We officially have a new space and are moved in! This weekend, the desks and furniture came in, and we're ready to begin our first work-week in the new space. The studio space is located in the Hydrostone Market in Halifax, and we're already worried about our waistlines - there's so much good food, coffee and wine on this street. We'll post new pics once the team is fully inhabiting the space, but in the meantime, here are some quick shots after the furniture got moved in.
Yesterday I attended Podcamp Halifax, which is a great annual, free event full of presentations about the web and social media. It's a great place to connect with people face-to-face that you know from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and learn new things that can help you with your business.
Much kudo's to the folks who put it on including Craig Moore from Spider Video. To those who came, it was great meeting you and I hope to you next year (or sooner)
I was privileged to put on a presentation based on Aarron Walter's book, Designing For Emotion. It attracted a good sized crowd and seemed to resonate with the people in attendance. Here were some mentions on Twitter:
HarmonicDev Harmonic Internet
GREAT talks yesterday by @brightwhite @kyleracki @SpiderVideo and keynote speaker @julien #podcamphfx and big kudos to the event organizers!
HStu Hannah
Designing for Emotion session with @kyleracki is packed and has tons of great ideas about creating human websites. #PodCampHalifax
22 Jan
TheRedSparrow Carly Murray
Design for emotion is a full room, very exciting! #podcamphfx
22 Jan
RegisDudley Regis Dudley
Add an element of pleasure for people using the website. Make boring tasks fun. Via @kyleracki #PodCampHFX
22 Jan
mattrogers222 Matt Rogers
Love the analogy usable=edible. Need to make web experiences not only usable but pleasurable #designforemotion #podcamphfx
22 Jan
I've also included my presentation in a PDF form for those who attended if they'd like it for reference.
We're looking for an awesome web developer to join our team.
You are an intermediate to advanced developer with at least two years in the professional field. You are experienced building everything from basic CMS sites to robust web and mobile applications.
You write in PHP, advanced MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and know OOP and MVC concepts inside and out. Ideally, you work in a framework like CodeIgniter. You use source control like GIT and Subversion. You can work within a team environment with other designers, strategists and front-end developers. You can closely follow instructions from our lead designer/strategist and our director of technology, but you can also innovate some intensely creative solutions when the need arises.
Applicants should apply using our contact form and list their qualifications and experience within the body of the email. Successful applicants will be emailed to request an interview.
Just a quick post to let everyone know I'm still alive. We had a busy December, more of which I can talk about soon. So far January is off to a great start.
Last year had it's highlights and challenges. We got to the beta stage of our proposal software, Pitch Perfect. I demo'd the app at Democamp Halifax and was completely blown away by the response, and by the event. The contacts I made there, and subsequently at Mentor Camp, were amazing. Even though the product isn't yet ready to be commercialized (although we've got big plans this quarter), the challenge to get it built in the first place were well worth the effort.
We are ready to soon launch our social media monitoring software, Social Gopher, which has been a long time coming. This month we launch version 1.0 and will be excited to hear users feedback on it. The aim of Social Gopher is to make monitoring easy for small to medium size businesses, and offer relevant search data.
This past fall, Amy Wheaton, our project manager extraordinaire had a bit of an early leave to have Baby Eli. She's busy managing different schedules now, namely feeding and sleep schedules, so we've been doing our best to balance the influx of work and make sure everything runs smoothly. So far we're managing well, but we expect some growth this year, so stay tuned for job postings on this very blog.
I just wanted to write a short thank you to all of our loyal clients, new clients, freelancers, staff and friends for the great year in 2011 and we look forward to working with all of you in 2012.