I’m proud to announce the launch my first non-client related work for the Canadian video game community: Game Census.

I’ve been working on this since last August when I started with an idea I had for the last couple years and a my Google map. Today Game Census now includes the Google map and website.

View Larger Map

I think it’s important for every company, regardless of industry, to do non-client related work each year. For a one person shop like myself, it gives me a chance to tinker with some ideas and stretch my creative itch.  There are a few other reasons doing non-client work can be health for your business:

• Burnout: Taking a few hours a week to do something that isn’t client drive can help cut down on burnout in regards to yourself and the people around you. I know Game Index does that for me. I can just site down and do something for the fun of it and not worry about short deadlines.

• Comfort Zone: Some say to learn something new you’ve to go outside of your immediate comfort zone. I’ve found with my two current projects that I’m learning a lot more then I thought I would and even if I feel bit awkward at times,.. I’m loving the experience.

• New Thought Process: This tags on the last point a bit. When you are outside of your comfort zone and learning something new. This helps to expand your mind and you start to see ideas, opinions and objects in a new light.

• It’s Just Fun: At the end of the day, it’s fun to do non-client work. Not everything in life should be about making money.

A lot of the reasons above are why I started working on Game Census last year. Now I can’t wait until I get to version one and grow with the project. This is a journey more then a destination for me but I’m having a ton of fun on the way and that was more important then anything for me.

Ad Age had a great article last year about agencies doing non-client work. The article focused more on the agencies doing it to drive new  revenue streams but I still think alot of the reason above hold true for the teams doing the work. What non-client work have you worked on lately?