Pemaquid Communications

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed in life, it’s that digital creatives, like most people, tend to sell themselves short. When complimented, they’ll say something like “…it was nothing, really…” or “…there are some things I could have done better…”

And some of these people are doing amazing things. I mean, they really rawk! So why don’t they realize it?

I have a theory. I call it my Theory of (creative) Relativity.

In Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, your perception of the laws of physics depend on your orientation in the universe. If you’re a passenger on a starship hurtling through deep space and look out the window you’ll think you’re not moving at all – even though you’re streaking along at the speed of light – because you don’t have a frame of reference.

So it is with our perception of our talents. We live with our talents every day, so after a while they start to seem ordinary, commonplace, mundane.

it’s sometimes easy to feel that we as persons are commonplace, mundane or – on a really bad day – worthless.

Don’t fall into this trap!

Everyone has a special talent – a “superpower”, if you will. Don’t brag, but be proud of what you can do, keep getting better and share it with others.

And when someone pays you a compliment, don’t brush it aside; mark it down. It means you’re on the right track.

Last week we asked other Maine Web designers to Twitter some words of advice for our intern, Jordan Warren. What we got was good advice for any Web designer at any level. A sampling:

Wendy Clark – @wending (Senior Web Designer at MaineToday) – “Occasionally leave the computer for your education and inspiration. Visit the PMA or local galleries once a month.”

Tim Shackleford – @fiveleafdesign – “Always be learning, test early and often, and surround yourself with people smarter than you. You’ll learn alot.”

Dan St. Peter – @danstpeter – “Listen to and learn from the experts you meet. Study http://www.smashingmagazine.com and other great online resources.”

Maggi Blue – @magpiecreative – “Don’t over think it…it only gets you in trouble.” (Don’t overthink, Jordan, but please do think.)

Ellen Kanner – @ellenkanner (Kanner Kreative) – “Firebug plugin for FireFox. period.” (We got her squared away with that on day one, Ellen!)

Calvin Gilbert – @calvingilbert – “Create libraries of frequently used code snippets and site templates… and listen to Rob.” (Listen to Rob? Smart man, that Calvin.)

You can find all these “tweets of advice” on Twitter, tagged as #4Jordan. Thanks to the folks above for taking the time to share insights based on their experiences.

So what advice do you have for Jordan? If you’re a Web designer here in Maine, we’d love a quick comment. No matter how insignificant you think it might be, it’s a gold mine of knowledge for her. Help her get better, faster.

She’d love to hear from you.

Last night Pemaquid was selected a first-ever entreverge award-winner. There were five award recipients in all; we were chosen for our work promoting the concept of coworking here in Portland, Maine.

Coworking, to us, is about “you + me + he + she = bettah!”

Pemaquid will now receive pro bono counseling from the entreverge advisory committee and we have access to pro bono promotional services from entreverge business partners.

It’s great to be recognized for an idea you feel passionately about. But ideas are the easy part. Now we need to get to work and do some heavy lifting to make the idea a reality.

I hope you’ll pitch in.

Portland Press Herald article on entreverge awards

We’re jazzed that Web developer Casey Rosenthal has joined us down at the “Fab Lab” at 28 Maple Street. Casey runs Port 49 and he’s an accomplished Ruby on Rails developer.

Casey also organizes the techMaine Ruby user’s group and is a member of the MaineUX usability interest group. But most importantly, Casey is a staunch supporter of the coworking concept and as such we couldn’t be happier he’ll be working with us.

You can follow Casey on Twitter at: @caseyrosenthal

Pemaquid Communications has been nominated for an entreverge award for our work pioneering and promoting the concept of coworking here in Portland this spring.

It certainly is nice to be recognized. What began simply as a search for office space evolved after a conversation with Chris Messina, founder of the original coworking space – San Francisco’s Citizen Space – and now seems to have captured the imagination of many Digital Creatives in town.

We got some media love from The Maine Switch, we had a successful and well-attended social last month, the coworking social Jelly has come to town, and now there are two Facebook groups on coworking here: Portland Coworking and Portland (Blueberry) Jelly.

