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The Northwest’s premier food festival, Bite of Seattle, kicked off today at Seattle Center. Lucky for us that is only a block from our office and with all that great food being at our finger tips we undoubtedly had to check it out. So the Plexi team took a lunch time excursion to try our best to eat our way through the Bite. Here are some pics highlighting some of the culinary excellence we enjoyed:

Some of the team enjoying the most anticipated culinary concoction, deep-fried mac and cheese. General consensus: although it seemed to be made from boxed mac and cheese it was still delicious.

Seriously, I am at a loss for words. The food is so good Tina and Steph are that excited.

Andy lost in the explosion of flavor from the deep-fried mac and cheese, while Jared and Tina show of the free samples waiting in line for 15 minutes will get you.

Easily the highlight of this lunch time adventure, Steph fist pumps to her airbrushed, bedazzled “Girl Power” tattoo.

What a great way to spend a lunch hour. Here is what I learned at the Bite:

• Deep-fried = delicious;
• You will be heckled by vendors especially teenage girls selling crab cakes
• People dressed as Foster-Farm’s chickens are frightening   
• Police love food and firearms are not allowed at this event
• Watching your co-worker get an airbrush tattoo, priceless    

The Bite of Seattle will be going on all weekend with live music and great food, so if you are in the area stop by to experience some local Seattle flavor.

The 8th annual A Drink For The Kids benefit for The Vera Project kicked off this week in Seattle. This benefit gives Seattleites the opportunity to show their support for all-ages music and art at The Vera Project by simply enjoying some live music and some tasty beverages. Here is how it works: when you purchase one of the Pyramid Ales or one of the designated drink specials at the participating locations the proceeds go directly to The Vera Project. For those of you who are unfamiliar with The Vera Project it “is a non-profit, all-ages music and arts space at Seattle Center that fosters a participatory creative culture through popular music concerts, arts programs, experiential learning and volunteer opportunities for all-ages, especially young people.”

Tonight July 16th at 6pm our neighbor the Solo Bar in Lower Queen Anne are nice enough to be hosting a music night to support this great program! DJ sets from some of your favorite hosts will kick-off at 6pm including Damien Jurado headlining at 8pm! So if you are looking for something fun to do tonight this is a great chance to have a few drinks, enjoy some good music, and support a great cause. You plus friends, drink specials, and live music equals a great time!

For those of you don’t enjoy the spirited beverage type, but would still like to show your support you can do so by grabbing a coffee at Caffe Vita locations throughout the city. For more info here is the complete A Drink For The Kids schedule.

It looks like the summer weather is finally here, so we think it is time to celebrate. Thank you to everyone that joined us for all the shenanigans at our June happy hour! We had such a great time that we are hosting another one this Friday, July 9^th. The Plexipixel team will once again be heading over to The Spectator in Lower Queen Anne at 6:00 pm to enjoy one of the best happy hours in the city. For those of you that missed the last happy hour and have never been to The Spectator, it is nothing too fancy, but it has a great happy hour menu, which includes some of our favorites such as hand-dipped corndogs, mac-n-cheese, pulled-pork sliders and a whole lot more (and don’t worry the happy hour runs till 7).

So if you are looking for away to kick-off the beautiful summer weekend come join the Plexipixel team for some good food, drinks, and good times this Friday at The Spectator. We hope to see you there!  

The Spectator: 529 Queen Ave N., Seattle, WA 98109

Are looking for something fun to do after the long work week? Well we have just the thing. Come join the Plexi peeps for a little happy hour and live music this Friday, June 11^th. The Plexipixel team will be heading over to The Spectator in Lower Queen Anne at 6:30 pm to enjoy one of the best happy hours in the city. It is nothing too fancy, but The Spectator has a great happy hour menu, which includes some of our favorites such as hand dipped corn dogs, mac n cheese, tator tots, sliders, and a whole lot more. And don’t worry the happy hour runs until 7!

After happy hour we will be heading over to the Funhouse where our very own Lisa Smith and her band PartMan PartHorse will be performing and having a CD release party! It will be a guaranteed good time. Good people, good food, and some great music; what more could you ask for on a Friday night? So if you are free tomorrow night come join the Plexi team for some drinks, food, and maybe a little fist pumpin’ action! We hope to see you there.

• The Spectator: 529 Queen Anne Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
• The Funhouse 206 5th Ave North, Seattle, WA 98109

LOGIN 2010, the three and half day conference for leaders in the online game, kicked-off last night at Seattle Marriot Waterfront Hotel. This annual event brings together industry leaders and innovaters to discuss, collaborate and share ideas to help advance the online gaming industry. The 3 1/2 days will feature online game development lectures, panels, and roundtables, renowned local and international industry speakers, facilitated networking activities, parties, keynote lunches, meetings and an exhibition area.

Vicky will be there to experience the madness and fun for the third straight year along with over 500 other industry professionals. She is excited to check out some of the lectures, panels, roundtables, and networking opportunities, while ”geaking out” with other gaming professionals. So if you have the opportunity to make this years event and run into Vicky take a moment to say hi.  She would love to talk to some new folks and “geak out” about online gaming!

