A couple of weeks ago we had the pleasure of producing and directing the photoshoot for Nicole Bridger’s Spring/Summer 2012 line. Images from the shoot will be featured in her new website which we will launch at the beginning of June. It’s a big time of change for Nicole Bridger and we’re incredibly excited to be a part of the label’s growth.

For the shoot, we spent two days in a dilapidated, yet gorgeous studio space in East Van. The brick walls that you see in the photos below served as a stunning backdrop for our shoot. Our team was made up of some very creative and talented ladies, including our photographer Kelsey Mackintosh and photographer’s assistant Jenny Shipper, our make-up and hair stylist Amber George of Verve Hair Lounge, and our clothing stylist Deanna Palkowski.

Photos by Jenny Shipper

Like many Canadian web and tech companies, we decided to complete a SR&ED claim this year. If you haven’t heard of SR&ED (or Scientific Research and Development), it’s a Government program that credits companies achieving technological advancement in either the creation of new materials, devices, products or processes, or the improvement of existing ones. Basically, it’s a great way for innovative Canadian companies to be recognized for their work with a reduction in their taxes.

There are a number of companies out there who will charge you varying sums of money to complete the claim for you but it really isn’t necessary, especially if you’re a smaller company like us. It seems that a SR&ED claim is the one (and possibly only) Canadian government claim that’s actually user-friendly. With a couple of figures from your accountant and a couple of forms you’re good to go. However, you may run into a problem when you try to fill out these necessary forms. Unfortunately our trusty CRA has yet to figure out how to make editable PDFs. When I called their office to find out where I could find the editable forms a helpful young man informed me that they don’t offer those yet but they’re hoping to have them ready by next summer. (Wow, dream big!) Instead, they accept hand-written forms and CRA staff members then complete the forms online. And that is what hard-working tax dollars look like!

We went ahead and created editable PDFs for both forms. Feel free to download them here:

• SR&ED Corporations – T2SCH31
• SR&ED Corporations – T661

Don’t miss these two, late-February, Group Social Ventures Events.

The first is Power Plant, a sociable networking event in Vancouver perfect for sustainable business leaders, social entrepreneurs, eco-adventurers, green artists and media activists. Power Plant’s framework is such: each presenter has 10 PowerPoint slides which are displayed for 20 seconds each; giving them only 3 minutes and 20 seconds to reveal their story in a nutshell. These time constraints are similar to those employed by PechaKucha- it effectively whittles each presentation down to the essentials, forcing the presenters to creatively respond to the unique timeline and makes for an engaging evening.

Our friends over at LimeLight are producing the evening, which will be held at the always awesome Waldorf Hotel on February 21, 2012. With an impressive partial roster of presenters, tickets won’t last long.

The following week brings us to the latest in the HiVE series: Start-up & Growth Resources for Your Changemaking Enterprise! In this session, experienced funders will help you explore your potential resources as someone looking to start or grow your enterprise. Just two short weeks away, the event takes place on February 28, 2012 from 6pm to 8pm at HiVE.

All parties involved in the production of both events are doing great things for Vancouver’s green economy. Come support them and let them help you better support yourself.

If you haven’t heard, our team has grown. New to the development team, we are stoked to have Alessandro & Andrew. We’ve been working like crazy the last couple months, and have decided it’s time to start getting some regular extra-curricular activities in the mix. Ale is a regular climber, and suggested we hit the local Cliff Hangers indoor climbing gym, which is just a few blocks from our office! We had a blast.

Next up is snowboarding I think. That or curling. hmmm.

Some slightly-past-the-middle-of-the-week, ardent rhythms & loops, Bizness by tUnE-yArDs.

Makes you want to shake it out. In the office. Right now.

(via: friendswithbotharms)

Briteweb friend and collaborator, Liam Mitchell has just completed his latest music video for Eric & Magill, which he directed, edited and handled all cinematography.

Liam has worked with us on a few projects now, including The Cheaper Show and Dot Eco, handling video production. We’re lucky to know him.

