Susannah Gardner of Hop Studios and Buzz Marketing for Blogs invited Moxie to participate in a panel on blog design best practices and the like at SXSW Interactive next Spring!

Kathy is going to have her hands full with her new baby girl, so I’m the designated Moxie representative. I’m honored that we were invited and I’m looking forward to meeting the other designers on the panel.  At Susie’s request, I recommended some of my favorites to attend, but there are so many good designers out there and only a handful of seats on the panel. Kathy and I are both eager to see who will show up and what we can all offer each other.

SXSW, here we come!

I looove February and I especially love Valentine’s Day, despite the mass grumblings from significant others everywhere about how it’s overcommercialized and how Cupid is a Communist or whatever.  Why do I love February so much?  Well, Godiva for one.  But really it’s because everything everywhere is pink!  ... and red and all the Valentine hues in between. 

Aaaaaand it’s also the month of our anniversary!  Moxie is going to officially be three this year on February 14th.  I can’t believe how much has happened in 3 years.  Crazy. But I couldn’t ask for more, to be honest. It’s the best gig in town and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Speaking of gigs, I’m buried under them, y’all.  With Kathy gone, my schedule for the first part of 2006 filled up lickety-split!  I’m booked until May, though it could fluctuate a bit.  At this time, I’m not taking too many more clients for Spring/Summer, so please sign up for the mailing list if you are planning web projects in the Fall and would like to work with me. I’d love to hear from you!

I’ll be out of the office March 10-15th for SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX.  If you’re a client attending the event, drop me an email! I’d love to meet you.  I’ll be speaking on the panel, “How to Make Money with Your Blog Design Skills” on Saturday, March 10th, but floating around most of the weekend.

Happy February!  Hope you spend Valentine’s with someone you love.... or at least someone willing to share a bottle of wine.

It’s March already?!  When did that happen?  Time has been flying this year and we owe a lot of that to you keeping us so busy.  Busy busy and we thank you for it!

This month is going to be extra busy, in fact.  On March 10-15, I’ll be out of town at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) in Austin, TX, but will be back in the office on March 16th and will answer emails as soon as humanly possible in the order in which they were received (unless the sky is falling).

What else is going on this month?  I have several projects that I’m working on, including a couple wine-related sites (pass the vino!), an adorable dog bakery, a couple of hip podcasting mommies and a much-needed (and very large!) Louisiana job-seeker site.  These should be live before the end of the month, so stay tuned for those.

On to my schedule…

Currently, I’m not accepting any additional jobs for the Spring/Summer seasons. I’m booked into July and will be unavailable until early Fall 2006. This, of course, is always subject to change.  I do have a couple projects pending for later on in the year, so if you have a project for early Fall 2006 (around September), please let me know and I’ll do my best to get you an estimate as soon as possible.

Thanks and have a lovely March.  It goes out like a lamb, you know.

I’ll be at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas this weekend where I will be speaking on the panel, “How to Make $$ with Your Blog Design Skills”with four talented industry colleagues.  We’ll definitely share the fun here on the site, so stay tuned for a potential podcast or transcript from the panel, should they become available.  I’m so excited to be on this panel and to get a chance to put faces to names.  If you’re going to be at SXSW, please introduce yourself!

I will be out of the office until March 16th, but will be checking my email periodically in case of emergency.  I’ll do my best to respond to your inquiries as soon as possible on return.  Thanks for your patience!

What a fantastic time we had at SXSW Interactive.  Our panel went swimmingly and it should be Podcast soon, for your listening pleasure.  I am back home a bit early, as I’ve been hit with a very nasty flu. (Gotta love air travel during the flu season!)

To my wonderful clients who are waiting for a mock-up or any other deliverable I’ve promised, I am going to be working this week to get myself well so I can give your projects the attention they deserve.  If necessary, I’ll work diligently through the weekend to accomodate your project as we have agreed. Your patience is greatly appreciated and I apologize for any inconvenience. 

Thank you! 

It’s April already? March certainly didn’t go out like a lamb.  More like herd of lambs.  A pack?  How do you group lambs anyway?

