Today I voted.
I voted because I could.
I voted because I wanted to.
I vote because I think it matters.
I vote because I care.
I vote because I think the health care system is broken.
I vote because money is getting misspent.
I vote because the taxes on small businesses are too heavy.
I vote because I want the earth to be saved.
I voted to protect my friends who married someone that loved them back.
I vote for those who have no voices because they are not citizens.
I vote because I am an immigrant.
I vote for our future and for what I want the world to be.
I voted for me.

Today mattered

Where were you today? Did you vote? Feel free to post your I voted sticker picture. :)

the economy in the USA was going downhill, the stocks of our favorite tech companies leaving us to look at our bank accounts and wonder if its a good time to buy or if the bottom had not hit yet. We were also discussing who was going to become our next president and with each debate we were getting our answer. My coworker Shannyn T. sent me a link to one of her favorite cookies, Mother’s cookies that just abruptly closed its doors but had existed since 1914. Now before you go out and storm the supermarkets for these pink and white iced goodies start thinking about what would you love to not go away. The idea is similar to the what would you take on a desert island but more along the lines of your favorite things you cannot live without. What would you want to keep if you could? 

Dan Cederholm created a logo for microformats. Then another man named Tantek Çelik evangelized about microformats and started hosting dinners about around it. I sat there thinking about the logo and how it would fit perfectly on a plate. (It sort of looks like an abstract salad ;) ).

Tantek thought it was funny and most importantly thankfully Dan likes it too :)

Upcoming dinners

Tantek’s hosting a dinner in London this coming tuesday.
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1080915/

Keep an eye out for this tag on upcoming:
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/tag/microformatsdinner/

Maybe a microformats dinner is coming to a venue near you! ;)

If you need the artwork

800x800
500x500
240x240
75x75 (square)

my friend Larry Halff im-ed me and asked if I had time to work on the OAuth Summit t-shirt design. OAuth is “An open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.” For those of you still wondering what that means, basically an API that acts as a valet key, so that API doesn’t give full access but partial access. Larry handed off my contact to Eran Hammer-Lahav and we started working on a concept for the OAuth summit that was held last week was hosted by Yahoo!

OAuth logo

Chris Messina designed the logo.

The OAuth Summit T-shirt design

The t-shirt was based on the LOL Cats that we’ve all fallen in love with. So I created a cute illustration of a cat with the talk bubble of “I can has open.” I was limited on time but it worked! :) How could you deny a kitty cat access? :) Incorporating Chris’ logo was a bit tricky. The logo had a lot more detail than allowed on a screen printed tshirt. Since it wasn’t possible I simplified the logo down to the A in a circle. I used that “token” for the collar of the cat.

They handed out stickers and such at the event too.

I attended the Facebook Girl Geek dinner held in San Francisco. My friend Holly Liu was a panelist and I wanted to cheer her on. The event was a mixture of developers, designers, and business women. It so happened it was the same night as the DC Design Babe’s first event on the other coast of the USA.

Standing there listening to women talk about their experiences I wondered, “Can I have it all? Do men wonder this or is it just women?” What I mean by “have it all”, for me someone to share my life with, a career that I love and a kid I can dress up in super hero costumes.

I’ve attended conference sessions and plenty of conversations about men vs women. The unfortunate thing is most of us don’t have a huge amount of time to mentor or be mentored. I want a mentor, maybe even examples of who to be like or not to regardless of gender but it does help for certain things if the person I listen to is a woman. Why? Well, men don’t deal with giving birth (sorry well maybe that one guy who had the sex change and landed on Oprah) but for the vast majority of you, you can’t. I need my girlfriends for that advice. The advice for what to do when they aren’t in conversations because they can’t bond with other guys the way guys vs guys do. It’s different. We just gravitate to what we’re comfortable with.

A few moments later still thinking about where I wanted to be in my career and life in general I got introduced to a woman that worked with Holly at AOL. She said she had seen me at a restaurant in Mt. View a couple weeks back but was too shy to introduce herself. She followed my flickr pictures. We joked about how she was stalking me and I told her it was silly for her not to say hi. She said I was famous at AOL. I’m not quite sure why but I was surprised and honored.

I’ve read up on people like Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon (she’s Asian and a high powered woman) and on the board at Apple. She’s on her second marriage. I wonder if that price of professional success has come at too high of a price for her or not? I wonder that for the male CEOs in power. If someone that works all the time can hold their family together when they don’t have the time to spend with the family they are trying to provide for. My parents worked all the time because they didn’t make much so they had to make ends meet, so maybe the answer is yes sometimes it does work out.