We are excited to announce our newest partnership, with none other than Milkshake Media out of Austin, Texas. We’re hyped about this opportunity for a variety of reasons. To begin, an introduction: Milkshake is a creative agency we share core values with- creativity, humour and quality of life. They have an impressive portfolio, featuring work like the LIVESTRONG brand. Maybe you’ve heard of it. They’ve worked with clients like Whole Foods, Chanel, and the Austin City Limits Music Festival amongst others.

The first is Stronger Together Food Co-op. Stronger Together represents the National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) co-ops nationwide and their shared commitment to providing delicious, high quality, healthy food; supporting local, sustainable agriculture; and strengthening local communities. They advocate for the production and availability of a safe, sufficient, and sustainable food system and recognize that a healthy environment is a prerequisite for healthy people and a sustainable food system. The second project involves My Co-op Rocks. My Co-op Rocks is an enthusiastic, annual photo and video contest open to anyone who wants to shout out to their favourite food co-op. The process of submissions garners a huge community of co-op lovers, prizes are distributed and the co-ops get great exposure: nice!

We aren’t the only ones interested in food co-ops- the United Nations have recognized 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives. This is an acknowledgement by the international community that co-operatives drive the economy, respond to social change, are resilient to the global economic crisis and are serious, successful businesses creating jobs in all sectors. It is an exciting time to be a food co-op.

Easy listening Friday tunes, Light to Dark by Jesse Boykins III.
Accompanied by a beautiful short film following a visceral, urban journey.
Note to self: ponchos & rings.

(via 2dopeboyz)

#Presence 2 |  #Catalog | #Dec 8th @ 7pm

Catalog Gallery is proud to present another fantastic salon show for their December program. The show opens Thursday, December 8th at 7pm and includes a selected pool of heavyweight talent as well as a slew of Cheaper Show alumni:

Indigo, Graeme Berglund, Matias Armendaris, Andy Dixon, Ben Skinner, Zoe Pawlak, Peter Taylor, Duncan Lewis, Megan Wall, Ben Tour, Eric Cruikshank, Chris Von Szombathy, Meghan Paterson, Alanna Scott, Jennilee Marigomen, Alex Rhek, George Vergette, Dan Climan, Hana Pesut, Andrea Wan and a heck of a lot more.

The exhibition runs from December 8th – 24th, but don’t miss the opening night because it’s cash and carry!

We are proud to announce the launch of the Check Your Head website! We are honoured to have had the chance to collaborate with the inspiring group at CYH over the past few months, working to put together a cohesive, beautiful new brand and website that parallels the amazing work they do. The site isn’t just pretty, it offers some powerful custom built tools that allow CYH to crowd source content, encouraging engagement and collaboration with their audience. Aren’t familiar with Check Your Head? Well, you should be.

Founded in 1999, Check Your Head is a youth-driven not-for-profit organization based in Vancouver, British Columbia that educates and activates young people on various social issues. Their main activities include workshops, facilitation and leadership training, supporting youth-led social and environmental justice actions, and engaging youth volunteers. So far, CYH has facilitated over 1,900 workshops and worked with over 58,000 youth in the Lower Mainland and throughout B.C! Like us, they believe that a healthy, democratic and sustainable future depends on a generation of informed, empowered & active young people and make it their mission.

With a small crew, CYH needed a website that could work for them. So we automated many of their processes and implemented tools to reach a bigger audience as well as aligned. With an open submission for ideas and the opportunity for multiple bloggers, their new website allows for fresh content and limitless community building.

Organizations like Check Your Head are the reason we do what we do.

Our latest WordPress Plugin allows you to add stylized Infusionsoft Sign-up forms to your sidebar areas.

Add an image, and whatever text content, and then simply add the Infusionsoft form ID and the plugin will automagically create a formatted form!

Note: this plugin is intended for simple capture forms only, it only provides a Name and Email address field.

