Pemaquid Communications

Two sites designed by Pemaquid have been named Best of the Web award winners for 2011 by the Technology Association of Maine (techmaine.com). Awards were presented at the TechMaine Gala Thursday, June 23. The winning sites are:

PortlandMusicFoundation.org – Best Non-Profit Site.

annie|catherine.com – Best e-commerce Site.

Another Pemaquid site, MaineLobsterFestival.com, was a finalist for Best Arts & Entertainment site.

Two out of three ain’t bad! All three sites use the Django open source framework for content management and e-commerce. More details about the sites were posted earlier this month.

Thanks to our Clients for giving us the opportunity to show what we can do!

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

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.

Pemaquid Communications has scored three nominations for techMaine‘s annual Best of the Web Awards. Pemaquid tied for the most nominations of any Maine Web design studio. The nominees are…

annie|catherine.com
Best e-Commerce Site

The site features exquisite stationery for any occasion, along with fine art prints, calendars and something racy called Go-Go Wrap! The company manages over 200 product listings in more than a dozen categories, along with order tracking and fulfillment, through a custom version of Pemaquid’s Commerce Manager.

More about annie|catherine »

MidcoastMaine.com
(Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber)
Best Non-Profit Site

This site draws out the visually appealing nature of this part of the Maine Coast. For many Internet searchers, the site is a tourist gateway to the region and it was very important to the Chamber that the site, through its look and feel, compare favorably to similar sites for more well-known Downeast destinations.

More about MidcoastMaine.com »

The Big Easy – www.bigeasyportland.com
Best Arts & Entertainment Site

The Big Easy is Portland, Maine’s premier night spot. The club wanted a new Web site that rocks as loud as they do. The Content Manager allows easy-self-publishing of upcoming events as well as multiple Photo Galleries of local bands in action on its stage. The design really makes you want to be there!

More about The Big Easy »

Best of the Web award winners will be announced at techMaine’s Gala, taking place May 20th @ the Eastland Park Hotel Ballroom.

At Pemaquid, we’ve never won any awards for our Web design (we have come close) and we don’t care if we never do.

Often, the criteria for winning a design award and the criteria for making something useful are completely different.

Donald A. Norman, of the Nielsen-Norman group, in his book The Design of Everyday Things illustrates this point wonderfully in telling how two office buildings were designed:

There really were two designs: one in Seattle, with heavy participation by the users, and one in Los Angeles, designed in the conventional manner by architects. Which design do the users prefer? Why the Seattle one, of course. Which one got the award? Why the Los Angeles one, of course.

Aesthetics are important, for sure. But in designing Web sites for our Clients, we’ll pick useful over award-winning every time.

We’re excited to announce that a Pemaquid site, MaineLobsterFestival.com, has been nominated Best e-commerce Web Site by MESDA, the Maine Software and IT Industry Association. The Maine Lobster Festival’s Web site was redesigned by Pemaquid in 2006.

The online store is a custom-built version of the Pemaquid Commerce Manager, and allows Festival organizers to self-publish product imagery and data as well as access order information for fulfillment. The Commerce Manager is just one piece of a larger CMS, the Pemaquid Content Manager, that makes it easy for non-technical people to keep the Web site up to date.

The MLF Web site is one of three finalists for the award, which will be presented on Friday at Geeks in Black, MESDA’s annual gala; it’ll be held at the Portland Marriott at Sable Oaks. (Looks like I’ll be going…)

We’re really jazzed that a Web site that was such fun for us to design is up for this award!