Author Archives: Garrick Van Buren

Garrick runs Working Pathways Inc, a company helping businesses become more responsive by improving internal and customer communications through simple, useful web applications. When Garrick isn’t evangelizing podcasts, wikis, RSS, and weblogs, and he’s assisting clients including Target, Sam’s Club, Orbitz.com, and 3M with their business communications process, information architecture, and interaction design.

MobileTwinCities First Meeting March 17, 7pm Loring Park Dunn Bros

If you’re interested in designing for mobile devices (iPhone, G1, Kindle, Blackberry, etc) Justin Grammens has started a local group – MobileTwinCities.com – focusing on that. The first meeting is 7pm, Tuesday March 17 at the Loring Park Dunn Bros.

[JOB] Information Architect – Gage Marketing

Jay Morgan, over at Gage Marketing, is looking for an experienced information architect to add to his team. Stuff you’ll be doing: “write scenarios, sketch mockups, spar w/ me and Bob Burns, prototype, test, play smart w/ technology, creative, pms” – Jay Morgan Email jay_morgan at gage.com if this is you.

[UPA] March 12, 2009 6-8pm Open Book – Usability Testing with Mahtab Rezai

Mahtab Rezai, VP at EatonGolden will be talking about keeping usability relevant at the March 12 UPA-MN meeting (6-8pm at the OpenBook). $10 members, $30 non-members (Cash/Check only at the door).

IDSA Midwest Conference, April 3-5, 2009, Minneapolis Hyatt

Theme: Uncovering Multiple Levels of Meaning in the Design of Objects and Experiences Full speaker list at IDSAmn.org UPDATE: the IDSA is looking for sponsors starting at $600. Contact Kerstin Strom for more info.

MinneDemo: “You Can’t Not Be Here”

Yep, I said that, outloud and on mic. Here’s the video to prove it. Update: here’s the original Minnov8 post – video by Gabe Chefitz of 612Authentic.

Darrel Austin Wins the First Twitter Challenge

Local enterepreneur Philip Hotchkiss has started Twitter Challenges and the winner of his first challenge: “Best New Biz Concept in 1 Tweet” is MNteractive’s own Darrel Austin for his Google-backup idea. “darrelaustin: @PhilipHotchkiss (re: idea) a paid service (minimal fee) that automatically backs up your entire Google Account (ie, your life) nightly.” Congrats Darrel. Darrel [...]

MinneWebCon Apr 6, 2009 – Keynoting; Doc Searls & Bruce Schneier

Kristofer Layon & Peter Fleck have formally announced MinneWebCon 2009 – scheduled for April 6, 2009. In case very cool sessions by some of the most above-average people in the area weren’t enough for you to block off your day and pay the $200 registration fee – Doc Searls and Bruce Schneier will be keynoting. [...]

[UPA] Feb 12 ’09 6-8pm @ Open Book, How Garrick Built Cullect.com

I’ll be talking about how and why I built Cullect.com at the Feburary 12th UPA-MN event. The agenda: Developing a product you will use and the way you will use it. Designing the API as the primary user interface. A tour of some of the innovative UI concepts behind Cullect. An activity in which you [...]

MinneDemo 7pm Feb 6, 2009 Intermedia Arts

Awesome! MinneDemo is back at Intermedia Arts. As of this writing, all the demo slots are open. But that doesn’t matter, you’ll be there – whoever is demo-ing. So RSVP already.

UPA-MN: Agile and UCD: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

UPA-MN‘s January 8, 2009 meeting at the Open Book will be a panel discussion (including David Hussman from DevJam, Bob Arnoldy of Avenet, and more?) on Agile in the context of user-centered design.