behind Reddit, Hipmunk & Breadpig) new book released by Hyperink. It’s a quick and easy read about how to create a product and company that customers love and includes a bunch of real-life examples culled from his personal experience as well as the broader startup community. Beyond building something people want, it’s important you use available tools with care including user experience design, social media, and swag to further delight potential customers. He takes the time to stress that treating your first 100 fans well can go a long way (but don’t think that means you can stop at 100). The point is to build a passionate group of users (as about 80% of the use of your product will come from only 20% of users). For obvious reasons, we particularly enjoyed his take on the benefits of using swag to make folks swoon:

“Swag: so very useful, but so often trivialized—something I personally find very frustrating. What is swag? Well, it’s asking someone, some random person who is already doing you the favor of being one of your users, to wear your logo, to wear advertising on their torso all day long. If you could put a value on that, it would far exceed the cost of making that t-shirt. So yes, pony up for the good quality t-shirt, because people don’t want to wear uncomfortable clothing. Make your swag attractive and give a damn—make it pleasant for your users to help you.

Whether it’s a sticker, a t-shirt (the standard startup swag), or a luggage tag (see the benefit of starting a travel startup with a cute mascot?), make the process of giving someone swag something special. No one is going to show off a sticker, or anything else, unless they feel an attachment to the brand. Even something as simple as giving someone a chance to ‘earn’ the item makes a difference (e.g, “Show me how much you love hipmunk by doing an impression of the chipmunk ‘flying’ with its arms”).”

Yep, he summed it up- swag rocks and can go a long way in helping to promote your company if used the right way, and that’s why we’re here. We can totally help you delight your customers! Do us a favor and if you’re thinking about working merchandise into your repertoire drop us a line (realperson@printfection.com) or check out our giveaway campaigns, which make giving merch to your fans super simple. Oh and for real, check out his book you won’t regret it.

Creativity (and the resulting innovation) is a key ingredient in many businesses. And while you probably understand what creativity is, you might not know how to make it happen (other than with a magic wand). Based on Jonah Lehrer’s IMAGINE, here are a couple ideas for fostering creativity within your company:

Develop a flexible attention policy: At 3M instead of insisting upon constant concentration, employees are encouraged to make time for activities that at first glance might seem unproductive. For example taking a walk, napping in the sun, or playing a game of pong. Beyond that, researchers are also encouraged to spend 15 percent of their work day pursuing speculative new ideas (bet you thought Google invented that idea– nope!).

Insist upon sharing across departments: It’s easy to let employees get trapped into their silos, but horizontal interactions (people sharing knowledge across fields) encourages conceptual blending, which is an extremely important part of the insight process. 3M insists on sharing among scientists which eventually led to a Tech Form (an event sort of like a middle-school science fair where each scientist introduces their findings and experiments). Keep in mind that the act of invention is in many cases a compounding and transposing. For example Larry Page and Sergey Brian developed the search algorithm behind Google by applying the ranking method used for academic articles to the sprawl of the World Wide Web.

Encourage persistence: Don’t let employees give up too easily. Even Bethoven the cliche of artistic genius needed to constantly refine his ideas, to struggle with his music until beauty shone through. The ability to stick with it (grit) is one of the most important predictors of success. While the right idea may not arrive on your doorstep on your first try, keep at it.

Locate (or move) your office within a city: Cities are crowded spaces for us to interact. As a result they lead us to explore ideas we wouldn’t explore on our own, and converse with strangers we’d otherwise ignore. Interestingly the per capita creativity of cities rapidly increases with size, but companies exhibit the opposite trend.

Now you’re fully armed to create creativity! Anything else you’d add?

This is a guest post by Kelly Young, who writes daily blogs on her website Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior. She is more than her disease and her website is more than her own story. It is a growing community of empowered patients and a source of information about fighting RA and stories of other patients with autoimmune arthritis.

Do you really need t-shirts for your cause?

I have a t-shirt drawer, doesn’t everyone? Every year, I weed out a few old ones I finally admit I’ll never wear again. There are shirts from every school or church event we ever volunteered for – not to mention those from amusement parks and sports teams. The memories are wonderful, but some shirts are scratchy and never fit right. Do we really still need t-shirts for one more cause? Yes. Let me explain why…

The value of a visual identity

I have watched the birth of a new community. Unlike the diabetes community which has existed online for almost a decade, the rheumatology patient community did not exist at all. But over the last couple of years, patients have begun to connect. Several things played a part in this beginning: first blogs, then a Facebook group, then Twitter chats. But t-shirts played a surprising role, too. Here’s one example.

Launching an awareness campaign using t-shirts & social media

Last spring, Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior held a t-shirt contest based on a Wonder Woman image I created as a t-shirt design called Warrior Woman. People used the design as a profile image on Facebook or Twitter to enter to win the contest. To earn more contest entries, they could also mention the contest on their own blog or social media profiles. Even guys played along.

In case you haven’t already guessed it, the contest was actually a clever awareness campaign for RA. But, it was even more than that: it was also a significant moment for our budding community. Every day, we could see one another using the same image – the Wonder Woman t-shirt design. It re-enforced that we were a team. Before long, members of the community were posting photos on Facebook of themselves in our t-shirts.

Creating a sense of belonging in virtual communities

A virtual community is a real community since real people are involved in real conversations that often become relationships. However, when there is something visual, it helps people to consider the community as real. T-shirts are a one way to help people feel like they belong to one another.

I hope this gives someone another way to think about t-shirts and other kinds of branded swag. They are more than just advertising for a company. And they are even more than just tools for awareness for a good cause. Sometimes, they can help create a family resemblance.