Once you install the plugin, here’s how to create a Sign-Up form box:

• Click the “Infusionsoft Forms” link in the main WP Admin Navigation
• Create a new Form Box, just like you’d create a post or page.. Add a Title, Content (optional), Featured Image (optional)
• You’ll need the ID of the Infusionsoft Web Form you’d like to use.. Once you create the form in Infusionsoft, click “Save & Gimme the Code” – then copy the Value (see screenshot below). Paste this string of letters and numbers into the Infusionsoft Form ID field on the right sidebar of the Edit screen.
• Click Publish
• Go to your Widgets (Appearance > Widgets)
• Drag the #BW Infusionsoft Form widget into the desired sidebar region
• Select the form box you created, set your background color (option), and select whether you’d like the Content to appear above or below the form (Note: Featured Image will always appear on top
• Done!

He was a hero to our generation and we are eternally grateful for his mind and revolutionary vision.

 RIP Steve Jobs.

I’ve just arrived here today for the annual SVI Conference (AKA 4 Day Business Rave), bringing together CEO’s and entrepreneurs from social venture and non-profits from all over BC, Canada and North America.

As soon as I arrived back on the very spiritual land that Hollyhock inhabits, I was immediately overcome by a wonderful calm.

After meeting my bunk mates for the week, I dashed in to the woods for a barefoot run and then in to the wonderful September ocean for a swim.

I feel incredibly blessed to be on one of the most beautiful and spiritual pieces of land on the planet, at the same time as being surrounded by some of the most talented and inspiring business leaders I’ve ever met.

More to come, just wanted to pass along my gratitude. A special thanks to Dana and Joel Solomon, Heidi Hartman, Pam Chaloult, Carla Culos and the entire Hollyhock/SVI/Renewal family for having me.

Photo Credit: www.raptitude.com/

We’ve finally got around to publishing some of the plugins we’ve built over the past couple years, with many to come over the next few months..

Today we’re proud to announce #BW Twitter Blocks, a cool plugin that you can see featured on our homepage.. It takes your tweets and creates custom WordPress posts which can then be displayed based on hash tags, or @mentions! This is a great way to publish tweets on your website without worrying whether Twitter is down, and allows you to edit tweets after they are published.

It has some cool built in controls to determine whether @mentions, #hash tags or regular URLs are displayed as links and has a built in URL parser for advanced users. We use the URL parsing to display Ow.ly and Youtube links inline in the lightwindow on the homepage..

You can add a “Twitter Block” to your sidebar using the built-in widget, or for advanced users, there is an easy query to pull posts into page templates. We’re planning on releasing an update that will include shortcodes for inserting twitter blocks directly into content regions soon.

This dude is making some amazing music. It’s kinda like R&B but not. I’d say it’s some of the more authentic music I’ve heard in a long time.

When the record label refused to release and supprt his album, Nostalgia/Ultra, the New Orleans singer/songwriter decided to bypass them and release it for free via this Tumblr post. Bold move.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ocean 

This is a sweet little piece of code for WordPress that allows you to create an Email mailto: link that is protected from spambots, but damn, WP sure could explain it better in the WordPress Codex.

Anyway, after some guessing and testing, here is a snippet:

<a href="mailto:<?php $emailaddy = get_field('email'); echo antispambot( $emailaddy, 1 ); ?>"><?php echo antispambot( $emailaddy, 0 ) ?></a>

The above code implies that we’re pulling a variable (using the extra-sweet Advanced Custom Fields plugin), which is useful inside a loop, but if you want a simple static email link printed, here is another snippet:

<a href="mailto:<?php echo antispambot( 'your@email.com', 1 ); ?>"><?php echo antispambot( 'your@email.com', 0 ) ?></a>

As you can see, there are actually two references for the email, one for the actual link (echo’s HTML) and one to echo the email in readable text..

Comment, share or like if you found this useful!

This is some what of an obligatory post. As a Somed advisor to many, I get a lot of questions about new networks like Google+. I say obligatory because as interesting and potentially robust as G+ seems, it’s hard to buy in to a new social network, fashioned heavily on Facebook, when Facebook has earned such a critical mass and shows no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, I think that FB has answered the privacy challenges well and continues to offer new innovation and push the envelope on what to expect from a social network.

