AuraViva is a new company based out of Boulder, Colorado that aims to help people improve their overall health and wellness by providing education, tools and resources on circadian rhythms and synchrony. Hold Fast Creative will help AuraViva create a content website, community portal, web service, product storefront, mobile application and all the back-end wizardry to make everything work together harmoniously.

We are absolutely thrilled to be working with AuraViva on this project! They have a great offering, exciting product roadmap and are all around very smart, friendly folks. A dream client by any definition. This large and challenging project will require everything we offer: web design, custom web development, database design, user interface design and mobile application development. Over the next several months Brett and I will be hard at work doing what we love: design and development for web and mobile, and we couldn’t be more excited about it.

Brett and I have worked together for years and collaborate on projects frequently. Our diverse skill sets and experience compliment each other perfectly. We have discussed partnering our businesses for some time now, and today we are making it official: Welcome to Hold Fast Creative, Brett!

Brett Duncavage has been writing code professionally for over 10 years, most recently as a freelance code warrior through his web and mobile development company, X Forward. Along the way he has become well versed in mobile technologies such as BREW, iPhone, Android, and Celltop; and various web technologies such as PHP, Python, Java, and Django. Brett has also been known to crush code for custom Facebook applications as well.

All of this knowledge combines like Voltron so he can provide end-to-end solutions for world-class digital products. Brett becoming an official member of Hold Fast Creative is a major win for the company and our clients, and will greatly enhance our web design, web development, user interface design and mobile application development services.

Sound familiar? I know I’ve muttered those lame ass excuses a time or two before. To be totally honest, I’ve found myself deflecting opportunities to have fun with the excuse of being “too busy” for years now.

At first I didn’t notice. I was too focused with getting my career rolling. Shortly after that I woke up and realized I was married. Then I had a kid. Now there’s two kids, holy shit! I definitely can’t take a break now, I have to work to keep this all afloat. What happened? How did I end up here? You would be amazed how fast life can move sometimes.

No matter how hard I worked I never seemed to finally “get there” and resume a normal pace. With every milestone accomplished there was always another to take it’s place. I realized I had become one of those adults who chooses to work their life away. When I was younger I had a name for those types of unhappy people: assholes.

Last month I decided it was time to slow down, get selfish and quit being an asshole. Now this isn’t a quarter-life crisis or anything like that. I adore my family and I love running my own design studio; absolutely! However, those were not the type of things I would day dream about as a kid. What I did fantasize about was making the main event at Washougal and pulling a holeshot at Glen Helen. That’s right, I’m talking about motocross.

I started out racing 80’s when I was 14 and kept at it all the way through college. For me, there isn’t any greater feeling than riding with friends on a sunny afternoon. It’s my thing. It is what I am passionate about. All the reasons for selling my race bikes years ago still exist today: I can’t afford to get hurt right now, I don’t have any time to ride, I should probably save some money, etcetera; but it didn’t matter. Riding has always made me happy. Recently I decided it was time to get back in action and, on a whim, I went out and bought a new race bike.

One month in and I can already see a huge change in my life. I’m not stressed out when I am at home with my family. My creativity and productivity have skyrocketed at the office and most importantly, I’m happy. So if you shelved a personal passion for whatever reason, it’s time to put it back in your life. Don’t wait another day. Dust off your cleats, get the band back together. Do whatever it is you used to do and remember what it’s like to have fun again.

The amount of available panels to check out on any given day is absolutely overwhelming. The mobile web application, Sitby.us, that was created by Naz Hamid of Weightshift was a huge help. I was able to sift through the available panels for every time block of every day and mark anything of interest to my personal schedule. This was especially handy for figuring out where to go at 9:30am after retiring from a Hampton Inn second floor balcony whiskeython™ at 5:00am.

Of all the panels I attended at SXSW this year, there was one in particular that really excited me; HTML5: Tales From the Development Trenches by Bruce Lawson. Bruce gave a great broad stroke review on the events that led up to the creation of HTML5, what exactly HTML5 aims to achieve and who is making it happen. For anyone involved in any aspect of creating anything for the internet, you really should read up on what Mr. Lawson has been writing about. A powerful and truly device agnostic internet really is just around the corner and we should all get busy with making this happen!

Outside of taking in presentations, I spent a fair amount of time exploring the city, meeting up with old friends and making a few new ones as well. I’m normally rather shy when it comes to meeting new people. If I don’t have a friend to make an introduction, I will generally stick to the sidelines and then spend the rest of the night regretting a missed opportunity to share a pint with a personal design hero. This year I made a conscious effort to break out of my shell and get social. I was pleasantly surprised that everyone I spoke with was extremely friendly and welcoming to conversation; even those snooty, elitist rock star designers everyone’s always complaining about.

The ExpressionEngine community was out in full force as well. I was blown away with how engaging everyone was at the EECI party. It seemed everyone there was hellbent on making connections, sharing advice on EE, business and methods to succeed with running an agency. I met a ton of really nice and talented folks and it really made me appreciate being a part of the ExpressionEngine community.

Speaking of nice and talented folks, I would like to call out one individual who takes the cake: Mathew Hoy. I had the pleasure of meeting Mathew for the first time this year and he is an absolute machine! I’m certain he is capable of transcending space and time because he attended just about every panel, conducted multiple interviews for his podcast on a daily basis; and still managed to find time to attend parties and then blog about everything, every day! I should also point out that Mr. Hoy is a Canadian and likes to give ‘er!

I would say that SXSW met my expectations and definitely lived up to the hype. I made it back home with a renewed excitement for getting back to work and focusing on being a better designer and developer. Thanks to all of you responsible for making this trip to Austin so much fun!

