Pemaquid Communications

We’ve been looking for ways to make use of our coworking space at 28 Maple that will advance the cause of digital creatives in our fair city, and tonight, from 6 – 8pm, we’ll host our first-ever evening mixer.

The event will feature a presentation by Kevin Silver on interaction design and agile development. Silver is a UX Designer at Tyler Technologies in Falmouth, Maine and he’s on the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) board of directors.

The gathering was organized by Benjamin Ho and Susan Doran, who have reorganized the local MaineUX interaction design group as the Portland, Maine chapter of IxDA (@maineixda).

Vittles will be provided free of charge by Portland Pie – and you’ll be able to wet your whistle with beer or wine. So slowly… slowly back away from the Facebook and the Twitter and come do some real life social networking with other like-minded creative types.

About Kevin Silver

Kevin is an empathetic champion of the end user and has been involved in designing the behavior of digital products since 1995. He has worked on a diverse range of projects for the government, software companies and many nationally recognized brands providing strategic direction and interaction design goodness. As a passionate advocate for Interaction Design, Kevin led the charge in forming an IxDA local group in New Mexico and is currently on the IxDA Global Board of Directors. In his role on the IxDA Board, Kevin oversees more than 80 IxDA local groups from around the world. Currently he is UX Designer at Tyler Technologies working to deliver the next generation of financial software for local governments and municipalities.

About IxDA

The IxDA Manifesto: We believe that the human condition is increasingly challenged by poor experiences. IxDA intends to improve the human condition by advancing the discipline of Interaction Design. To do this, we foster a community of people that choose to come together to support this intention. IxDA relies on individual initiative, contribution, sharing and self-organization as the primary means for us to achieve our goals.

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.

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.

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.