I love reading great articles that support my interest in promoting Raleigh,NC,  the place where I have resided for over 20 years!, as a great place to work, live and play. Raleigh has changed a lot, an I mean a lot over the past 5 years, so if you are asking yourself, “seriously? Raleigh?… last time I was there it was, eh…” do yourself a favor and visit Raleigh soon. A great way to experience our downtown is to attend one of our First Friday events, which happens to be this Friday, January 6. As a suggestion, I would start at Artspace, Visual Art Exchange or The Carter Building and simply walk around. Raleigh has a wonderful FREE bus, the R-line, that can take you to all three art districts within minutes. The galleries usually have wine and snacks to hold you over to dinner time. Look for Triangle.com photographers roaming about and get your photo taken with friends and later visit their website to see your picture online, it’s a great way to feel part of the community. Then about 9p things start to slow down. But don’t worry, we know you are starved by now!, wherever you are at the moment probably has at least 5 good restaurants within walking distance. If you are still up for exploring, the nightlife continues at one of our many cozy bars, some offering live music.

Congratulations on another great PKN night. It was fun, entertaining, and thought-provoking.
– Cris Cohen

and

Thank you so much for making this amazing event happen.I had to leave before the end since I have 2 papers due tomorrow. But I did enjoy the event and will  be a follower in the future.

– Pinar Yoldas

We had talks from artists who told tales of Kickstarting a project, imaging visually what a new species without a central nervous system would look like, poetry of balance and space, new work ideas, new ideas for intoxication management, how introverts rule the world… and more. If you missed this event, we will have our videos on YouTube shortly, search “pknraleigh” for the channel.

The video was shot by Larry Evans and he also managed the audio thanks to his good friends Amy & Anthony who supplied the PA system. These events are always a collaboration of great skills and talents and would not happen in such fin style without each and everyone who contributed.

What did you really love or not like so much about our recent PKN? Will you attend again? How about  presenting a talk in the future?

The Internet is changing very fast. It is difficult to keep up with the changes and how those changes can impact your business. You might be thinking about user experience, converting site visits to orders, should I have 2 menus or one?, what font and size is best?, is search important?, and much more.

Our awesome government has a great website that can help answer some of these questions. Many resources can be found at Usability.gov to insure your website is compliant with standard usability guidelines. At the very least you will become knowledgeable about the issues and can decide which elements are most important to you.

Guidelines | Usability.gov.

It is seemingly a simple concept. Idea + to do list = Scrum

Sure, I’ve used it in my home for house cleaning, especially when we had little time. Kinda like this…

” Hey this room is a mess! Let’s do a 15 minute rush.”

Then all parties involved would rush around and pick-up, dust or vacuum for the full 15 minutes, then stop. All of the most awful stuff got done and we all felt better, or at least I did!

So this concept of Scrum can work in your business too. It doesn’t take a lot of time and the results are remarkably satisfying. Try it yourself on your next work or personal project. Here is the full article to get a better feel for how Scrum works. Scrum Alliance – What Is Scrum?.

If you are like me, when I think of Thanksgiving I often think of our family traditions. You know, the things we do each year as we visit, bake, make and enjoy time with the folks or things we hold most dear. But traditions needn’t only happen once a year. We could mold a tradition each month, week or day and be thankful for the moment we give to our special tradition. And some traditions can be as simple as a morning cup o’ joe.

So, this Thursday morning as I pour the hot, dark liquid caffeine into my bright green mug, I’ll be thinking of ya’ll – and wishing you and your family the very best!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cyn

p.s. So what’s your favorite food to make or eat during Thanksgiving? Mine is pumpkin pie!

via The 25% Off Thanksgiving Sale for StudioPress.

Have you been wanting to buy the Pro Plus All-Theme Package? Have you been looking for a new design for your WordPress site? Do you want to save some serious holiday cash?

Woot, Now’s Your Chance to Save!

