There are recipes from a dozen of Portland’s finest restaurants and we’ve built an interactive map to show you where to find each culinary creation. You might want to create a short list of your favorites and hit them up during November, which has been declared Salute to Sous Month.

While building this special feature, Jordan and I had to wear bibs during the late afternoon hours to avoid drooling all over our keyboards.

Do you have a favorite?

Salute to Sous Recipes

They say that making laws is like making sausages: you don’t want to know how it’s done, you just want to know that what you get at the end tastes good.

For a long time now I’ve thought that that notion doesn’t apply to Web sites. I think there are lots of folks out there who want to know how a good Web site comes together. And making sure a site’s built right is essential; the best online marketing plan won’t work if your site isn’t effective and easy for both customers and administrators to use.

With that in mind, today I present The Sausage Makers – an inside look at how a real live Web site comes together here at Pemaquid Communications. We’ll talk about our things like Content Strategy, Information Architecture, Content Management, Design Concept Development, e-commerce and Search Engine Optimization as well as some of the techniques we employ in Interface Production (“front-end” coding) and Development (“back-end” coding).

We’ll also be talking about our user-centered philosophy and coding sites to be accessible to the visually/physically impaired.

And we’re going to do things completely out in the open.

If all that doesn’t sound sexy to you, you’ll be glad to know that we’ve found the perfect Client to make things interesting: The Portland Music Foundation. The PMF is dedicated to developing the music scene in Portland, Maine. They provide workshops and resources to musicians (as the bass player in Bluezberry Jam, I’ve availed myself of their very worthwhile services) and work to forge a musical identity for the area. It’s an innovative venture modeled after a similar organization in Austin, Texas – and we all know what amazing music comes out of that town!

PMF President Pat May has agreed to let people view the site development as it unfolds. We’ll be making a link to our development site available so you’ll have a backstage pass for all the festivities.

We thought it would be apropos to team up with graphic designer – and rocker – Walter Craven, front man of Lost On Liftoff, who will be working up the look of the new site. If you didn’t know it already, Walt does beautiful work, most recently as a designer with Accel Golf. He last teamed up with us at Pemaquid to create the look and feel for local club The Big Easy, a site that was nominated for a techMaine Best of the Web award a few years back. When we approached PMF with the idea for this project, and let them know we were working with Walt… well, that sealed the deal.

So get ready to strap on your hardhat and feel free to move about the job site as we nail the boards together. And keep your dial tuned to Pemaquid Crunch for updates on the design and development process.

Our year as an inaugural entreverge award recipient officially concluded last week with the selection of new winners at the June 16 gala at Port City Music Hall. So now is a good time to reflect.

When you win an award like entreverge, naturally people often ask how the award changes your life and makes a difference in your business. One thing’s for sure – 2009 was a very tough year, but it would have been much tougher without entreverge.

Entreverge definitely helped build an awareness of Pemaquid, what we are all about, and our coworking experiment at Wycwah. The award’s endorsement has helped to solidify the support of the creative community here in Portland behind what we’re doing.

It’s been great to get some face time with entreverge advisors like former governor Angus King, IDEXX Founder David Shaw, Swardlick marketing group principal David Swardlick, the management consultants of the local ACE chapter, and many others (I was particularly pleased to see that long-time Client Gabrielle Melchionda of Mad Gab’s was among them).

Those connections forged will always be there, and who knows what opportunities they might lead to down the road, and the advisor’s perspective on business and what Pemaquid is doing has been helpful.

On the other hand, no magical secrets were revealed. No great bolts from the blue that have transformed the business. In that sense, it reaffirmed one of life’s basic truths: there’s no substitute for hard work, and when the lights dim and the cameras get turned elsewhere things still boil down to you, your own personal energy and your belief in yourself and what your doing.

Perhaps more exciting than meeting some high-powered advisors was the opportunity to meet and get to know my fellow 2009 entreverge winners. Karen Farrell of Top Line Marketing, Emilie Sommer of emilie inc., Adrianne Zahner of Turtle Love Committee and Jeremy Litchfield of Atayne are all doing amazing things, right here in Portland, Maine, and it’s been so great to get to know them and compare notes. I’m so glad that entreverge decided to select five winners each year instead of just one.

What’s next for Pemaquid? More and more of the same. Smart, bulletproof, common-sense Web design and development, delivered with style, by people who speak English (not geek) and don’t talk down to you, is needed more than ever.

