While there’s a lot to be said about online community and how much value it creates in the web industry, I’d like to focus on offline community for a second.

A great deal of time and money has been spent on building online communities and connecting people from one nation to another, but lately the web as a whole is becoming more ‘local’. People want to know who’s been where we are, what our real friends think, and connect on a daily basis and are using the internet to do this. Then once they’ve checked in on their mobile phone, sent out a twit about tonight’s BBQ, or uploaded the photos from last night’s drunken bash, they go back offline to continue those interactions. The internet is now bringing people together locally quicker than any networking event could have. It’s creating a depth to our online interactions that was previously overlooked, and it’s powerful.

Offline community is often overlooked as just “friends hanging out”, but honestly it’s more than that. Through offline interactions you can build respect, work together quickly, share great ideas on a whiteboard, and also enjoy a good laugh or two. Over the past few months I’ve seen a few new offline communities spring up due to online interactions and I’m loveing what they’re bringing together. I’ve been able to learn more, do more, help others find more business, and make great friends with people I really enjoy.

A few years ago I was at the first meeting of Refresh Phoenix, a local group that wanted to bring the web community together to start working together and make a name for Phoenix as a technology center in the United States.  From Refresh Phoenix sprung some offshoot commuities such as Refocus Phoenix (a local photographic community), Refactor Phoenix (local software developers), and Tiny Army (local illustrators).

Earlier this year I started using Twitter, but really didn’t get addicted to it until SXSW, when several Refresh Phoenix community members started using it as our primary device to stay connected during the conference. Once we got back, I started attending local TweetUps, meet ups of twitter users in Phoenix. Many of us were into social media, but just didn’t know of eachother because we were just different *enough* not to meet up through other means. Once I tapped into the social media crowd I found out about Social Media Club in Phoenix, which is a meetup of people who enjoy discussing social media, how it effects our lives, and how technology is becoming more ingrained in regular social activities.

Over the last year I’ve become part of Drawbackwards, which is one of the companies that Integrum Technologies shares it’s offices with, that includes the likes of Forty Agency and obuweb. Intergrum has since opened up the offices as a co-working space called GangPlank, where anyone can come and work. GangPlank has open house events as well, one of them being Hackmania every Wednesday night where you can come and connect with other webbies to create great applications and work on other side work that you may not have a chance to focus on normally during the week. This time has allowed new ideas to spring up all over the Phoenix valley, and I’ll be sure to show case some of them here in the future.

I’m really enjoying all the friends and real connections I’ve made through the past few years, and it’s always getting better. I really hope that you can connect with you own local community and build a niche for you to grow in within your own backyard.  Bringing people together can help the comunity as a whole and really bring strength to your ideas and interests. Good luck!

Alright, so I’ve been out of the circuit for a while on these, but they’re coming back! Check out these sweet links I gathered up from the interwebs last week.

Ever wonder if your boss, and his boss, and their boss has it out for the company? Do some of their managerial tactics don’t make sense and end up wasting time and money? Perhaps their team management manuals have been switched with this 1944 sabotage manual that reads like a 2008 Management Guidebook. Download the whole pdf and share with your team mates, I’m sure they’ll agree! Thanks to Tomas from The Closet Entrepreneur for this great link.

O’Reilly Ignite is the basis of the new Ignite movement that’s been happening around the United States. Basically it’s a 5 minute talk on what ever you think is interesting enough to talk about, 20 slides with 20 seconds a slide to help demo your opinions and ideas for crowd. Ignite Phoenix has just started getting the fire started here, and wanting to know more I started looking into past talks. I found one in particular that really spoke to me, it’s a comic for kids that teaches them to be creative, inventive, and to always be thinking.

Perhaps you enjoy being in touch with nature, with all of your five senses and twenty digits. If you hate shoes and would rather go barefoot, there is another way. BrainFuel spotlighted a site last week that answers this very issue. Vibram Five Fingers is a type of foot covering that allows you to experience the joys of being barefoot without the pain of that sharp rock or twig.

I have the pleasure of working over at GangPlank at least two days a week, and every so often Derek will break out the camera and snap some footage of us. Dana then goes to town editing and splicing digital bits to make us all more amusing than we are.. wait no.. we really are that funny, Dana just makes it MORE so. Anyhow, check out the new video A Day in the Integrum Lives.

