Compass Media to design third-generation websites

By Eleanor Osborne, Champlain Business Journal — March 1997

Longtime media director and editor Jay Collier has formed Compass Media, a business that will provide Web development, training, and digital video editing services to community businesses and nonprofit organizations. …

The common thread among Collier’s extensive experiences is, as he describes it, “helping people communicate, in video and on the Web. I see myself as a coach, helping to match profit and non-profit businesses with the tools they need.” He points out that every desktop computer can now broadcast full-color interactive publications to the world. “Advanced training and intuitive design can help raise any site above the Web noise.”

Collier focuses most of his energy on the Web, which he describes as “the Volkswagen” of the Internet because of its accessibility and endurance. At Compass Media, he designs third-generation web sites, finding a balance between design and content with the relatively rudimentary tools provided by the Internet.

A third-generation Web site looks like a full-color magazine page, with articles of varying lengths and a strong interactive component. In contrast, a first-generation Web site would look like a term paper rolling down the screen.

The other half of Collier’s new business is digital video editing. The pilot he’s currently working on at MIT focuses on student interns helping different businesses. He hopes that the project will marry his Web and digital editing experience: he is editing the film on a Macintosh video editing system that will allow a Web page to use video as one of the elements on the page. Ultimately, this will allow users to look at a Web page and see moving video.

“It’s a phenomenal opening of lines of communication,” he says. He is also excited by the increasing accessibility to the Internet via computer hardware and software tools. What this means to the consumer is that with a modest investment an individual can broadcast images of quality and put them on the Web.

Though Compass Media only started in January, Collier is collecting a group of impressive clients, including the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and the Green Mountain Audubon Society.