Once again digibomb is reinventing himself!

As many of you already know I’m no longer with Vanilla. You also probably know about my side project PressWork. What you don’t know is that I was recently offered an amazing job as Senior Community Manager at Mega Brands. If you are not familiar with Mega Brands you will be familiar with Mega Bloks, one of Canada’s largest toy companies. If you’re  parent like me, then you know that Mega Bloks are a household name and your kids probably play with them all the time.

As Senior Community Manager I will be responsible for many things, including social strategies, online community building, and most importantly managing and organizing events, meetups, and more. This is really the perfect job for me and I couldn’t be more excited to join an amazing team of people and an outstanding company whose product is already such a big part of my life.

This will be my first stab at tech for non tech. I’m looking forward to the challenge of bringing my expertise to an off the shelf product instead of a digital one.

I’ll be blogging and tweeting more about my adventures at Mega Brands and make sure to follow us on twitter @megabloks to see what we’re up to. Over the next few weeks I will be attending and helping coordinate our brand an presence at ComiCon New York and BlizzCon Anaheim. If you a fan of Mega Bloks or into Halo, Starcraft, and WoW collectibles and building make sure you check out what we’re doing in these areas over the next few months, and if you’re going to be at ComiCon or BlizzCon come by the booth and say hello!

On Wednesday August 3rd at 7:42 am I became a father for the second time! Nathaniel Joseph Sera-Shriar ( or as I refer to him digibomb 3.0, my first son being digibomb 2.0) was born.

As with my first son so far it has been an amazing, but exhausting, experience. My wife and I could not be happier. He’s strong, healthy, and already growing up before our eyes

This alone is a life changer, however it’s only the tip of the iceberg. As many of you know my other full-time job is Social Manager at Vanilla Forums, or should I say was. After 2 incredible years at Vanilla I have flown the coup and started my own Startup “PressWork” with good friend and now co-founder @cbavota.

My years spent at Vanilla taught me a lot about the industry, Startup life and culture, and gave me the necessary skills to move on and start my own thing. I have mad respect for the team at Vanilla and wish them the best of luck!

A little more about PressWork …

PressWork is a free, open-source theme framework built for WordPress 3.2 using HTML5 and CSS3. It was created out of a need for a framework that catered to all types of users. As developers, we needed it to be powerful enough to allow for complete customization, which is why every element in PressWork can be hooked into. But we also didn’t want to scare away beginners and that’s why we came up with the PressWork front-end toolbox, which gives users the ability to change their site’s layout and design in a live preview environment while taking advantage of all the bells and whistles that WordPress already has to offer.

We just launched our first premium theme “InstaPress” which we are really excited about and a premium suite of plugins for PressWork called “BriefCase“.

I know what you’re thinking, I must be mad to start a new business venture with a 2 year old son, a new born, and a wife on maternity leave. Well, you’re right! However sometimes in life you need to take risks in order to succeed. I feel great about this decision. Don’t get me wrong, it’s scary, and it will be a long hard road, but totally worth it in the end. We have already seen some success with PressWork. PressWork has been downloaded over 30,000 times in the last month, we made the top 15 most popular themes on WordPress.org, and Matt Mullenweg mentioned us in his “State of the Word” at WCSF this year.

dropping digibomb’s from coast to coast …

You may have notice that I have slightly re-designed and re-organized the blog. It’s currently running PressWork and a modified version of a premium child theme called “Postly” which will be released soon. I plan on using my blog as a sandbox for PressWork over the next few months testing out new themes and features. So keep watching the blog and let me know what you think.

This is only the beginning of digibomb’s REDUX – I have some other projects up my sleeve

May is another really busy month for me and Vanilla. I will be heading out to Vancouver for a week to speak at WordCamp Developers and Make Web Not War. I am very excited, I have never been to Vancouver before and I am looking forward to checking out the city.

I’m also stoked to be speaking at the first ever WordCamp Developers, yep … you heard me right “Developers!“. As far as I know this is a first for WordCamps world wide, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I’m also looking forward to meeting the organizers (@vanessa_chu, @Mor10, @AnnyChih) so we can talk shop one organizer to another

I will be presenting part 3 in a series of presentations entitled “Building a Community Around your Blog“. Following WordCamp Developers I will be doing part 4 at Make Web Not War.

This will be my 3rd consecutive time speaking at Make Web Not War in 3 different cities, does that mean I earn a hat trick? It will be interesting to reunite with the MWNW team in Vancouver, we’ll have to see if we can top are crazy Montreal adventures (fill in the blanks ) from last summer.