Using the code THANKS at checkout (don’t forget that), you can save 25% off of anything you’d like here at StudioPress. And now that we’re making every theme mobile-responsive, forum-friendly, and e-commerce-ready, you’ll get those benefits when they arrive thanks to our unlimited upgrade policy.

• Get the Genesis Framework for only $45.
• Pick up a Genesis child theme design for less than $20.
• Snag a Genesis / design combo and save close to $20 (or more).
• Wipe our entire shop clean by getting our Pro Pack All-Theme Package. Get Genesis plus all 43 current designs, plus every design we make in the future, and save over $74 off the regular price (and over $875 off the retail price of just the existing 43 designs)!

This deal ends promptly at 5:00 pm Pacific time on Monday, November 28, 2011.

I’ve done this work for many years and I simply love it! I like the feeling I get when I walk into Barnes & Nobles and see the titles I designed on the book shelves. It’s an “I made this!” moment. Of course it takes many people to get a book from concept to bookshelf, but I am proud of my little corner of the process. I also like when I go to a friends home and find a book I designed on their bookshelf.

In general, I love the idea of books and want to contribute to the success of keeping content flowing in print. When authors, individually or with publishing assistance, put their know-how, experience and thoughts to creating content and produce a book, it is truly an incredibly exciting moment.

I work with publishers, individuals, authors and editors. I use content and images given to me from the source or find photography or imagery from online sources or my own library. Some of my favorite fonts are Garamond, Helvetica, Gill Sans, Caslon, Trajan Pro and Minion Pro.  I like to use photography or imagery that has strong contrast or bright and closely cropped for detail. I like to keep the overall design simple and minimalist. I work hard to blend direction from all involved to craft a book that everyone can feel proud of.

Here are few book cover designs I like (but did NOT design)

What are some of your favorite books and designs?

ideaSPARK Events
Thursday – PechaKucha Night Raleigh Vol.8 starts off SPARKcon with an awesome ideaSPARK event. This well attended and much anticipated event ( Tickets go fast so get yours now ) will take place at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science on Thursday September 15. The evening will showcase over 10 different presenters, all chosen for their enthusiasm about their topic and willingness to share ideas benefiting our community. See the line-up and register here. The beauty of PechaKucha Nights is there’s something for everyone whether your interest is in culture, sex, arts, politics or doing good. As with all PechaKucha Nights there will be plenty of chit-chat within a casual atmosphere and of course a liberal amount of beer and wine… and maybe a super-duper cake! After the event speakers and participants are invited to an after-party (TBD) for more in depth chatting about topics and just plain fun! PKN shows are open to all ages, but some material may not be suitable for young children**.

Registration is open!

Learn more
Sunday – For the second year ideaSPARK presents the Intellectual Property Panel an informal gathering of entrepreneurs and law professionals who share their thoughts on IP specifically geared toward the creative community. If you or someone you know has questions about your creative rights this panel will answer your questions or point you in the right direction. Very valuable information for visual artists, musicians, poets, game developers or scientists.

Attendee Willa Brigham and speaker Rebecca Currie ($1 a day)

On Dec 2, 2010 we had our #5 PechaKucha Night at Noir Bar & Lounge in downtown Raleigh’s trendy Glenwood South. We had a great night with a fantastic turnout of over 130 attendees. Noir management had the event area all spiffy for the holiday and provided some snacks to soak up the many drinks that were bought at the bar. Yelp! was there and sponsored beer for the first 30 people to checkin using the Yelp! app. Thank you Yelp!!

If you were unable to be there live, we have video, yay!, so you can see all the presenters doing their “thing” at the PKN website. Thanks to our Videographers ( Ted Huff, Maria Droujkova) and Carlee for editing and posting the video.

One thing that was super special that night was that Carlee and I did a joint presentation on How we Created and Cultivated a Global Family. We found pictures and bits and pieces of memories to weave together an awesome talk. In the audience that night was one of the families we did this journey with and for them it brought back great memories… and thanked us for doing the talk. They also said ” well done“, that was nice!