I’m trying to figure it out as I go along and maybe we’ll see if I can have it all… whatever I decide that to be. For right now I’m taking notes from the people I know like my friends Jared, Paula, Tara, Erica, Jenny and Jody. If you have suggestions let me know. :)

Christopher Schmitt asked me to write a chapter in the CSS book he was trying to complete. I was honored and terrified. Why? Well to be honest I’ve only coded my site. I’ve never come up with a hack, or anything to that level. I’m a designer, an illustrator, my strength is in design not in code. The way I learned was by reading about it and having the two best tutors for CSS my internet world has ever known, Veerle and Geert. Chris assured me that was fine and that I could what was existing in the world and explain how I used things that people have created for my own purposes ::cue scary music::: Bwhahahahaha. :) Hopefully you will like it too. :D

If you want to order it

Via Amazon: Professional CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for Web Design

Thank you

• Christopher for editing and making me do something regardless of how chicken I was.
• Veerle and Geert for being inspiration to me and the best tutors
• Brian Ivanovick for taking the photo even if he forgot to tell me I had something on my tooth when i had to send a cover shot for the book. :P
• For my friends, Jason Garber, Kevin Lawver, Jenny Chou, Jessica & Chris Mailey, Daniel Morrison, Paula Bee, Jeremy Keith, Mark Norman Francis, Leah Koentopf, Nicole Gregory, Elsa Kawai, David Cafaro, Kevin Tamura, Charles Treat, Larry Halff, Jody Thomas(changed screen so I left you out sorry), Julie Luxenberg, Philip Kim, Matt Harris, and my family your faces are smiling from my chapter.

LIfe has changed so much but I’m relieved that I have you all in my life and I just wanted to remind you of that your love and guidance means the world to me.

I was at the Refresh DC meeting last month and they had a panel about entrepreneurs in DC. The entire panel was men. I asked Jackson, “why there wasn’t a single woman on that panel?” I’ve been out of the DC area so I had no answer for him off the top of my head either when he asked me. He tried to find one but couldn’t. This started my train of thought that the pool for women entrepreneurs is small or is it that the men are only hanging around men so the men don’t go outside of their group? Is that why? I started asking friends in the DC area for answers.

I know that Circle Solutions was started by a woman and its still going.  But that’s only one I know of in the web arena. Then I started speaking to the female designers I knew in the DC area. I suggested that they put together a Girl Geek Dinner, to encourage each other. I know there already exists a group of DC Web Women. I’ve signed up to the list serve for years and the list serve is too diverse for what the women I’ve spoken to would want. Most people want different things out of their social networks so how do you appeal to them?

So this sparked another conversation on what terminology to call ourselves.

Identity crisis

What do you call women who are geeky, and something with marketing pizzaz but not derogatory toward women? The trouble with the English language is that there isn’t anything appropriate to call women with out it being generic. So I’ve been looking into labels for what we could call ourselves. If anyone can suggest one let me know.

• Girl: too young/immature


• Babe:from the 70’s and came out of “baby”


• Diva:too much attitude


• Goddess:too new age


• Chick:usually ending with things on twitter she’s one hot chick


• Broad:just too off the cuff


• Princess:Too Disney :P (even if we want to be treated like one),

If anyone has a solution let me know :) I think Blogher does a great job of branding because no one takes offense to “her.”

What’s the solution

To get the women involved when you are doing an event. Organizers being all men aren’t going to be able to cover the possible thoughts of what women want. I hear the jokes coming in. :P One example, one woman wanted to ask about breast pumping options at a conference. This particular woman didn’t want to speak to the single, male organizers. It was awkward and it was personal to her. Not all women may agree and some may shout it from the roof top when they need to breast feed but the key is not everyone is the same. As liberated as we may think things are I still see people cringe at tampon/feminine hygiene ads in mixed company.

I had the honor of speaking with the guys at Nclud at a high school in Damascus, MD. The teacher Mr. Jeff Brown has taken a lot of effort in reaching out to the community to encourage his students that what he’s teaching is relevant. At the end of the talk I spoke to a female student, she was in 11th grade, one more year of high school to go. Now she could have spoken to the three guys that went with me but she didn’t. Which worked out great because she was where I was at during her age. She was trying to decide if she wanted to go into coding or draw. I think we tend to seek out people we can relate to. Maybe I’m friendlier than the guys :P but that’s the beauty of diversity as long as it happens it works out better for our ecosystem.

Having women or even other minorities helping to organize the event would help attract the attendees. We all have different ways to communicating and learning from others. The reason why we flock to certain groups is because we feel we fit in. We’re all different so keep that in mind. It’s just something that’s been on my mind.

