It is with great pleasure I get announce that after a year long courtship, Armadillo Studios Inc., is an approved member of the NationBuilder Architect program.

For those unfamiliar, NationBuilder is one of the fastest growing and most popular Content Management Systems to hit the market in the past few years. Developed off the backs of members of Obama’s highly touted technical team, NationBuilder is an incredibly powerful web site platform for political and non-profits looking to raise money, connect with volunteers and actively engage with their user base.

NationBuilder is a software platform that combines your people database, website, and communication tools like email, text messaging, and social media—all in one. Accessible and affordable, NationBuilder helps people all over the world create more meaningful relationships. Whether you’re an author, activist, small business owner, or politician, we provide the tools to build a community around whatever it is you were meant to do.

As you can imagine the NaitonBuilder platform is a powerful tool to help candidates and organizations connect beyond the typical methods found on a normal CMS. As one can see from the work with did with Alberta MLA Steve Young, our first NationBuilder web site, the system is a powerful way to transform your site into something other than a one-way broadcasting tool.

I’m excited to add NationBuilder to the growing list of services that Armadillo Studios provides for our Business, Not-For-Profit and Political customers. If you feel that NationBuilder is a tool that might interest, send me a note at cturner@armadillostudios.ca and I’d love to chat with you about the pros and cons.

Also, I would like to give a shout out to Brendan Mulvihill of EDAHelp for his guidance with working with the NationBuilder System.

It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan of WordPress. Not only is WordPress Armadillo’s core speciality and go to Content Management System (CMS), but it is also one of the easiest to use, intuitive and powerful tools out there for creating robust web sites. So it is with great pleasure that I get to announce that not only is Armadillo Studios a sponsor of WordCamp Calgary 2014 on June 14th, but I am also one of the core co-organizers of this year’s edition.

If you’re unfamiliar with WordCamp Calgary, here’s a bit of an intro into the event.

WordCamp Calgary 2014 is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. This year’s edition is planned for June 14th at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

This year’s conference is not only dedicated to celebrating the growing WordPress community in Calgary, but looking at how we can push WordPress to being more than just a “blogging tool”. Through a series of sessions, panels, hands-on workshops and events we are aiming to help grow the WordPress community in the city. This year’s one-day conference is jam-packed with great content for a wide spectrum of WordPress users – from content editors all the way to hard-core coders.

There is something for everyone at WordCamp Calgary 2014.

So if you interested in attending WordCamp Calgary and helping to build the great WordPress community in the city, make sure you register today!

It’s with great pleasure I get announce that SAIT student Cody Thompson will be joining Team Armadillo Studios for the next two months. Cody is a great young and upcoming talent, who will be working with myself on a weekly basis to help complete the Practicum portion of his program. Over the next few weeks Cody will be working along side myself on a handful of projects, but mainly on corporate branding, WordPress theme development and mobile responsive site design.

Here’s Cody’s bio if you are looking to learn about him and his work.

Starting in elementary with basic typing and computer skills, then multimedia in junior high and senior high, and now into post-secondary with NMPD; technology has always been a huge part of my life. What made me want to aspire for a career on computers was simply the fact that I loved being on them so much to begin with. I remember when I was younger I would constantly view web page’s source code trying to decipher what all the mumbo jumbo meant and did. Thus it’s only natural that my chosen path would be a developer or designer of some kind. Coffee filled coding nights keep me happy it seems. And knowing that I am by no means an expert keeps me motivated and eager to learn. My interests don’t only lie within web however, although it will almost always influence what I do. I’m also incredibly fascinated with mobile design, and business, and one day hope to embark on both of those. I have a dream of owning my own business, and constantly find myself writing down ideas, reading articles, etc, all in attempt to achieve that goal. When I was in high school I partook in a leadership camp, and although strange at first, I personally feel it has made me realize what I really desire, and also made me stronger in the process. I am very passionate and dedicated when it comes to what I enjoy and what I want. I’m confident in my skills and what I know, yet am not ashamed to admit when I don’t know something yet. Learning and staying up to date, in this field especially, is essential, and I devote myself to that every day. In the end, I love design, I love developing, I basically just love technology and computers in general, it’s what I’m good at, and it’s what I’m aspiring to specialize in as a profession.

So in addition to welcoming him to the team for the next couple of months, I’d also strongly suggest connecting with Cody on Twitter, LinkedIn and Behance.

A few months ago, good friends of mine were all a buzz about a new project that was making the rounds of the Calgary social network-o-sphere called “Grow Calgary”:http://www.growcalgary.com.

From the brainchild of Calgary-based food advocate “Paul Hughes”:http://paulin8.blogspot.ca/, Grow Calgary’s goal is to take unused provincial land and through the generosity of Calgarians “transform it into 100,000 pounds of fresh vegetables for the cities’ less fortunate”:http://www.growcalgary.ca/. To say it is an ambitious plan is an understatement, but if there is a city that could pull it off, Calgary is the one. (Read More…)

The old Armadillo Blog has been rather quiet the past comple of months, as I put some of the finishing touches on a massive redesign of our web site and the finishing touches on a couple of campaign sites for the upcoming civic election in Calgary. In the meantime, I figured it would be good to do a dual post to catch-up with two really cool personal blog redesigns that were launched over the past two months for two incredibly smart entrepreneurs. Those sites of course are the redesign of “Leah Lawrence’s personal blog”:http://www.leahlawrence.ca/ and the redesign of Sarah Blue’s Get Mommy Some Gin. (Read More…)