And the winner is…

January 6th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber, PHUG

Congratulations to Aaron Jackson who is the winner of the BackSpaceStudios/Seneca Logo Design Contest!

Aaron Jackson

BackSpaceStudios/Seneca Logo Design Contest

December 5th, 2008 | 46 Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber, PHUG

ONLY 5 MORE DAYS LEFT TO VOTE! CONTEST ENDS DECEMBER 12 !

Some if you already know that I am a part-time teacher at Seneca College in various different new media programs. This semester I have been teaching a class in Design Fundamentals for the MFD (Media Fundamentals) program. In our last class the students had to create a logo design for 1 of 3 fictitious companies; sporting wear, cosmetic, and travel. They where giving roughly 3hours to complete this assignment using only Adobe Illustrator.

Just for fun, I made a last minute decision to run a contest for the best logo design.

We received almost 60 entries from 2 classes! Below are the finalists (Chosen by PHUG board members). The winner will receive a cash prize and books.

The vote is in your hands!

Open Source Design Presentation at FSOSS 2008

October 23rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber, Open Source, PHUG


The good and the bad…This morning I woke up with the flu, how nice on the day of our big presentation. It was a bit of struggle getting through but we did, and successfully to a full house!

BackSpaceStudios presented “Open Source Design” - Exploring the world of Open Source Design, looking at what designers are doing with open source tools like gimp, inkscape, and blender3d. We also look at how designers get creative with interface design using various designer friendly open source languages like CSS, PHP, JS, and more.

We also had the opportunity to sit down with members of Mozilla, Linux, IBM, and other leaders from the Open Source Community to discuss how PHUG is making an impact online and offline. Everyone was really exited about our FREE Workshops, DEV Days, and WordCamp Toronto 2008. This will be a good year for PHUG!

We have uploaded our presentation here!

Some pics of our presentation:








Videos from WordCamp Toronto 2008

October 7th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber, Open Source, wordpress

Just came across this video of my presenation from WCT 08. Thanks to newmediaMike for posting this and all the other videos from the conference. You can view the rest here.


WordCamp Toronto 2008 - Making the Most of Plug-ins with Brendan Sera-Shriar from Mark Wood on Vimeo.

WordCamp Toronto ‘08 - Day Two

October 5th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in BackSpace Blabber

Day two was a success at WordCamp! There was an incredible lineup of speakers. The BackSpace team had the opportunity to meet many passionate WordPress designers, developers, and professional bloggers. It was great to network with others in the community and spend a little one on one time with some very talented and created individuals.

What impressed me the most today was the overwhelming number of folks interested in getting together outside the conference to explore, create, and inspire new open source tools.

This is what I love about WordPress! Its another great example of how a solid open source community can develop offline and continue to make its mark on the industry as a whole, from all walks of digital life.


My presenter pick of the day had to be Mark Jaquith, a core developer for WordPress, the geek in me was waiting all weekend to drool over some fancy WordPress code, and Mark delivered with his presentation on “Secure Coding with WordPress”. Check out Marks presentation here.


The craziest presentation of the day has to go Mark McKay. Awesome, that’s all I have to say! If you don’t know Mark Mckay, you should. Check him out here.


As usual I geeked out with some code bling! I covered the essentials of writing, customizing, and extending WordPress plug-ins, how to pimp your blog from front to back, and some basic tips on getting starting with WordPress development. You can download my presentation here.