I asked on the Girl Geek Brighton Dinner website if they were going to have an event while I was visiting Matt in England. Niqui and Rosie invited me to speak instead, last friday. They mentioned it was more about geeks meeting up not segregated by gender so the event was renamed “geek social”. It reminded me of the Refresh DC meet ups. Thank you it was great fun!

I got to speak about illustrations and how I went about incorporating illustration into a project. The problem with using photographs for people sitting behind a computer is that we’ve seen it sooo many times. Thanks to stock photography companies we’re sick of them. Using illustration as in Joyent’s (Illustrator: Paige Pooler) website is a great twist and so this sparked a discussion about how to use illustration in a project.

Questions about illustrators, and illustrations

My talk was about how illustration was being used and the questions that came up were:

• QUESTION: How to find illustrators?
  ANSWER: Find websites that have interviews of illustrators, example Veerle’s Art Elsewhere section is one good example. I know they contact many more illustrators than they get responses from. Is it that the world is just doing so well (so man projects going on) that no one feels it necessary to answer back from possible client requests or that spam filters are that good? ;)
  
• QUESTION: What is my process for illustrating?
  ANSWER: It depends on what it is. For the most part, the ma.gnolia logos I’ve been illustrating lately I have been researching the topic/concept. I surround myself with the idea example: Crocus flower and then sketch on paper then onto the computer. 
  I was asked to pull up examples of my work. So I dug up the fish in a fish bowl for Thmbnl.com. To create the fish on the right, I scanned in what I had sketched out on the left and brought it into illustrator and did a vector trace. Half the time it’s just knowing what the terminology is to look up if you get stuck and need the tutorial for help.
  

  

• QUESTION: How do you create illustrations if you can’t draw?
  ANSWER: How did you learn code/web design/even to read? You looked at examples and did tutorials. You might even have gotten a tutor. Even if you can’t draw the way you want to it takes practice. Just like everything if you want it bad enough and work hard you can achieve it. It just depends on what you are willing to give up to get it. Sometimes it is just easier to find someone else and pay them, that works too. I like to draw. ;)

I had a discussion with Geert Leyseele & Veerle Pieters over at Duoh! that keeps coming up again and again. They get lots of emails and I have started getting some too from people asking to promote their projects and websites. We all like to help but we’re short on time for things we want to do. So here goes my humble opinion....

Focus

If you are launching a new project remember to focus on what your project is.

Example: If your product is a shiny new red ball. Your focus should follow this train of thought. Why your red ball is different than others? Does it bounce better? Does it make a sound? Does it have a texture that sticks to the wall?  Is it the color or texture different? Why do I want to spend my hard earned money on the red ball you are pitching to me when I have a perfectly good red ball that I have had for a while? If you can explain that well in the 1 minute I have to scan and check out your site then you’ve won a major battle.

Possible pitfall #1: Staring at the product for too long, you are too close to it and know it too well to step back.
Solution:Getting feedback from people who haven’t been staring at the same page over and over for the last week. Getting fresh eyes helps in the case we were discussing.

For me: Even if it is a great product and is better than the rest and If I can’t figure out what it is in a minute (I read/scan/click) then it’s not better.

Possible pitfall #2: What you created turned into something else.
Solution: make the message for the product relate to the new product. Don’t market it as a red ball if it was supposed to be blue.

Critiques

Being on both sides on this it’s been a learning experience. For both the person giving feedback and receiving it you need to treat the person with respect. Chemistry for teams is very important and if you loose that because of the lack of respect it is hard to regain.

Giving the critique:
Give feedback that is about the focus of the project. Explain why you do not like the color red, more than I hate red. It doesn’t give the designer anything but “avoid using red and all shades of red” for the next version of the project. Now if your feed back is that red means “hot” and it is a label for cold, then that makes sense. Make sure it is in the right context.
If you are unsure about what your product is then think about what it was you wanted and articulate it.

Receiving the critique:
Listen to what they are trying to say. Try your best to not take it personally. Remember to stand your ground on why you were making the decision. The person giving the feedback was asking for your help because it is your expertise but remember to listen without attitude. Being assertive but not rude.

Promoting

Thank you for sending me your project/product/website. I hope it does well. I hope that Boing Bong, or a Tech Crunch or a style gallery shows off your website. I am a consultant and at least for now not a marketing machine. My blog posts have been about my design, conferences, and things I feel are relevant to me and I write about it. I do like writing things I like a lot but if your site lacks focus then I’m going to do my best in trying to help with what little time I have at the end of the day.

Example: I was asked to promote their website.
My response: Thank you and I will check it out! I only add people I know (it was about my cool sites section on my main page aka blog roll).
Response from person: I can send you a photo
My response: No, Thank you. What you have done is great and I hope you continued success so one day the rest of us can ask you for help :)

Hopefully inspiring them to make the best website/product/blog for fame and glory via the internet and they wouldn’t need me or anyone else to add them.