Best of all, there are now four of us (five if you count Jordan, Pemaquid’s intern) at our little coworking space at 28 Maple Street.

Entreverge is an organization formed recently to promote entrepreneurs and business innovators in Maine.

Five award winners will be selected from the nominees at a party at Port City Music Hall this Thursday evening.

I spent the day the other day working at the Space Gallery in Portland with other people who work from home more often than anything else. It was an event called “Jelly”. Jelly was originally started in NYC in 2006 by two roommates and has expanded from there. You can find more information at http://workatjelly.com/.

Everyone I talked to was really excited about getting out of the house and it was definitely a good opportunity to meet people and network. There is also talk of holding this event once a month somewhere in Portland (There’s actually one scheduled for July 7). You can keep up happenings via its Facebook group: Portland (Blueberry) Jelly.

I think this is a great idea to help people brainstorm, get refocused, and be very productive.

One other new project I have gotten to work on lately is site mapping. I am using writemaps.com which can be made public so more than one person can edit it. It reminded me a little of building a family tree, only it functions much better than most of those I have tried. It is very easy to show how the pages drill down.

This project, however, gave me a much larger respect for everything that has to go into a website. This site map was for a bank so it was more complex than some of the other sites we come across but any business is going to have many many pages and subpages. It’s something you don’t really appreciate, and therefore don’t appreciate the work that goes into building them, until you look at each and every one.

A Facebook group has been set up for Digital Creatives who are interested in coworking.

Portland Coworking is a space where local folks can share ideas on how we can make coworking, well work.

A lot of folks have expressed interest in our space at 28 Maple Street, and this will make it easier for everyone to stay in touch with what’s happening in town. So surf on over!

All you John Smiths and Davey Joneses out there should listen up…

Bright and early tomorrow, Facebook will start allowing members to “claim their name” for their profile page – i.e. http://facebook.com/roblandry.

Right now mine is http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=771569224 for example. Now who’s going to remember that?

We’ve all seen URLs like that. Here’s an MSN article on the Facebook change: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31212881/?gt1=43001.

Lovely.

Why is Facebook making this change? Usability, of course. It’s much easier to remember someone’s name than it is to remember their number. In the iPhone you dial a contact by their name, not phone number.

Why do people create Web pages with long lists of unintelligible numbers? It’s easier to program.

Whenever possible, make it easy for people to remember where when they were on your Web site. After all, the 48th state to join the union was Oklahoma, not “48″ and not “?state=oklahoma”.

If a page name is easy for people to remember, it’ll be easier for them to return, and easier to spread the word about it. You’ll see traffic and sales increase.

Recently at Pemaquid we’ve begun rolling out using tools like mod-rewrite to allow Clients who use apps like our Content Manager to have page names that are easier for them – and especially their customers – to remember.

As I am getting accustomed to life at Pemaquid I have been getting more involved in how things work and I’m starting to actually contribute. It is one of Pemaquid’s major concerns to make sure all their websites are accessible to everyone, including the visually impaired, so I am learning about a side of usability I had never even thought of before.

When I first started my internship we had to spend some time with getting me all geared up with the right gadgets and applications. We had to discover some free software that would help with writing in HTML so I have been using a program called jEdit. It works well so far but it definitely takes some getting used to. You have to write all the code yourself, unlike in Dreamweaver where it offers you buttons and shortcuts to get things done. Though it takes more time doing things this way I feel like I am learning a lot more. The other downfall is that it doesn’t allow you to test code directly from it to a browser, so you need a way to upload to the internet to check out what you have done. I have been using Filezilla for that, which is a very nifty little tool.

We also set me up with a bunch of Firefox add-ons, like Firebug, which allows you to inspect a website while you are on it and see how each element fits into the source code. I have also been using the Web Developer toolbar add-on that allows you to validate websites, see any site without css, disable images, outline different page elements like frames, manipulate forms and many cool things.

So, I’m all geared up. I know HTML basics. Now it’s time for me to do something useful. I have been working on a form for one of Pemaquid’s clients and I think I will be posting some changes to another client’s website today, finally starting to feel like my time at Pemaquid is benefiting them as well as me!