MIX10 is Microsoft’s conference for web designers and developers. This year’s event will be taking place in Las Vegas March 15th-17th giving “designers and developers the opportunity to learn about Microsoft’s broad web platform and tools that help bring together clients, servers, and cloud services needed for creating great rich web applications.”

Me and Kristi will be hopping on a plane on Sunday to represent the Plexipixel team. We’re excited to meet and interact with other folks to get some insight on the future of web, and the continually blurring boundaries between content, media and commerce.

Some stuff we’re excited about:

• More details on the Windows Phone 7 Series (aka “Vicky’s next phone”)
• Bill Buxton’s keynote – last year I made the whole studio sit and watch the video from Bill’s Day 1 keynote because it was so inspiring. I’m sure I won’t be disappointed this year, either.
• MIXOnline’s secret den – Matt and I had a Top Pot Donut break with Thomas Lewis, the Director of the MIXOnline team last week. Apparently, his team is creating a cozy get-away with custom furniture. If the design inspiration is anything like their limited edition MIXOnline Sketch Book, you know I’ll be happy.
• Karsten Januszewski’s session “Incarnate: Behind the Scenes” – We built the Incarnate WordPress Plug-in (with Andy’s amazing WordPress expertise) so of course we’ll be there to support Karsten—but especially because he’s a super nice guy and an awesome client.
• Silverlight Games for Mobile – That’s what the agenda says…

Some peeps we’ll be partying with:

• Josh Santangelo of Stimulant
• Jon Rooney
• Paul Sanford
• David Shadle
• March Rogers
• you?

MIX10 is a 3-day conference for web designers and developers building the world’s most innovative web sites. This year some of the session ideas and speakers are being chosen by the public and we were lucky enough to have four ideas chosen by Microsoft for public voting. The authors of the top ten vote getting session ideas will be invited to speak at MIX10. Voting is open to the public starting today January 5th through Friday January 15th, so we need your help. Don’t worry the voting is quick, easy, and requires no sign-up, so please take a moment to review our session ideas and cast your votes for Vicky Tamaru, Matt Tamaru, and Andy Jacobs.

The voting tool can be accessed here: http://visitmix.com/opencallvote/

To learn more about each of our session ideas here is a list of the proposals we submitted:

• “Reduce Your Risks with SketchFlow” - Vicky Tamaru
• “Mixing it Up With Blend” - Andy Jacobs
• “Creative Suite and Expression Suite: Sweet Harmony?” - Matt Tamaru
• “Taking Wireframes to the Next Dimension with SketchFlow” - Matt Tamaru

Word of mouth Supergenius and author Mitch Joel discusses social media, personal branding, digital marketing and his keys to success through word of mouth marketing in the SmartBlog interview “Mitch Joel’s big ideas behind ‘Six Pixels of Separation.” Joel stresses the importance for companies to focus on the “who” rather than the “how many”, while embracing the old adage the more you give, the more you get; the idea that where you provide value is where you build communities. To hear more of Joel’s ideas listen to the full interview or see him live at the Word of Mouth Supergenius Conference.  

Protests, re-counts, and illegal votes lead to a lot of controversy in the second annual Plexipixel Halloween Costume Contest. The race for top prize was extremely close between Richard Simmons (Jesse), Pumpkinhead (Ian R), and Brett Michaels in his search for love (Justin). After leaving Friday evening with the top spot still not decided we came in this morning to find out there were still three late votes yet to be counted. In the end the costume contest ended in a tie between Pumpkinhead and Brett Michaels with Richard Simmons a close second, (in the nature of friendly competition we decided against a sumo-suit wrestling match as a tie-breaker). 

Yes, that is a real pumpkin. Talk about dedication.

To see more pics from this Halloween Costume Contest and other shenanigans check out our Facebook page and become a fan if you aren’t already:

http://www.facebook.com/plexipixel?v=box_3#/plexipixel?v=wall

We all know someone who has experienced some major downtime due to server failure.  It’s happened to the best of us!   

Vicky Tamaru will be speaking along with Joe Towner of Downtown Tech about a super new end-to-end solution for rapid disaster recovery as part of the Partner Lecture Series with the Business Continuity Center of Seattle (BCCS). The event will be taking place at the BCCS offices in Kirkland, WA on November 18th, where Vicky and Joe will be presenting the Plexipixel disaster recovery case study utilizing the Doyenz ShadowCloud platform.

What does this mean for Plexipixel clients?

It means our clients can breathe a sigh of relief in the wake of a disaster or server failure. With this instant access to a highly encrypted backup of our servers in the cloud, and available fresh facilities at the BCCS, we can be back online working immediately in the wake of a fire, earthquake or even invading zombies.  Regardless of the situation, we will have minimal downtime for our services. This way we can ensure that projects will be finished on time with or without zombies.

No zombies invited to the event, and with All Hallows Eve coming up we will be on the look out!