Pemaquid Communications

Well, Hello World! It’s good to see you again.

It’s been a heckuva long time since the last blog post. We’ve had plenty of work here at Pemaquid for the last several months and somehow blogging about it hasn’t ranked very high on the todo list.

I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on improving the financial efficiency of our operation, and that’s paid off so far. 2011 will be our best year ever. It’s a good time to be in Web.

We’ve launched sites for great Clients like annie|catherine designer stationery, MaineBiz Sunday, Portland Music Foundation and, launched just this week, the Maine Lobster Festival, and done work for dozens of others including Oakhurst Dairy. Social media is still all the rage and we’re helping Clients make sense of the cacophony of tweeting, facebooking and blogging.

I’m working with a great group of people now as well. Jordan Warren has left for bigger and better things in Beantown, but fortunately she’s been replaced by new Creative Services Coordinator Trish Altieri (who’s better, not bigger). Trish is just what the doctor ordered – she has experience running operations for an ad agency here in Maine, so she fit right in and is whipping things into shape. Kelsey Raymond, whom I met last fall while guest lecturing to her Web design class at the Maine College of Art, has gone from intern to humble apprentice and is developing into a fine interface producer. Walt Craven has pitched in to do the design work on several sites, including the aforementioned Portland Music Foundation and Maine Lobster Festival. Elliot Bradbury continues to work his Django wizardry and has been – thankfully! – very reliable. Suzy Massey has been displaying her black belt in CSS and HTML. And there are many more who have contributed (Bob, Rebecca, Doug – thumbs up!).

Coworking continues at Wycwah, where we’re currently sharing space with our friends from NewsSimply and Sarah Robbins of Yacht.com and of course, Alibi. It’s great to see other coworking facilities like Peloton Labs take up the idea and run (ride?) with it. We wish we had their square footage!

Lots of good things are happening in the design scene here in Portland that are encouraging. Abstract Conference, for one thing, is shaping up to be an amazing event.

So this spring has been full of win. Looking forward to a great summer!

Last week Pemaquid launched a new site for Wycwah, the coworking space we share at 28 Maple Street.

www.wycwah.com

What the heck does “Wycwah” mean? An ancient Abenaki word for “coworking”? Was it the only domain name available? Nah. But you’ll have to ask us in person sometime to get the lowdown on it.

The site is a simple construction built on the Django framework. Over time, we coworkers will be using it as a learning device as well as a source of information about our space.

The beautiful logo was designed by our friend and Wycwah member Keith Sirois; interface production and Django configuration was done by yours truly.

Our Jelly last week was so much fun we’ve decided to do it again.

Come down to 28 Maple Street and hang w/us from 10a-4p, next Tuesday, August 25.

Coffee, wi-fi and camaraderie will be plentiful. We should have a wireless printer and other clerical sundries by then as well.

(photo courtesy Dave Weinberg/cellphoneSketchpad: http://daveweinberg.com/daveBlog/)

On Tuesday our coworking gang at 28 Maple Street held our first-ever Jelly and it was a huge success! The place was abuzz with activity – and more importantly, creativity. At any given time, about a dozen coworkers were collaborating in the conference room or lounging on the sofas.

Below is a rundown on the people who made our Jelly “Jell”:

Nick Hall (@tripdragon) – showed how he creates custom brushes and textures in Photoshop.

Our new coworking partner, Sarah Robbins (@brightworkllc) showed us how she uses Protoshare to make quick mockups for her projects.

Big, big thank you to Casey Rosenthal (@caseyrosenthal), for getting a more powerful wifi broadcaster in place to handle all the traffic. Internet service was screaming and flawless throughout the day. Casey also arranged to make sure we had plenty of coffee from our friends at Bard Coffee (@bardcoffee, @bardtogo).

Dave Weinberg (@daveweinberg, @AIGAMaine) created one of his patented cellphoneSketchpads. Dave and I also compared notes on working with local ad agencies with Web designer Katie Benedict (nope, not on Twitter… yet).

Progmatica members Justin Henry (@jhenry) and Russ Jones (@codeofficer) swooped in. Among other things, we hacked around the inner workings of the Django framework SQL. You guys are super geeks! (and I say that with admiration).

Arielle Walrath (@ariellebw) and her husband came by and, I think, got a little Web design work in.

Jason Thaxter (@thaxter) was wrangling with Flash action scripting for some online videos he’s working on for WGBH.

Good news! It looks like Jason, Tiffany Rad (@tiffanyrad) and Keith Sirois (@sirois) will be joining us on a more regular basis, starting in August.

Suddenly realizing it’s strange that Casey, and not Pemaquid’s intern Jordan Warren (@jmwarren19) who fetched the coffee for our event. We kept Jordan out of trouble by having her browser-test two new site launches.

While we’re on the subject of coffee (it happens a lot), I want to thank: Bard Coffee for being a friend and cutting us a break on the java; our landlord Portland Pie (@portlandpie) for the wicked good pizza they provided for lunch (Dave Weinberg is right; you must try the Nor-easter); our neighbors at Blush (@blushimagery) who provided an extra table as more people started to arrive, and Steve Darnley (@stevedarnley) of Tugboat Creative (@tugboatcreative) for offering his conference room for overflow.