I’m not doing this for money, a cause, fame, or to anger my wife … not sure how long she will put up with it though … I’m doing it for all the beard lovers out there!

It’s time to reclaim the beard! I’m not a hipster, ZZ Top fan (well maybe a little), terrorist, mad scientist, or Joaquin Phoenix … I just want to be free to let it grow!

This is my challenge: Can I let it grow until March 2011, without loosing my job, my wife divorcing me, getting arrested at an airport, or have people throw money at me on the street?

Join me if you can, or just support me by liking this page!

Dirty Deeds – Stupid People from Flying V on Vimeo.

Exhausted … after 4 days in NYC at the greatest design event ever, FOWD!

As you may know from previous posts I have spent the last few months on the road with Vanilla spreading the good word, and having a lot of fun doing it. I was very excited to have the opportunity to head to New York for a few days to check out FOWD, by far one of my favorite design conferences, organized by Carsonified, whom many of us in the industry look up to. It was a fun filled, inspiring, and action packed 2 days of learning from some of the greatest minds in the industry focusing on design from all aspects.

Highlights

Every presentation was good, but there were a few that really stood out for me.

• Designing for Emotion – by Aaron Walter of Mailchimp. Aaron looked at design from a more conceptual and psychological approach and tied it in to how our emotions are affected by this.
• How to Design Great WordPress Themes – by Nick La of n-design studio. Nick showed us how to design a WordPress theme that is properly UI’ed to give the user the best possible experience.
• What Will Web Design Look Like in 2 Years? – Jan Cavan of Dawghouse Design Studio. Jan hypothesized what the future of web design will be based on the current state of the web and where it’s heading with technology such as mobile.
• 10 Tips for iPhone Interface Design – by Sarah Parmenter of You Know Who Design. Sarah illustrated how to conceptualize, design, and develop a successful user interface for iPhone.
• The Changing Face of Typography – by Mathew Smith of Squared Eye. Mathew took us above and beyond the world of design and showed us how essential typography is to the success of design and the impact it has on the user.

What made it successful

• Venue -New World Stages, an off Broadway theater in midtown  Manhattan.
• Location – Close to absolutely everything New York has offer!
• Speakers – Wow, some of the greatest minds in the industry.
• Host – Paul Boag. This guy ROCKS!
• Food – Starbucks coffee in the morning and individual boxed lunches (Sandwich, chips, cookie, and a drink)
• Attendees – Friendly, outgoing, smart, and interesting. What more could you ask for!

What made this event so successful, for me, was the overall feeling of being welcomed into a family. Every moment was an opportunity to meet someone interesting, spark a conversation, and create a new relationship. I was fortunate enough to meet some remarkable people, or should I say friends, whose kindness extended beyond the conference walls and into an amazing experience. It was like “design camp”. Each day I had lunch, dinner, and some crazy nights with a varying group of individuals from all over world.

It was great to share our industry experiences, swap battler stories, and most importantly learn from each other and develop new alliances and strategies.

Good people, good times …

As I’ve already mentioned, my biggest take away are the people I met, the agencies and firms I discovered, and most importantly the friends I made. I would be remiss if I did not shout out to the wonderful people that made this experience worthwhile.

*In no particular order

• James Fenton – Tribal
• Clint Robinson – Rawlco Interactive
• Juanma Teixido – Teixido
• Andre Foeken and Matthijs Langenberg – Nedap
• Aaron k White – Empire Avenue
• Jan Cavan – Dawghouse Design Studios
• Paul Boag – Boagworld
• Louise Morgan – Carsonified
• Ismael Burciaga Jr – ChurchMedia
• Meghan Bristow – SAS
• Joe Guthrie – SA Technologies
• Fabian Acantara – Mad Fabuloso
• Chris Bannon – Wijmo
• The Entire webpop crew (these guys ROCK!)
• Tyler Smith – Teamspace
• Bryan Shneider – Bryan Shneider Design
• Gillian Vrooman – GNDV
• Dan J Sullivan – Daniel J Sullivan Design

old friends …

• Nick La – n design studio
• Alkarim Nasser – bnotions
• Darcy Clarke – Themify

Follow these people on twitter @DanielJSullivan @thatguy666 @jamesfenton @alkarim @aaronkwhite @fabuloso @jancavan @gndv @boagworld @nickla @darcy_clarke @loulou @ webpop @teixido @b4nn0n @meghanbristow @nutshell @churchmedia

See you all next year!