We’ll be trying this again. November’s even was postponed and I’ll be in Sioux Falls on January 19th chattin’ it up and sharing some stories.

Find out more HERE!

We’re honored to have been showcased in the first release of The App & Mobile Showcase Book written by the folks over at The FWA. Its a truly humbling experience to be recognized by a group you’ve so often looked to for inspiration. Thank you so much! Glad to have been a part of this amazing collection.

More on the book HERE and HERE!

Every once in awhile I get out of the office and talk to people about things. Well, its happening again. This time I’ll be in Sioux Falls, SD at the Washington Pavilion for the AIGA South Dakota “Elevate Series” talking smart, cracking’ jokes and hopefully imparting some inspiration on why the internet is the most amazing canvas we’ve yet seen.

If you’re in the Sioux Falls area on that evening, would love to see you there. You can snag tix here if you’re so inclined.

*Also, I apologize for that picture of me. Its literally the best one I’ve taken in the last 5 years and we’re going to get our money’s worth out of it.

We got a great bit of coverage in this month’s Minnesota Business Magazine’s article The Target Effect. Jamey talks about the boost Target provided in the early days, the big collapse and how things have changed as they’ve moved forward. A nice little read that also features our friends over at Catalyst, Puny and Hello Viking.

Check it out: http://svns.in/ny

Jamey, Jesse and Evan will be speaking at the 10:30am time slot of the MIMA iOS Strategy, Design & Development Workshop event at the Uptown Apple Store in Minneapolis on May 13th.

Register over on EventBrite ASAP as space is limited.
http://mima-ios-workshops.eventbrite.com

UPDATE – This thing is already full. Wow. Only took an hour and a half.

Today brought some exciting news. This morning at 8am the Webby Awards made their announcements, and we are excited to announce the iPhone/iPad app we created for our fantastic clients over at JCPenney was picked as an Official Honoree.

Great to see a project we all know how much heart and dedication has gone into get such a big nod from an amazing organization. We’re all very proud.

Additionally, a huge shout out to our partners over at The Nerdery for their help on this thing as well. We’re never ones to hide our helpers, and believe me, these guys have spent many a sleepless night making this thing happen. We couldn’t do it without you all!

Official Webby Announcement – http://svns.in/mk

We got a nice little feature in the MN Business Magazine’s Business Encyclopedia this month. A look a 142 people, places, companies, topics and things effecting the vibrant MN Business scene this year. We even got a full page, nonetheless. We feel pretty honored.

The Full Article on their website:
http://minnesotabusiness.com/minnesota-business-encyclopedia-2010

PDF of the feature page:
http://sevnthsin.com/webroot/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/2010_mnBusiness.pdf

So our little mobile workplace experiment, Distance Makes No Difference, has come to an end. The office has reunited and we’ve got some great stories to share.

First and foremost, we’d like to thank everyone who met with us, helped us along our way or just tweeted their praise of the project along the way. Secondly, I personally would like to thank the entire team for their diligence, pro-active and overall positive approach throughout this entire project. Everyone worked together SO well, this couldn’t have gone more seamless.

SO, now on into the nitty gritty of this thing. What did we do, how did it all pan out, what did we learn?

First, we set out on a mission to both push the concept of mobile technology as well as the idea of what it means to truly have a mobile workplace environment. For two weeks the entire team was working remotely, using the laptops, home computers, iPads, Public/Hotel Wifi, a few Verizon MiFi’s and even participating in a few inspired challenged (like working exclusively from a beach for an entire work day). Additionally, the new business team departed on a string of meetings and meet-n-greet sessions all across the country. They went from Chicago to New York City to Denver to Seattle to Los Angeles and back, all over the course of ten business days, meeting with everyone from giant corporations to old friends and partners.

As part of the project requirements, we requested everyone be somewhat trackable for the 10 days. The Distance Makes No Difference site allowed visitors to see both what city or location people were working from, location tagged tweets as people moved from place to place as well as follow our thoughts/rambles through the #svnMobile Twitter hash tag. As you can see from the screen caps below, the team moved around quite a bit over the 10 days.

So how did this all work out and what did we learn? Well, good question! It went as well as anyone could expect it to, actually. It was 90% seamless. Everyone got around with no hitches, everyone had relatively decent internet connectivity everywhere they went, communication was virtually flawless through the use of IM, Video Chat, Campfire and even good old conference line phone calls. The only big hurdles we ran into, and granted some of these came from our over-indulgence in the idea of traveling, were that people would go into the “dead zone” as we called it, during flights or sometimes long drives through Wisconsin and be unavailable for meetings or conference calls. So scheduling was difficult from time to time. Additionally, we have a couple clients we receive LARGE files from almost weekly (8GB + files, to be exact), and we had a couple instances where the folks who needed them couldn’t get them in a reasonable amount of time due to bandwidth limitations either at the place they were located or because they were on an MiFi and you just can’t get that kind of file down through one of those devices. However, on the up side, we were pleasantly surprised to see how easy it was to access our server via VPN and how easy that made it for everyone to keep on top of things and share necessary files just like we would at the office. If there was one huge takeaway we can all agree on, it was that the addition of VPN was something we should have done a LONG time ago.

