4 Nov 2013
We wanted to congratulate Ada Developers Academy up in Seattle, WA who successfully raised $46k for their project, which aims to teach more women how to program with Ruby on Rails. We look forward to hearing how the program goes with their students!
Make it Happen!
3 Sep 2013
We are on a mission to help six Portland area non-profit organizations before the end of 2013.
28 Aug 2013
Wow. This is a game changer for small retail shops that sell their products online.
We’ve spoken to several companies over the past several years about their frustrations with maintaining a single inventory across two platforms (physical and online). Many of these stores were stuck on some custom eCommerce tool that a freelance developer built them several years ago. They weren’t being updated (with security patches, newer Rails releases)… the original developer is long gone and are faced with the scenario of having to hire a team like us to upgrade and improve their site.
In many of these scenarios, we have highlighted that services like Shopify are likely to be a better investment going forward. Just because they’ve invested thousands and thousands into an existing custom platform doesn’t mean they should continue to. While we live and breath off of designing applications and writing code… we don’t want to see anyone waste their money. In many scenarios, the POS was completely disconnected… and we’ve met many shops that are dealing with a QuickBooks inventory and have all these duplicate steps in their process.
I’m really glad to see that Shopify stepped up and went straight down to the retail level. This should alleviate a lot of pain for the small retail shops.
20 Aug 2013
Technology almost always democratizes art, because it gives us better tools, better access and a quicker route to mediocrity. It’s significantly easier to be a mediocre (almost very good) setter of type today than it was to be a pretty good oil painter two hundred years ago.
7 Aug 2013
Let’s take a moment to thank Silicon Florist for being everything that it has over the past six years.
6 Aug 2013
July’s theme was Space and the presenter, Brad Cloepfil, did not disappoint.
Brad Cloepfi founded Allied Works Architecture in 1994. His body of work is as informed by the land and the history of place as it is by formal training, and it is one that cuts a clear line through much of the infatuation with rhetoric and formal novelty surrounding the practice today. The approach to design combines a research-intensive focus on the specific character of each project with an understanding of the profoundly affecting possibilities of building. In addition to leading all aspects of creative work at Allied Works, Cloepfil has held guest professorships and given talks on the work throughout North America and Europe.
3 Jul 2013
If you attempt to make sense of Engelbart’s design by drawing correspondences to our present-day systems, you will miss the point, because our present-day systems do not embody Engelbart’s intent. Engelbart hated our present-day systems.
Doug, we'll miss you. Thank you for opening up our eyes.
2 Jul 2013
We look back at all of our design and development clients since 2006 and breakdown, by month and season, when they made a decision to hire us.
28 Jun 2013
In my role as a Business Developer at Planet Argon, it’s important to keep connected to Portland’s creative and business community. One of the ways I attempt to gather local intelligence and randomly bump into interesting strangers from other companies, is to regularly attend several of the awesome networking type events around town. There are many to choose from, but this post will focus specifically on CreativeMornings.
18 Jun 2013
So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.
Always ask yourself, "how does this benefit our mission?"
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