The next Likemind Vancouver event will be held at 8am on Friday, April 15th, and hosted by Ethical Bean Café 91315 Kootenay Street (near Boundary & 1st Ave) (Click here for directions).

Free coffee and snacks will be generously provided to those who come early, so come join a group of like-minded creative professionals and start your day with some good conversation over a cup of good coffee.

Remember to confirm your RSVP on the Facebook group page so we can estimate how many people are coming (sometimes more than 50 attendees). If you don’t use Facebook, you can join our LinkedIn Group, or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on upcoming events.

Invite a friend, and bring your travel mug. See you there!

PS – If you bring your camera along, please upload your shots and share them with the 70 other Likemind groups in cities around the world! Also, please consider sharing your appreciate for our host café by posting to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Urbanspoon, or your personal blog!

The next Likemind Vancouver event will be held at 8am on Friday, January 21st, and hosted by Prophouse Café at 1636 Venables St. (one block west of Commercial Dr) (Click here for directions).

Free coffee and snacks will be generously provided to those who come early, so come join a group of like-minded creative professionals and start your day with some good conversation over a cup of good coffee.

Remember to confirm your RSVP on the Facebook group page so we can estimate how many people are coming (sometimes more than 50 attendees). If you don’t use Facebook, you can join our LinkedIn Group, or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on upcoming events.

Invite a friend, and bring your travel mug. See you there!

PS – If you bring your camera along, please upload your shots and share them with the 70 other Likemind groups in cities around the world! Also, please consider sharing your appreciate for our host café by posting to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Urbanspoon, or your personal blog!

The next Likemind Vancouver event will be held at 8am on Friday, August 20th and hosted by Kafka’s Coffee & Tea House at 2525 Main Street (at Broadway) (Click here for directions).

Free coffee and snacks will be generously provided to those who come early, so come join a group of like-minded creative professionals and start your day with some good conversation over a cup of good coffee.

Remember to confirm your RSVP on the Facebook group page so we can estimate how many people are coming (sometimes well over 60 attendees). If you don’t use Facebook, you can join our LinkedIn Group, or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date on upcoming events.

Invite a friend, and bring your travel mug. See you there!

PS – If you bring your camera along, please upload your shots and share them with the 70 other Likemind groups in cities around the world!

The journals have countless pages of inspirations and ideas in them. My favorite part of this whole project is that the pages are created by ordinary people, not artist or designers. Allowing new ideas and unique and unusual concepts to emerge. It is simply brilliant.

There are still 1,000 journals circulating around the world… who knows, you could find one.

Check out 1000journals.com or buy the book with Amazon

Likemind has come a long way since its inception and profile in the New York Times. With about 250 members in Vancouver, our “chapter” has become one of the most active, with a lively Facebook Group, Flickr page and Twitter feed. There are no fees, no rules, no agendas, no speakers, no barrier to participation—just good people meeting for good conversations over good coffee.

The only thing missing is YOU.

Likemind Vancouver happens at 8am on the 3rd Friday of each month, with the next gathering on August 21st at Workspace Café at 21 Water Street in Gastown. So bring your travel mug and be prepared to enjoy a FREE cup coffee while enjoying casual conversation with creative professionals just like you from a myriad of backgrounds and industries.

Please spread the word and come join us for a coffee!

Thanks to Dane and the team at Workspace for the continued support.

I’m already buying tickets to go see legendary Cuban pianist Chucho Valdez with The Hugh Fraser Quintet at the Center. Other highlights include studio favourites The Heavy, James Danderfer and Cuban flautist Maraca. Plus there’s always Canada’s best jazz club, The Jazz Cellar, offering up the countries best jazz all year round.

Who’s with me?

Bill Buxton is so cool. He’s Canadian, a massively talented designer, and arguably the world authority on interaction and usability design. What’s not to like? Oh, Buxton does work at Microsoft as their Principal Researcher, but I forgive him for wanting a big paycheck and working for the world’s most powerful software company. I’ve even had the pleasure of shaking his hand after he gave a stirring lecture at a conference some time ago and since then have been a big fan.

His book, Sketching User Experiences: Getting The Design Right and the Right Design, argues that sketching, prototyping, and iteration are essential parts of the design process itself. And I must say I agree—especially these days where the complex marriage of increased media with information appliances and reactive environments makes the convoluted behaviors of the devices we use as important as human behaviour itself.

In 2007 Buxton presented an excellent lecture about his thinking in this area at the Stanford University Human-Computer Interaction Program where he discussed the design process itself, from the perspective of methods, organization, and composition. See Bill Buxton’s Stanford lecture about sketching interactions on YouTube.

Yesterday I saw Jeffrey Zeldman tweet about his inclusion on Big Think. Big Think heralds itself as way to cut through overwhelming amounts of information and gives you access to information directly from experts in their field. I’m still exploring the site but it looks to have some great resources and videos and is worth a visit. Here’s a talk from Zeldman about the future of journalism to get you going!

Mark dropped something on my desk and asked me to answer five questions about my job for a friend of his who was doing a grant application. I find I rarely stop to articulate why I like what I do, and questions like this make me slow down, step back and figure it out. I’m not sure if this will be any help for the person who needs this, but had fun filling it out:

1. What do I like most about this job?
   - work with friends
   - challenges on every project
   - get creative reward
   - get to work on a really fast computer with big screens
2. What are the major frustrations for this job?
   - working with friends
   - challenges on every project
   - “leaving work at work”
   - deciding on new lunch spots
3. What are the entry level qualifications for getting hired?
   – working knowledge of industry software and problem solving skills
   - GOOD COMMUNICATION (written / aural)
   - ability to take and manage peer critiques
   - learn on the job
   - know how to use Google (if you don’t know something…learn!)
4. What advice would you give someone coming into this job?
   - if you want to do something else, do it. You’re going to work your ass off, so you had better love what you do
   - read, read, read, read, read, learn, learn, learn, learn
   - don’t be everything to everyone (specialization is not a weakness)
   - get a tight workflow fast
   - take plenty of notes about everything, and make lists. Your brain isn’t as good as you think it is.
   - Trust your brain on decisions, it’s better than you think.
5. Are there opportunities for advancement?
   - If you work your tail off, learn quickly, listen well and make yourself invaluable, and indispensable to everyone around you, then yes.
   - If you use Twitter / Facebook / email all day long, think work can only be 9-5, and count the minutes on your lunch break, then no.

It’s like Communication Design class all over again.

Take a peek at these sexy pieces for the Grammy’s “Celebrate the Music That Made Us” campaign.  The portraits of select artists (Rihanna, Stevie Wonder, Coldplay, Thom Yorke, etc.), are made up of song titles that inspire them. Not sure who produced the artwork but you can view more here and here.

With such great use of typorgraphy, even I’m inspired to catch the Grammy Awards on Feb. 8th.