We’re so glad to be doing it here in Portland, Maine, and we’re jazzed that our fair city has entreverge, a fantastic way to recognize, build awareness and support great business ideas and the spirit of entrepreneurship.

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.

Last week, Pemaquid’s first intern, Jordan Warren, officially became Pemaquid’s new Creative Services Coordinator, and we are really jazzed about it.

Jordan’s responsible for managing all the “air traffic”: working closely with our Clients to make sure we’re meeting their needs and that they always understand the status of their project. She also works with the creative staff and subcontractors to make sure that your friendly neighborhood Webslingers understand what they need to do to get the job done right.

Have a question or concern about your Web site project? Jordan’s your gal.

Jordan and I met in April, when I gave a guest lecture to her e-commerce class at the University of Southern Maine. Afterwards, she asked if Pemaquid provided internships. She said she wanted to learn as much as she could about Web design and usability and didn’t care if she got paid.

Music to my ears (the part about learning all she could).

So I signed her up as our first intern, and the rest is recent history. Jordan has read the books, written the blog posts, set up the Delicious links for other aspiring Web designers (and learning in the process) and coded the HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL. She even set up Pemaquid’s Facebook fan page.

When her internship ended this past September, Jordan stayed on as a part-time designer. As she finished up her final semester, she has gotten to know many of our Clients quite well.

And the word, from at least one last week: “We like Jordan”.

That rocks. Jordan’s cheerful disposition, ingenuity and attention to detail are making a positive difference. That’s the kind of person we want to have around.

Please help us in congratulating Jordan on her new gig. We’re eagerly looking forward to great things from her in 2010!

The year started off with, shall we say, a “subdued” business climate. Then in January two long-time collaborators decided to go their own way and haven’t looked back. No calls, no emails, no coffee, no beer, no lunch. (I blame myself). For someone who went into business in part to try to build a better kind of workplace, that one still hurts bad. Real bad.

In February, with the commercial real estate market being what it was (at a low ebb, that is), it was time to head downtown and see if I could score some office space. I got very lucky and hit the jackpot with a top floor space at 28 Maple Street, formerly occupied by Lapchick Creative. I couldn’t rent the entire floor space, but worked out a deal w/our landlord, Portland Pie (Best. Landlord. Ever.) to rent part of it and then see if I could bring in like-minded creatives to fill it out as a coworking space.

I had heard about the idea of coworking, through Twitter of all places, and in April it became a trending topic in Portland, thanks in part to a great article in The Switch by Avery Yale Kamila. Then Space Gallery held a Jelly – a coworking open house of sorts – and we followed suit (we hosted Jellies on a monthly basis throughout most of 2009 and we intend to continue this year). Our space now has four full-time members, two part-time members and a funky name – Wycwah (you’ll have to ask a member how we came up with that one). You can follow Wycwah on Twitter, naturally.

In February, I decided to try a NoonHat lunch, organized by the folks at Portland Greendrinks. There, purely by chance, I ran into Sheila Reiser, a gal who was in-between jobs and to some extent was trying to find herself. Needing a Creative Services Coordinator, after the departure of an aforementioned collaborator, I decided to take a chance, and hired her.

Here’s the thing you need to understand about Sheila: she didn’t have a computer, a Facebook page or a Twitter account. Her mobile phone was an ancient model, and I don’t think she sent very many text messages outside of those we exchanged. Quite an unusual hire for a company that does Web design and development.

What Sheila did have, however, was a keen interest in typography and a can-do, supportive attitude. She was not in this game of life for the money (she had turned her back on her career as an officer in the Coast Guard – she graduated from the Academy), she actually wanted to help Pemaquid make a difference, and see if it was in any way fulfilling for her. She had a courteous, military bearing, but was not “professional”. Refreshing, just right for Pemaquid (courteous but not “professional”), and a very good fit as it turned out.

In March, I caught another break, bumping into Jordan Warren, while giving a presentation on e-commerce to her class at the University of Southern Maine. Jordan quickly became Pemaquid’s first summer intern, and the experience went so well that she has continued on as a part-time employee, and she’s doing a bang up job as my Humble Apprentice. When Sheila left in mid-December, Jordan assumed her role as Pemaquid’s new Creative Services Coordinator. You will be hearing much more about her soon enough.