It’s only a social network if you’re able to be effectively social (a party ain’t a party without a room full of people). While “millions” of people have “joined” G+ (read below for my take on that), I find it unlikely that people have the patience to upkeep two social networks, which is what you’re essentially asking people to do. Yes, some people are pissed about Facebook’s so-called privacy issues, but still, the popular mass is deeply invested in Facebook and aren’t going anywhere fast.

That said, many have taken the approach with G+ that it is not a social network as much as it is a collaboration space for teams and organizations. On this level, I’ll say that there are some super cool tools that could be fun and valuable if there is any significant buy-in.

My formal advise for organizations and businesses is to sit tight. It’s challenging enough getting a good handle on existing social media tools, and it’s important not to jump every time the tech world launches the “next big thing” or you’ll spend more time in the air than you do on the ground, focused on your cause or business.

There are a lot of social media folks raving about how fast G+ was to assemble millions of quote-unquote users, but these numbers are a little deceptive. Google had the existing user base via Gmail, and were smart in building G+ directly into the Gmail interface, and avidly prompting Gmail users to click on G+ and suddenly becoming “a user”. I for one, was shocked at how many friends added me to G+ Circles, especially how many non-tech folks in the early weeks.. yet that early buzz has yet to materialize in a single meaningful exchange.

I wouldn’t normally post political content on my business blog like this, but I feel that the upcoming election warrants it.

I want to share this open letter written by Ralph Nader to Stephen Harper. It eloquently illustrates just one of the serious concerns many Canadians have regarding Stephen Harper’s increasingly deceptive and un-democratic activities.

This letter is regarding the top-secret policy in the works regarding “Deep Integration” with the USA, threatening our sovereignty, our natural resources and energy resources and marrying Canada to the USA’s failing and devastating foreign policy. It’s an issue I’ve been following closely, and couldn’t possibly describe in better terms:

http://rabble.ca/news/2011/04/ralph-nadar-open-letter-stephen-harper-canada-us-deep-integration

What you can do

If this letter resonates with you, please take the time to forward this on to friends and family, post on Facebook and Tweet away! It’s incredible what just a few votes can mean. Some ridings in the last election were won by just 20 votes!

Why?

This election could greatly affect the future of our country. I urge all of you to step out of your routines and hockey comas in the coming days to raise awareness in your circles of influence. A few minutes or hours of your time could help shape your future and the future of your children.

………

Additionally, many of you have asked who you should be voting for in various ridings to ensure your vote is of greatest value. As you may or may not know, it’s important to know who is the likely favorite to ensure your vote isn’t wasted. It’s an unfortunate system, which requires us to often vote “strategically”..

This website, created by some very talented colleagues will help you figure out how/where/who to vote for if you need guidance.

http://votesocial.ca/

………

Also, if you’d like some additional talking points regarding Stephen Harper’s incredible and dubious track record, check out this admittedly-biased (and hilariously .. sad) website created by another group of incredibly committed and talented friends:

http://shitharperdid.com

………

Of course, I respect you all greatly, and whomever you decide to vote for is your choice. The most important thing is to vote and have your voice counted. Especially as young voters, when the political parties all but dismiss our generation due to our past lack of interest and engagement.

peace, love, and I guess, oh goddammit, go Canucks go.

Steve

The Cheaper Show is just around the corner, and we’re getting really excited! A few weeks back we launched their all-new wordpress website with tons of cool features. We’ll be doing a case study here as well as writing a full case study for the WooThemes Blog as well which we’re stoked about.

The Cheaper Show is a one night art show featuring 200 international artists, 400 pieces of art, all priced at $200. This year the show is featuring artists from 15 countries around the world.

We donated our services to build a simple little WordPress Website for the sister project of The Cheaper Show, the soon-to-open Black and Yellow Gallery in the Waldorf Hotel. The gallery opens April 1st, shared with openings by some incredible artists like Paul Wong, Attila Richard Lukacs, Stan Douglas and more. Details on the Waldorf Hotel website