So in the end, the ten days passed like it was nothing. The team had a blast, our level of service was virtually un-impared, our productivity was just as high (if not higher for some) and we learned a whole lot about how easy it really is, in this day and age, to work from really anywhere you want… just so long as you have a plan and an amazing team willing to work together to make it happen.

This site will remain up for awhile, so feel free to check it out over at: http://DistanceMakesNoDifference.com

This past Friday, the 24th of September, we here at Sevnthsin sent up the final iteration of our Yavin IV Low Orbit Space Experiment. It was a little rock on the ground, as we had extremely high winds and we almost lost the balloon a couple times while filling. However, we got the thing up and we captured some pretty great stuff.

Check out some video/photos below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more on the project, head on over to: http://YavinIV.sevnthsin.com

UPDATE:
We made the feature section of Ars Technica on Tuesday the 27th of September. So great!

More over at Ars Technica: http://svns.in/ds

TheFWA is one of the most prestigious award sites around. Every day they pick only the best of the best to showcase on their site, and have been doing so for YEARS! We here at Sevnthsin are honored to have been included as part of their newest Mobile initiative by being named Mobile Site of the Day for September 22nd, 2010!

Check it out either on your Desktop Browser or your Smartphone

If you’ve been following our little side-exploits lately, you’ve recently learned we’re sending a weather balloon up into low-orbit space and taking photos as part of a project called “Yavin IV.” Well the local St. Paul Pioneer Press caught wind of the story as well and deemed it worthy of today’s cover.

Wow. We’re honored in the nerdiest way possible as the folks at the paper clearly share our unbridled space enthusiasm and aren’t afraid tho throw that us as their lead story!

For the article itself, head on over to: http://www.twincities.com/ci_16096860

For more on Yavin IV, check out: http://YavinIV.sevnthsin.com or follow us on twitter @Yavin_IV

Looks like the JCPenney Weekly Deals iPad app has made it up over on the Pioneer Press Tech Blog.

Great to see our client’s forward-thinkingness getting some great coverage!

The full article here: http://svns.in/an

Well, he’s gone and done it again. Major Briggs has gotten himself some prominent space on the St. Paul Pioneer Press Tech Blog. He’s pretty much unstoppable at this point. He’s gotten a taste of the fame and just can’t quit.

Never stop being adorable, Major, its your ticket!

http://blogs.twincities.com/yourtechweblog/2010/04/sure-cats-seem-to-like-ipads-but-dogs-apparently-do-not.html

Our furry little office friend, Major Briggs, made the Wall Street Journal ‘Small Business’ section yesterday and we’re all so very proud. Although he’s a bit of an attention hog, we still feel his presence in the article was well deserved.

So well done Mr. Major. You make us all so proud.

The full article: http://svns.in/a9

Julio over the St. Paul Pioneer Press – Tech Blog dropped a great little writeup on the front of today’s business section (April 2nd, 2010) around the unveiling of the iPad and how its changing the game in a number of ways.

We’re working on a couple great iPad apps here at Sevnthsin and got a chance to talk a bit about how our in-progress app for Metro Magazine is helping the glossy mag leap into the digital realm in smart new ways.

“…this is a no-brainer for the iPad, with a screen roughly the size of a printed page. We can show off content, such as archived photos or video clips, which might otherwise never see the light of day.”

You can see the rest of the article over on TwinCities.com or in PDF format here: http://svns.in/9w

For the third year in a row, Sevnthsin has been honored to present a deserving student at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, MN with the Sevnthsin Interactive Design Scholarship. This year was a special occasion as the scholarship itself has been restructured to award TWO deserving, up and coming students.

Jamey was on hand to present the awards to this year’s recipients, Mike Arney and Carly Wright. Both students were required to submit an application, undergo a portfolio review and were ultimately selected by a CVA appointed panel.

Congrats to this year’s recipients and best of luck going forward!

A list of the recipients can be found here: http://svns.in/9u

A photo set of the night’s awards can be found here: http://svns.in/9v

This past weekend Sevnthsin’s own Jamey Erickson was a presenter at the first annual Mobile March Twin Cities event held downtown at the Hilton Garden Inn. The event focused specifically on the business of mobile marketing as well as the development process for mobile app/web experiences. Jamey’s presentation was tailored to Sevnthsin’s focus on the hybrid of both sides while focusing on the creative execution that comes in the middle.

Plenty of post event blog posts have made their way online and it looks like Sevnthsin’s show-n-tell was a crowd pleaser.

A few of the write ups can be found here:
http://svns.in/9n
http://svns.in/9o

The new Sevnthsin business cards were featured in this weekend’s St. Paul Pioneer Press. A nice little writeup on “Unusual Business Cards” featured a nice shiny pic of Jamey’s card as well as quotes from both Jamey and Evan.

Unfortunately there’s no digital version of this snippet, however you can click the image to see it in full size.

Sevnthsin & JCPenney have taken a Bronze at the 2010 RAMA Racie Awards for the JCPenney Weekly Deals iPhone app.

JCPenney medaled in many categories, but we’re all very excited to see our efforts achieve a medal in a new category. Congrats to all involved, especially our boys down at The Nerdery who moved mountains at the 11th hour many a time during the pre-holiday build up.

More here: http://svns.in/8h

We got a nice little plug on Smashing Magazine this weekend in their “Optimized for iPhone” feature. Nice to see us up there with so many other great sites.

Smashing Magazine : Optimized for the iPhone