Wireframes and complex UI design can be overwhelming for designers, but Adobe hopes to solve some of the burden with Thermo. Adobe will release Thermo during the Adobe MAX 2008/2009 conference, check out some sweet screen shots.

Now on to mobile! With the news of iPhone 3G in hitting markets in July, lots of buzz around that of course, but check out these other mobile gems you may have missed under the roar of Apple. Modzilla Labs gave a sneak peek look into a concept for Firefox Mobile Browsing for all you die-hard Firefox lovers out there, you will soon get your alternative . Flixwagon also gave video casters another way to get their fix by using your iPhone to stream live video.

Sometimes I find myself looking at the smaller details in life and wondering how random or perhaps meticulously designed the are. We interact with products all the time, and when the user experience is perfect, we seldom take design in consideration, take for example the car door handle. Luz, one of my brand new designer friends sent along this link last week, thanks hun for the designer touch on this week’s link list.

Onsite Insite, a local billboard leasing company, will be using their unoccupied billboard space to showcase local artists, creating community awareness and large-scale artistic expression at the same time. Tyson Crosbie, a local abstract photographer and a good friend of mine, was selected to be showcased on one of their billboards along the Santan Freeway. Congratulations Tyson. Tyson also had his Phoenix 20 book signing this weekend, where I scored three of my very own Tyson Crosbie prints!

So, what’s a link list without a good humorous video mocking a social network… which brings me to Facebook Gangsta, ’nuff said. Thanks to Beau from HLFIndustries for this fine link.

So lately I’ve been very interested in self-discovery and building my own brand. Who am I? Who do I want to portray myself as? Are those always the same person?

I stumbled into a very interesting conversation between Forty Agency and Heather Herr of Experience Studio regarding archetypes and branding and how those build an entire brand experience and increase customer loyalty.  I won’t go into those details here, that may be another blog post some other time. However during this presentation, a book was mentioned, The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes by Margret Mark and Carol Pearson, that really raised my interest in what this archetypes bit fit into who I am and how I would build my own legacy.

Well, my very own hardbound copy arrived in the mail today, and I’ve spent the better portion of my night starting to read more into it. Very interesting stuff, and as I discover things I’ll be sure to mention them here. So far it’s mostly regarding these 12 archetypes that appear throughout history in stories and stereotypes and how aligning your brand with one of those 12 will consistently help your brand be easily recognized and create value within customers. By using these default stories we can engage our customer quicker, allowing the experience to become easier and can increase loyalty within a brand’s customers.

So far, I’ve been doing quite a bit of passive branding, through my own blog, through local networking and through twitter etc. But due to my interest in continuing to go to conferences and what have you, I’d like to get a real feeling for what I want to be perceived as and how to do that properly. I’d like to really get behind a design style, branding, colors, and paraphernalia (biz cards, stickers, fun stuff).

However, there is a catch in this, right now my name is pretty much my brand, and while it’s great that it’s unique (According to google I’m the only April Holle in the world!) The catch is I might be getting married soon, and if that happens then my name changes, all my effort is then thwarted. Not only am I changing names, I’m changing to April Jones. Do you have any idea how many of those there are? So if you have any ideas on how to gracefully transition this, please chime in!

If you have any personal experience in self branding, please feel free to comment, because advice and experience is never a bad thing to have.

I’ve been speaking to several colleagues lately within the web design community, and I’ve come to a harsh realization. I think that as a whole, our industry creates it’s own self-inflicted pressure with deadlines and customer relations.

Granted, some customers can come into the relationship wanting the impossible, but often, with a little enlightenment, customers can grasp how Rome cannot be built within a week. But I feel often, instead of investing in this conversation, we instead push ourselves to build things quicker, faster, and cheaper.

Sometimes we can just have a simple conversation with our clients, and often they’ll be totally accepting of our need for more time to create the desired product. Many times when I talk to a client, they themselves are not prepared for the product to be finished, they don’t have the content ready yet, they still need to gather all their product photos, etc.

Why do we tend to forgo these honest conversations that can strengthen our client relations and really give us a better working relationship in the long run? Is it our need for deadlines? Perhaps our procrastinative nature drives us to seek this adrenaline rush that is the last-minute push? Maybe a way to curb our creative natures that drive us to constantly expand the scope of possibilities for the project?

