Our company is looking for more talent, specifically in the graphic design / illustrator area. We have immediate positions that need to be filled, either on a contract or contract-to-hire basis.

Ideal candidates will be able to "own" the conception of a new product from the discovery or "pie-in-the-sky" phase through to the production of wireframes and graphic design concepts.

If that sounds like you or someone you know, have them contact me (preferrably with a link to a portfolio of previous work).

My 411:
Doug Schmidt
Vancouver Operations Manager (& Big Geek), EffectiveUI Canada
[email protected]
Mobile: 604-551-4840

Hello fellow Workspacers! (is that the correct collective noun?)

Today marks the launching of the Vancouver office for EffectiveUI Canada, a subsidiary of Denver-based EffectiveUI.

We're a design firm specializing in immersive user experiences using rich internet applications. Stuff like this and this.

Tobias Patton, Jason Wong, and I will be hanging around here at Workspace for the next while, and are looking forward to meeting the rest of the regular crowd.

Hey, Dane, came for one of your Dane's-Best-Latte-In-Vancouvers, and discovered it's your birthday!  Best, best wishes!-nancy

"Shelter Program with the Guavaclub"

For those who have yet to experience this, please sign-up and gain tremendous satisfaction in serving a wholesome meal to over 100 of those living in the downtown east side, on the streets or in nooks and crannies

WHAT?  Get to know fellow GuavaClubbers and serve a meal to the homeless

WHEN?  Tuesday, July 17th

TIME?  8:00pm

WHERE? Blenz Cafe.  Cnr of Granville & Nelson Sts

HOW MANY?   6 people

REGISTER?   Please email Celia - Event Host.  [email protected]

Please register as soon as you can, by emailing Celia: [email protected]

Glow Wellness Centre In Vancouver Is The Answer To Holistic Healing

I have finally found an acupuncture and wellness centre in Vancouver to heal me! I have had many body ailments and injuries over the past 20 years, mostly rips, tears and fractures from playing all kinds of sports, landing a few snowboarding concussions, but also from being quite accident prone in general - who else tears out their entire shoulder from slipping and tumbling down a snowy, wet escalator in the Montreal Metro?

I have visited somewhere between 5 and 10 different physiotherapists in 4 cities across Canada over the last decade, all of them have helped me tremendously, and all have lent a hand in fixing whatever needed fixing. But I am not quite 100% on most injuries. The trick (for me) with physical injuries to the body: consistency and diligence - you'd think it'd be easy to do those stretches and exercises twice a day to improve your strength. It's not. If things are mostly working, I think I am good to go. How stubborn.

Now here's some really fun economic gossip!

1.  Turns out Rogers Canada (owned in large part by AT&T) charges Canadians about 6 (six!) times the price for wireless data than AT&T charges their US customers.   Canada: $299/month.   US: $63/month.   There's an online petition to Rogers if you care to protest.


2.  And on the tech theme,  Google just bought Postini Inc.   What's postini? It provides security for e-mail.   This means gmail will become even more popular.  Google's stock price rose by $3.16US, while Microsoft fell by 10¢.

It being Canada day and all, thought I'd investigate how our tax dollars, that make Canada, Canada, get spent.  Here's the breakdown:
$0.15 - interest on the debt (pays our Canada Savings Bonds interest, for example)

$0.53 - given to the provinces and territories and individuals to do good stuff with. We hope.

• $0.23 - go to individual Canadians (like Old Age Security - $0.13, and Employment Insurance - $0.06, Child Tax Benefit - $0.04)

• $0.19 - given to provinces and territories to implement federal programs like healthcare-$0.08, education & social assistance -$0.03

$0.11 - grants to things like the arts, farmers, aboriginal programs, bilingualism, sports

$0.25 - operating costs of running the federal gov’t (eg. Nat’l Defence - $0.07, RCMP - $0.03 and our favourite, the CRA itself - $0.02)

$0.03 - crown corporations like CBC, CMHC and Atomic Energy (huh? who knew?)

$0.06 - surplus, used to reduce the federal debt.

There you have it. Note that some of the things we love to hate, social assistance and employment insurance, were only about $0.06 cents of the dollar, whereas old age security is actually the largest single item after interest on the debt.Now we know!

Hey Workspacers
My brother from Switzerland is coming to town for the summer. Now I am looking for a furnished room or a studio in Vancouver. 
May be you know somebody that is going away for the summer and wants to sublet or somebody that is interested to share his/her big house.... Budget 400 - 550 per month. Drop me a line if you know of anything.
My brother is easy going, 35,  very Swiss, but nice. 
Thanks, Florian

Am I Crazy: Chronicles of an Entrepreneur Part 6

YEEHAW…..I have a licensing deal with an established Chinese factory that pays an impressive 20% royalty, but first let me step back. I started this blog a few months ago with the question: Am I crazy? It was one of those days when I was questioning what the hell I was up to. I had been working on this new tool concept for 11 months which was to weave itself into a brand new category of hand tools and spawn a whole new industry (think Leatherman)…with my company riding the wave all the way to the top.

Yes, I had grand (attainable) aspirations, yet on that particular day I was over-run with the fact that people I wanted to work with weren’t returning my calls, My factory was getting increasingly difficult to communicate with. My working prototype was months behind schedule. I was running out of money.

12 artists of varying talents are paired together, shake hands and are given two weeks to weave their gifts into a unique collaborative performance piece.

The show is called Brief Encounters and I have been to the last two events...absolutely incredible and a must see for anyone looking for an eclectic evening of not knowing what to expect.

This years lineup includes a tabala player, a swordsman, a flamenco dancer, an actor and eight others.

A bunch of us are heading to the show on the 20th. Hope to see some of you WORKSPACERS there.

Two nights: June 19th and 20th,
The Anza Club (#3 West 8th).
Doors at 7:30, show at 8pm.

Tix $15 at the door, cash only.

After-show lounge with dj Jacob Cino.

info: [email protected]