Since today is yesterday was Launch Party, I thought it would be appropriate to launch the new look for our website and blog. I’ve had the theme set live for myself and others on the team for weeks, so I’ve forgotten the rather … basic … nature of the default theme we were using

Dave Shea of Bright Creative did the original logo work. Paul Jarvis of TwoThirty tweaked the logo and did up the overall design plus the WordPress template for this blog. Alexa Booth took Paul’s design and did a Drupal template for the main site.

Why do we have two sites? Well, this is our social blog space. In general, we think it’s best practices for companies to have a corporate blog. Some see fit to integrate it into their main site, but especially when your “main site” is a web application that actually IS your business, we think it’s a good idea to run your blog on a separate system. It becomes your status spot if something goes wrong with your main site, so you can keep people informed.

As well, we have the challenge of wanting to present a fair amount of information. Some of that has to be easier consumable as “static” content, easily guide people to the right information, and so on. We can continue to be more conversational here, as well as showcase many of the other social tools that we use — here is the full list of tools that we use.

Lastly, since I’m a raving Drupal fanatic, I ended up building Extranet features into the main site. Our portfolio company members, mentors, and other advisors have access to some additional features and information when they’re logged in.

I know there are lots of bits and pieces still to tweak — from wording and clarity to graphical fixes (the auto complete throbber looks crappy on a black background). Leave a comment or let us know what you think on Get Satisfaction.

I was trying to flip the switch on the new design before Launch Party last night, but called away to do ‘networking’: you know, the kind that has you lasso’ing ethernet cables over a bar’s rooftop We’ll see if the switch does in fact get thrown today — at left a fun image that is going to be on the new home page.

In any case, the clock has flipped over to September 19th, so we are officially in Talk Like a Pirate Day. And of course, our oh-so-staid parent site, ye old Bootup Labs, has gone piratized in celebration! The about page is a nice demo:

A Vancouver-based startup accelerator designed t’ help founders build tech startups an’ take them t’ their first round o’ fundin’ o’er th’ course o’ a nine month placement.

The nine months be split into three trimesters - because we all know that growin’ a startup is like raisin’ a child! Each three month period has different deliverables in th’ areas o’ business, marketin’, an’ product. Founders will come in with different strengths an’ weaknesses, bein’ matched with th’ right set o’ scallywags at Bootup Labs or external Advisors t’ reach each deliverable.

Oh, I really never get tired of that …

Thanks as always to Richard, the scallywag at Raincity Studios that created the pirate module for Drupal.

Day two of our video work station and we captured another nice little video. A little more serious than the bacon haze!

Robin Puga and I go way back, as we explain in the video. He’s finishing up a stint at the BC Institute For Co-operative Studies and looking at starting a co-op of his own here in Vancouver, likely with a focus on web work and open source.

The Chicago Tech Cooperative and Civic Actions are the two co-op related companies that I know doing Drupal related work. I think the co-op model and open source are a good fit, as is co-op and independent web workers. I’m hoping that Robin does give a session on “What is the co-op model?” at BarCamp Vancouver.

Find out more about co-ops and Robin’s progress at Each for All, a radio show and podcast about co-op models.

I’m heading to Boston for the next 6 days for the annual North American Drupal convention, aka Drupalcon Boston 2008.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the Drupal framework (I’m a Permanent Member of the Belgian-based Drupal Association), but the relevance here is my experience with open source development communities and methodologies in general. I was impressed and moved by Matt Mullenweg’s keynote at the recently finished Northern Voice 2008 conference: almost half of it was dedicated to open source. One line that he said really rang true for me (paraphrased): “the long term utility of proprietary software trends toward zero”.

I’m giving one presentation on mapping business requirements to code, participating in a panel on training your in house team on Drupal, and helping to moderate a birds of a feather (BoF) session on RDF and the Semantic Web in Drupal. Oh, and likely having one or two business and technical meetings ranging from my friends at brand new Acquia, to those crazy aggregation hackers from D.C., Development Seed.

While the conference is sold out (800 seats!), there are various social events in and around the conference. Drop a comment if you’d like to meet up while I’m in Boston. Are you using Dopplr yet? I’m finding it to be a useful tool, feel free to add me to see where I’ll show up next.