Inspire others! Crossing fingers and toes that this helps.

the guys and I at Nclud decided to volunteer our services to organize the bowling event at SXSW interactive at the end of January. Everyone wanted to bowl so that part was the easy puzzle. The rest got kind of crazy we needed to organize the date, the buses, sponsors, volunteers, signs, wristbands, and the venue. I wanted to start off by thanking everyone for helping Geeks Love Bowling and apologize for not doing it sooner (due to me slammed with post sxsw deadlines). It was a crazy two months organizing it. We ended up with 51 teams participating (6 people per team) and additional 100 or so attending to watch and hang out!

Thank you

This event could not have happened without everyone in the geek community helping out! Roll call commence! I cannot begin to thank you guys enough and I’m sure everyone that was at the event would agree.

Roll call

• Angela Baxley, (who was a major factor in getting the second half of the bowling alley and the remaining buses we needed once we sold out) Josh Russell and Pete LePage for convincing the Microsoft family (Mac Office 2008, Microsoft Silverlight, Internet Explorer, Expression Studio, to donate prizes (Xbox games, Microsoft Office, Bowling Shirts, M&Ms, and sponsoring the majority of the event).
• Craig Cook for coming up with the idea for the diskette medals, the money he donated to create them and the time
• Marianne Masculino for donating time, giggle factor to make the medals, and being part of the day of the event team.
• Stephanie Troeth, Chris Moeller, Christopher Schmitt, John Croston, III for walking around and checking on whatever we needed during the event
• Matt Harris for helping me keep my head together before/during the event and tabulating the scores of the winners once we realized the computers at the bowling alley weren’t able to do it.
• Mike Cummins from the Developer’s group at AOL for donating the 80g Ipod for a prize when he walked through the door at the bowling venue.
• Kevin Tamura and Jason Beiard for being our registration welcoming crew
• Ngenworks my hometown, Jacksonville crew that created “Happy Webbies” , one of our top level sponsors, and brought t-shirts to give away
• Larry from Ma.gnolia for sponsoring the event
• The guys at Electric Pulp for contacting us to sponsor the event
• Sidebar for getting us to the part where we could afford the 2nd bus and the lanes (when we only had 20 lanes)
• Viget Labs for being one of the first sponsors
• Jeremy Keith for helping us with finding sponsors and helping setup.
• Opera for donating to the event
• Kelsey Ruger for giving us a lift to the event to help setup
• 200ok for working on the live stream twitter page
• and I’m sure I’m missing someone else but I hope not :)

The crew: Alex Giron designed the website for geekslovebowling.com. Dan Drinkard newly adopted into the Nclud family assisted with the website while Martin Ringlein and I split off the behind the scenes work like registration for the website, organizing the day of to make sure everyone had a great time.

Guidelines on How to get Sponsors for an event

We got an email while trying to organize the event inquiring how to acquire sponsors. I figured this would be helpful and the right way to go about it. Guidelines if you will :)

1. Get involved with the community without asking for something in return, build up a reputation first. Don’t be “that guy” always asking for something and never adding back into the community.
2. Write an email and explain why you need the money for your event. (Place yourself in the other person’s shoes and think what you would want if someone came to your door asking for money).
3. If you are asking for sponsorship of a product you need to explain even more so what the benefit is to the other person.
4. Thank them regardless of whether or not they are going to donate this time. (Even if they don’t donate to the event thank them. Remember that manners and grace will leave a lasting impression).
5. Remember that if you abuse sponsors they will not return to help again and then you are going to be poisoning the sponsorship pool for everyone else.
6. Check before your event to see if there is anything else they will need (if they wanted to have any promotional items to setup).
7. Thank then for their help no matter what “level” of sponsorship they ended up contributing.
8. Blog about the sponsors to give them attribution in the format of email/website/blogs to return the traffic back to them in a way that makes sense for your event (don’t spam the attendees).
9. Create signs/banners for the event.
10. Create facebook group for the event so advertise the event and create interest/buzz for attendees up.
11. Create a twitter account for updates that people can subscribe to for the event for things like where the buses were, who was winning.
12. Create a flickr pool for the event so that the photos can be pooled into the website and on blogs as another way to promote the sponsors/event.
13. Create an upcoming page for the event and then people have a “machine tag” to put into the photos on flickr (another way to tag photos).
14. Send a thank you always via blogs or websites or email.
15. Only take as much as you actually need for the event. These companies are donating to the EVENT, not to your profit margin.

This goes for event planning and for life. Remember to do more than is expected of you, treat people the way you would want to be treated and in doing so you and the event will go far.