And finally, thanks to Pemaquid’s Creative Services Coordinator Sheila Reiser (nah, not Twittering) for organizing the recycling of trash and generally ensuring our carbon footprint is minimal.

We missed you: Jeff Norris (@thumbtech – hope you’re enjoying your vacation) Mikey Hougland (@lamikey), Alex Steed (@alexsteed), Fred Abaroa (@costavidafred), Sarah Wallace (@sarah_wallace – glad you’re feeling bettah!) and Frank McMahon (@franklinmcmahon).

Things went so extraodinarily well that we’ll probably do this on a monthly basis on the third Tuesday of each month. At last word, Space Gallery (@space538) is planning on continuing their Jelly every first Tuesday, so hopefully we’ll make Portland a two-Jelly town! Amazing for a city this size, which tells me there’s a lot going on here under the hood.

How was your Maple Jelly? Let us know in the comments.

I’m very excited to announce that we have a new coworking partner at the 28 Maple Street mashup.

Sarah Robbins is a Web designer who operates as Brightwork LLC. Currently Sarah is managing improvements to Yacht.com.

Her faithful companion is Alibi the besenji. They’ve both settled right in and are a great fit with the rest of us mad hatters.

You can meet Sarah and Alibi at the coworking Jelly we’re hosting tomorrow.

Follow Sarah on Twitter: twitter.com/brightworkllc

Since we’re having so much fun with it, we’ve decided to host a Jelly at our coworking space at 28 Maple Street.

It’ll happen Tuesday, July 21, from 10am – 4pm.

We’ve been working with the folks who brought Jelly to town, Chelsea Baker, Nat May and our friends at the Space Gallery (congrats on the new Web site, guys!), to try to hold Jellies bi-monthly. For now, we’re aiming for a Jelly @ Space on the first Tuesday of the month and one at our place on the third Tuesday.

So come on down! There’s plenty of bandwidth to share and we’ll keep the coffee hot.

A Jelly coworking session was held yesterday at the Space Gallery between 10:00am and 4:00pm. There were roughly 15 people there at any time.

There was a lot happening:

Sarah Wallace (@sarah_wallace) and I brainstormed to develop the social media strategy of a Pemaquid Client.

Casey Rosenthal (@caseyrosenthal), one of our coworking partners at the 28 Maple Street space, helped me determine that Shopify was probably the best e-commerce option for a small business Client.

Alex Steed (@alexsteed) and I discussed ways to work together to develop the tech community in Portland, and we batted around an idea for an iPhone app.

Jordan Warren (@jmwarren19), Pemaquid’s intern, helped set up Google Apps for one of our Clients. She and I also learned an important lesson on spelling errors (but that’s another story).

I met videographer and prolific twitterer Chris Cavallari (@chriscavs) IRL.

Chelsea Baker (@charmquark) filled me in on her new job at Grace, Portland’s newest restaurant.

I got to know Mikey Hougland (@lamikey – photo below) a Web designer from Providence, Rhode Island who is looking to relocate to Portland. Like me, she uses Coda. We’re glad to have you, Mikey!

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!

Staff writer Avery Yale Kamila has a great piece on coworking in today’s Maine Switch featuring Pemaquid Communications and our endeavor to create a coworking space at 28 Maple Street, what we sometimes jokingly refer to as the “Fab Lab”.

Open House/Social

May 19th 5:30 – 8:30pm – Free pizza, beer and wine provided by Portland Pie (our landlords; they run their business out of the ground-floor space. We’re up on the top – 3rd – floor).

Coworking Links

Photos of 28 Maple Street (Flickr) – taken recently when it was occupied by the previous tenant, a Portland ad agency.

Coworking Survey – Take our quick survey and let us know what you’d like to see in a coworking space here in Portland, Maine.
Coworking Wiki – share ideas on coworking with people who are operating similar spaces in other cities.

Do you work in Portland, Maine? Do you create things digitally, using bits and bytes? Do you think being around other, similar folks – “Digital Creatives” – would help everyone get better?

Then you should take the Coworking Survey for Portland, Maine. It’s a quick, 13 question affair (don’t worry pilgrim, we’ll have you in and out of there in no time) intended to help us (who is “us”? we’ll get to that in a minute) find out what others might like to have in a collaborative space.

I’ve been exploring the idea of developing a coworking space in Portland for about a month now, after some poking around in the commercial real estate scene.

Along the way, I’ve bumped into Jeff Norris, Sheila Reiser and Alana Post (perhaps you know us?), and together we’ve been experimenting w/t/idea. Fortunately, right now there is a lot of downtown commercial real estate to use as our laboratory. For now, we’re working out of a space at 28 Maple St.

Other coworking spaces in other parts of the country include:

• Indy Hall- Philadelphia
• Citizen Space – in San Fran, founded by Chris Messina and Tara Hunt, pioneers iof the concept
• Launchpad - in Austin, TX, home of SXSWi

If you’re a Web/Graphic artist, programmer, podcaster, digital video producer, information architect, copywriter – really anyone who uses bits and bytes to create stuff – we’d love it if you could take a minute to give us your thoughts on this idea, which I submit will be the work environment of the future. Or at least comment this post.

Keep an eye on this space for survey results.

Feel free to stop on by. There are 4 of us there right now; we’re looking for 2 more “Charter Members”.