In June, Pemaquid was nominated for one of the first-ever entreverge awards by a Client, Curtis Picard of the Maine Merchants Association. We were nominated for advancing the idea of coworking in Portland, and we were lucky enough to be one of five companies (out of 50+ nominees) to win. Winners have access to an Advisory Committee that includes former governor Angus King, Idexx founder David Shaw and David Swardlick of Swardlick Marketing Group. Happily, one of our Clients, Gabrielle Melchionda of Mad Gab’s is also an advisor. Over the coming weeks, I will be writing about my experience with entreverge advisors.

My entreverge has been wonderful, and has quite possibly saved my business. It’s mission – to celebrate and promote good, creative business ideas and innovation here in Maine – is something that should be supported year after year. Kudos to Johann Sabbath and the folks at Propel for bringing it to life.

I’ve met many wonderful folks through coworking, and many through social media connections. Portland has many wonderfully talented “digital creatives” and I’m hoping there will be many opportunities to collaborate in the coming year.

Like a lot of folks, I’m looking forward to a better 2010, but there’s definitely going to be a lot of very hard work to be done to be successful. The business of Web design continues to evolve, forcing those of us in the market to adapt quickly. The economy still isn’t exactly rainbows and unicorns like it was a few years ago, and competition for the best gigs will be tough.

But bring it on. I’m convinced you learn much more about what your business is made of during the tough times, because you’re forced to be more introspective about what you need to do to be successful.

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

113 fans and counting!

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I thought it was high time I recognized some of the folks who have contributed to Pemaquid Web design projects over the last few years; these are the some of the folks who make up Portland, Maine’s Web design scene.

Jen Ecker – Web Designer, Pixel Surgeon. Jen (a.k.a. Dr. Jecker) has collaborated with me for more than three years now, and we’ve honed quite a system for developing markup. Jen’s specialty is cutting-edge CSS, and she’s got a certain flair when it comes to graphic design. She can also dabble in PHP. In other words, the Doctor is in, and she Rocks! (Word to the wise – she is not a robot!)

Sarah Hines - Creative Services Coordinator and all-around Problem Solver. The Web is not simply about a “Web site” anymore. It’s about solving technical problems elegantly. Sarah’s done that in spades. She can do a little Web design, a little SQL, and she’s even been a project manager at times – though I hate the term. She even took care of business cards a while back when we needed some.

Jeff Norris - Programmer. Actually, programmer is not really a fair assessment; Jeff is a big-picture thinker (dare I say “Problem Solver”?) in regards to technical trends. Jeff has fine-tuned the back-end database systems and has done some sysadmin work for a number of projects, and did the heavy lifting behind Oakhurst Dairy’s innovative job application module, which I architected this past September.

Jamie Peloquin - Web Designer. Jamie, a lone wolf who runs Peloquin Design, has been a frequent contributor to Pemaquid sites over the past few years. Typically, Jamie has collaborated with us to produce the Photoshop comps for a site design concept, though he’s a very capable XHTML/CSS designer who is passionate about Web Standards – which is one reason why I like working with him. Oh, yeah, he knows his way around PHP and a Subversion checkout as well.

Wendy Clark – Web Designer. Wendy is the lead designer at MaineToday.com. We were on the same wavelength when I worked there several years ago and we’ve kept in touch; Wendy has done some graphic design work and XHTML coding. I can’t wait to see her handiwork on the brand new MaineToday.com site which is slated for launch tomorrow – kudos Wendy!

Louise Ellis – Web Designer. Louise bumped into a post on this blog more than a year ago when I was looking for help managing the ever-increasing workload. She lives up the road a piece in Rockport, Maine, but that’s not stopped her from being a frequent contributor. Like most of the folks listed here, she’s passionate about Web Standards and “doing things right”.

Suzy Massey – Web Designer. I’ve known Suzy for some time through a local coffee klatch of Web designers; then last year, we discovered we were both attending SXSW. Suzy’s chipped in a time or two, though mostly she’s been a kindred spirit. She may become more involved soon enough though!

Thanks to all of you for all the amazing work we’ve done. I consider you my Superfriends of Maine Web design. I couldn’t have come as far as fast without you, and I look forward to collaborating with you in the future. Good times!

Pemaquid Zone (FB)
Pemaquid Fan Page (FB)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/pemaquid

You can also find me tweeting at:
http://twitter.com/portlandhead

I think we do a pretty spiffy job cranking out sites, but are there other people practicing great Web design in Maine? Ayuh!

Would like to see more!

Let’s get a conversation started about Web design, Web sites and technology in Portland, Maine.