This issue has always frustrated me, why push ourselves to slam something out when there’s always more time to work? Sure, things have to get done, but does the quality of work have to suffer? We quit trying to achieve the best possible, and start undercutting to hit some date that really isn’t anything more than a spec of time in the span of the universe.

So I thought I’d toss it out there and see what you guys thought, why do we do this to ourselves?

Meet our newest family member, Eddie (formally known as Jelly Belly). Kaleb and I have been talking for a while now about getting another dog to keep Anniezilla happy. It’s been a long process, but we’ve finally found her a man!

Kaleb and I have had Annie for a little less than a year (her birthday was May 10th) and we love her soo much, she’s always full of energy and has a real personality. Since we moved to the new house we’ve been thinking that she was spending a little too much time harassing the cats, and maybe she needed her own doggie companion. So the search began! We originally discussed a Maltese since we absolutely love little Cocoa every time we visit Baker’s (a co-worker of Kaleb’s) place, but there aren’t a whole lot of them around and buying one from a breeder can be really pricey. Other breeds that made it onto our short list were Italian Greyhound and Papillon. I’ve always loved the look of the Italian Greyhound, but I was worried about the match up between Annie’s short stature (being a doxie and all) and the tall lanky Greyhound. Papillons are also one of my favorites, but they were in the same boat as the Maltese.

While we bought Annie from a breeder, I really didn’t want to do that again. It’s expensive, you have all that work of training a baby puppy, the cost of the puppy shots, the new microchip, the spay/neuter, etc, etc. Not to mention there are so many homeless pups that are just in need of a wonderful loving home. So we started looking at adoptable pets in the Maricopa area. We found a wonderful tool to really help us, and I’m so glad there’s a website out there for this! It’s called PetFinder.com and it basically is a network where shelters and rescues can list adoptable animals. You can search by breed, age, size, etc which made it really easy for us to find possible matches for Annie really quickly. That’s where we found Edward, we contacted AJ’s Best Friends (his rescue agency) and scheduled a meetup as quickly as we could! Eddie is half Chihuahua and half Dachshund which makes him the perfect size for Annie. We love his pointy ears too!

When Annie and Eddie first met, Edward was quite shy and just wanted to curl up in Sherri’s (Edward’s foster mom) lap and bury his little head. But Annie seemed really interested in this new dog friend and tried to get him to play, he did a bit, but just really didn’t know if he could come out of his puppy shell. After a while Kaleb and I decided that Eddie was a really sweet pup and we were sure the two would warm up to each other eventually.  So after some quick paperwork, Eddie came home with us!

We renamed Edward from his original name (Jelly Belly) because we feel that our dogs are our babies, and they deserve human names and to be treated with equal rights as humans. Plus, there’s a story! When we went to meet Edward he had just had his nails trimmed, and I was wearing shorts since it was hot out. Since he was so excited to meet us he was jumping up and scratching my legs with his newly trimmed nails. Pretty soon my legs looked horribly scratched and red, Kaleb exclaimed, “It looks like Edward Scissor Paws got you you!”  So the name Edward stuck. It’s a good nickname and goes well with Anniezilla!

He’s been with us two days now, and LOVING every minute of it! Annie and Eddie are like two peas in a pod now, they’re never more than a few feet away from each other at any given time and play together like they’re littermates. Edward has had a few accidents in the house, but we pretty much expected that with him still being a puppy and all, but overall he’s been a great sport learning the puppy pads quickly and when we go outside he doesn’t fool around! Kaleb kids him, “Annie has ears the size of Jupiter and Eddie has a bladder the size of Pluto.”

If you are a dog lover or if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Annie or Eddie, feel free to follow their twitter feed. They’re always up to something, and they have a particularly interesting view of the world!

If you’d like to know more about rescuing animals in Phoenix, becoming a foster family for rescued or abused animals, or how you can help animals in need by donating time or money, please contact AJ’s Best Friends or the Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. While on our hunt for the perfect pooch companion we learned that several rescue agencies in the Valley received over 100 dogs and puppies from puppy mills in Missouri over the course of this weekend, so they really can use your help right now as much as ever.