Archive Page 3

Today our good friend Iris from NextSpace asked us about our corporate culture mantra. Shane and I delighted in recounting it:

Happy, Helpful, Curious and Accountable.

As we recited our beloved chant, it dawned on me that it deserves a long overdue blog post.

What, you ask, is this 12 syllable slogan? It’s our cultural measuring stick. These are the words that we iterate whenever we meet someone new or review someone we’ve been working with. It applies both to our colleagues and to our clients.  In fact, we apply this gauge to everyone in our lives from presidential candidates to car mechanics. I asked Shane, who recently became a father, how he envisions his daughter as an adult. He thought about it for a while and after a couple days of deliberation replied,

I would be delighted to see Serenity grow to be happy, helpful, curious, and accountable.

(I am thrilled to report after the first 6 months, Serenity has a great head start on the “happy” part of the equation and is currently working on “curious”.) Continue Reading »

Today our good friend Peter Koht, the Santa Cruz City Economic Development Coordinator, presented our work at GOV 2.0 Expo.  We’re proud to announce that we won one of five Showcase awards for the Santa Cruz City Budget Website.

What started as a volunteer weekend Wordpress project to help the City of Santa Cruz address the budget deficit has transformed into an adventure. Partnering with UserVoice and Rob Knight Shane, Peter, and Brandon Jones produced an integrated portal for community participation. Mayor Cynthia Mathews worked with Koht and a number of collaborators to produce content for the site and to articulate the state of the budget.

The resulting site instigated conversation amongst both the online and offline Santa Cruz community setting the tone for collaboration.

Our friend Jonathan Fields was just interviewed on Fox Business regarding his recently published his book, ‘Career Renegade‘. We are super excited to find that in his interview he mentioned our iPhone Surf App (at 5:15).

On a related note, Jonathan also interviewed Shane on his podcast, Career Renegades Profiles.

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We are delighted to announce the launch of our first complete iPhone app: “Surf“. Working in conjunction with WaveWatch.com, we’ve developed an iPhone app for surfers. The app features the first ever iPhone streaming surf cams, an intuitive user interface for reviewing current conditions as well as 6-day forecasts.  Surf also features:

• Tide
• Swell & Surf
• Wind
• Sunrise, Sunset
• Lunar Phases
• Weather Conditions

For more information or to download the app, visit the tunes store:
http://iphone.wavewatch.com/download

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We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 3 honoree positions in the 2009 Webby Awards. Giant Mag won a spot in the Magazine section as well as in the Celebrity/Fan section along side The Urban Daily.

David-Michel Davies, Webby Awards Executive Director, writes:

As a result of the exceptional quality of submissions this year, the Academy has recognized outstanding entries as Official Honorees alongside our Nominees and Winners. The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement. With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and over 60 countries, this is an outstanding accomplishment for you and your team.

Freelance Camp Santa Cruz 2008 was exceptional, emotionally charged and a total win for our local community. The amount of interaction and support that came out of that event had a direct impact on the rebirth of the freelance / tech community that is rapidly growing in Santa Cruz today. It was a catalyst. If you are involved in the local community, or wish you were, I cannot imagine a more powerful way to get involved. No bar camp in your town yet? Grab some people and start one.
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About 10 minutes ago, I filled out a survey sent to me by a friend for the Santa Clara Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. The goal, as best as I understood it, was to look at personality traits of entrepreneurs. As I often do when asked personality questions, I struggled between providing my default tendencies or my consciously developed patterns.

The survey questions freeze my personality at a specific instance in time. Had they asked these questions while I was in college, during my first company or perhaps when my second company was failing they would have found a very different set of responses. I found myself choosing a number of answers while thinking, “but that is because I chose to change that and now am comfortable with ….”.
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The Opportunity

We are in the middle of a pretty sweet gig. We’re looking for a Wordpress Plugin Master (no themer this time folks) to join our team on the project for the next 4 months starting now. Help build a high profile full-scale Wordpress suite of 54 sites with elements from various 3rd party web applications.
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The topic at hand: Freelance Camp!

We are beginning to put together a bar camp in Santa Cruz on the topic of freelancing and running a small service business. This is a community event and we are actively looking for volunteers to make this kick ass. If you can help find sponsors, spread the word, find a venue, get some grub lined up or perform general geekery – let’s talk. Hit me up by email or respond in the comment, add yourself to the wiki, and we can chat.

Freelance Camp: http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/Freelance-Camp

I’ve finally gotten around to generalizing our contract to share with our community. Please be advised that if you use this template, you are using it at your own risk and that we are not responsible for your use of our contract. Also please take it to your lawyer and have it reviewed before you use it (and feel free to let us know if you have any suggestions for improving ours)

Download the Shane & Peter Client Contract…

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