Method Men

The core of the 25 people that make up MethodFactory, a software design and development firm, aren't the standard issue button-down government types.

There's the jeans and sneakers attire favored by some of the staff. There are the relaxed conversations about the company held while sitting on and around funky furniture. There's the basketball hoop hanging from the center of the building's main stairway. And then there's the company's building itself, a converted warehouse that once stored pumps and lines for Sarasota's water system.

Yet thinking like a government bureaucrat is carrying Sarasota-based MethodFactory through the recession. To wit: the company landed one of its biggest government contracts to date in late November, when it was hired by the state of Florida to provide technology consulting services for all state departments and more than 1,000 state-affiliated agencies.