The recent devastation in Haiti triggered a global cooperative effort to aid people that were suffering and in need of help. Virtually every available medium was flooded with requests for donations. It seems that within a moments notice every television, radio station, computer monitor, and even mobile phone, was prompting you to help do something. One of the most prominent calls to action was the Red Cross SMS campaign: Text HAITI to 90999.

This particular campaign, as is any campaign on the 90999 short code, was made possible by the good folks over at mGive. I worked with the founders of mGive a couple years ago and helped design their logo and website, and remember the simple utility in what they were hoping to create: The easiest way to raise money for a cause. If you stop and think about it, it’s amazing that SMS donations are not more popular in the United States. Everyone has a mobile phone that requires some method of payment for monthly use. Everyone uses SMS to communicate and receive notifications and alerts. People are comfortable texting to short codes for acquiring mobile content to their handsets. Why not use SMS as a donation platform?

This is exactly what mGive has created, an SMS donation platform that enables qualified 501c3 Non-Profit Organizations with the ability to raise funds for their cause through text messaging. It’s unfortunate that it took a massive tragedy to bring the benefit of SMS donations to the lime light, but through the unified efforts of many people around the world; mobile donations generated more than $25,000,000 in support for Haiti. In a brave new world, it’s comforting to see that all this technology really can make the world a better place.

I have no intentions of kicking a dead horse here, everyone on the planet is fully aware that the sixth version of Internet Explorer is outdated and a total pain in the ass for designers and developers; but I still write CSS for it and would like to tell you why.

A few months ago I received a call from a potential client (who just so happened to be a Finnish handset maker) regarding some custom icon development for an upcoming project. The woman who called me had discovered my portfolio by asking uncle Googs on her personal computer using Firefox.  Upon reviewing my site and deciding I was a worthy candidate for her UI considerations, she decided to take note of my portfolio and give me a call.

So far, off to a good start. Every part of this story is awesome: A high profile client is in need of a service and discovers a suitable vendor and all is right with the world. Not the case, friends.

There is nothing more uncomfortable (except for wearing newborn baby vomit) than experiencing the following conversation that shortly ensued:

“Hello, thanks for calling Hold Fast Creative, this is Derek.”

“Hi, I found your portfolio online last night and really like your style! I work with [Finnish handset maker] and we are in need of some custom icons for a new project.”

“Great, I would love to help out! Can I ask how you found me [nods head and makes air hump gestures at wall]?”

“Sure, I found your site… Let me just pull it up here… Oh, hmm… I’m sorry. I guess I’m using the wrong browser here at work apparently… Chowderhead, it says?”

This potential new client has just tried to access my site using IE6. Instead of viewing my portfolio, she’s greeted with a clever little quip about IE6 being lame, and all content is completely without style. At this point, my clever IE6 strip-all-styles-away-and-insert-some-bonehead-remark doesn’t sound all that clever. It’s not clever. It’s downright embarrassing. I try to explain my humor and why my portfolio looks like a grenade of stale wit and Times New Roman, but it’s to no avail. Needless, to say, this potential client didn’t call back.

So what did I learn from this? Well, for starters, if you are in the business of making websites: Ensure your personal website looks great in all browsers. I also learned that there are a ton of folks who are bound to IE6 in the workplace, and their employers are the types of clients all studios strive to obtain. If you’re like me, and your website is responsible for your family’s only source of income, write the extra 102 lines or so of code. It’s much easier than explaining why your site looks like shit in IE6 to a potential client over the phone.

With that being said, if your site is a personal project, or you don’t rely on it to survive; screw ’em, do as you please! You could also hire the awesome John Martz to illustrate a custom IE6 denial cartoon for you like we did for Momentile.

Technically, it was less of a welcome and more like a uterine blitz™. After lingering around six days past our expected due date, Breezy and I checked into the hospital at 11:15AM on Tuesday, December 29. Within 30 minutes of our arrival Breezy was in full blown labor! Everything was progressing so quickly there wasn’t time for an epidural or any pain meds, and our midwife was still 40 minutes away from the hospital. At 12:50PM our son, Chase Balmer, was born at a healthy 7 lbs 15 oz and with just about as much hair as his old man.

I’m hunched over behind my MacBook right now attempting the impossible task of wrapping up my last two projects of the year before Christmas arrives. We are expecting a new son any day now (due date was yesterday). Once he’s born I’m going to unplug, turn off the phone, and take January off to spend some much needed time with my family. I’m really looking forward to taking advantage of my downtime and coming back in February, fresh and ready to motor. I realize a month with a newborn and 16 month old isn’t necessarily downtime, but I will happily accept the sleep deprivation and diaper duty in exchange for a month of hanging out with my family.

Next year is already shaping up to be an exciting year for myself and Hold Fast Creative. We have a couple exciting projects on the horizon, as well as a new office! I have intentions of writing about all of this, but then again, this is my second post this month. That’s a world record for me, so I’m not going to promise anything.

From my family to yours, here’s wishing you happy holidays and a happy new year! See you in February.

A few months ago I had the pleasure of working with some old colleagues from a previous mobile company for their new iPhone app, 8 Planets.
8 Planets is the initial offering from BrightSlide, a new mobile application company that seeks to create educational mobile games and applications for children. I designed the user interface for this iPhone application, Brett Duncavage worked his code fu on the application programming, and the folks at BrightSlide developed an analytics platform for parents to track their children’s progress. Check it out →

Every year I head out to Glen Helen with a handful of my close friends to race the World Vets MX Championship. We all grew up racing together, and it’s a great excuse for us all to escape our daily grinds and make an annual moto road trip. After missing last year due to some personal tragedies, I’m ready to pick it up again this year.

I’ve been preparing for this race by sitting on my ass designing/coding all day and consuming ample amounts of coffee and whiskey. I haven’t ridden a bike in a few months either. Who wants an autograph?

Photo by stryder10464