SXSW was fabulous and I got to meet so many people I’d only known online, as well as meet one of my clients!  I was so thrilled to meet Carol, whose financial site will be launching this month.  It’s not that often we get a chance to chat face-to-face with our clients, so it was a real treat, though much too short.

Upon return from SXSW, my household was hit with The Plague (also known as “the flu") for about 2 weeks, which pushed my schedule behind a bit.  I’m almost caught up and hope to be fully back on schedule by the end of April. 

There are several large projects I’ve got coming down the pipe for late Spring/early Summer and I will be unavailable beyond that until the end of September at the earliest.  I’m am beginning to get requests for Fall and I have limited availability for the Fall/Winter 2006 season.

If you’re looking at a project launch around that time and are interested in having me help you out with that, I’d love to hear from you!  Please allow a 2-3 day turn around on emails… you know, just in case I’m buried under a large pile of Javascript somewhere. 

I wish everyone a Spring full of flowers and free of bee-stings. Have a great April!

SXSW Coordinator, Hugh Forrest, emailed an announcement that “How to Make $$ with Your Blog Design Skills” made the ”SXSW Honor Roll” of best panels.  Wahoo!

This means, to paraphrase, that after processing all of the panel feedback forms from this year’s event, the panel we were involved with made the so-called “Honor Roll.” Our panel tallied an average score of 4.0 or above (on a 1 to 5 scale) on the feedback forms submitted by attendees at the end of our session. 

How encouraging! I know that we are interested in participating again, so this has given us experience to grow from. We look forward to both being able to attend SXSWi 2007.  Thanks to all who attended and voted for our panel!

It’s that time of year when the bell-ringers are out, the smell of pine trees fills the air and people will cut you for the last Thomas the Train, but it’s also a time for giving. And we think you should give Blogging with Moxie for the holidays this year.  We’re very subtle like that. 

We also have some great announcements!  We’ve received wonderful reviews on Amazon and the book has been doing steadily well!  The fine folks at Expression Engine offered up an adorable video review for their readers and several bloggers have shared their thoughts both on Amazon and on their personal blogs.  Our publicist CJ has also beenbusily pimping us (we love her!) and on December 19th in the evening, Kathy and I will be appearing on the Derek & Romaine Show on Sirius Channel 109.  Tune in and listen!  We’ll also try to get a transcript or a recording of the interview to post here, as well.

HOLIDAY HOURS: For the holidays and because we are working diligently to roll out many new internal projects we’ve been working on before the New Year, we will be CLOSED from December 19th - January 2nd. We really need these two weeks for administrative and year-end wrap-up, and like you, we wish to spend time with our loved ones for the holidays. We appreciate your consideration and will respond to inquires sent during that time on our return in the order in which they were received.

We are booking for the first quarter of 2008 right now and we’re wading through a stack of inquiries that came in over the last week or so. January is almost booked solid for me, though Kathy may still have some openings. We will also be out of the office March 6-10 for SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. — just a heads up. Our schedules fill up fast and we are doing our best to respond to all of the requests in our inbox as quickly as possible.    We didn’t forget you!

If you are interested in having us design your blog or small business website, please fill out a Design Questionnaire. If you submit a request for a quote without completing a questionnaire, you will just receive an email from us asking you to please fill it out, so if you’re serious about working with us, please take a few moments to fill that out… yes, even the bit about the budget and timeline. Thanks!

I hope everyone has a wonderful, safe and joyous holiday season.

Things are nutty right now, so I’m going to keep this brief.  As you may have read, SXSW is upon us and we’re getting ready to take flight to Austin on Friday morning.  It’ll be the first time I’ve seen Kathy since June 2006, so I can’t wait to hang out with her and network with many of our colleagues.

My schedule right now is booked solid until early April.  We are swamped with inquiries, so I’m not accepting any new projects at this time, but we’ll be reviewing new projects above and beyond the stack of questionnaires that we already have here hopefully in the next six weeks or so.

In some exciting news, I was interviewed by the fine folks at Ellis Lab about the project I did for FashionJunkie.com. If you’re interested in checking out the interview, visit the EE Showcase.  It was so great of them to do that…

OK, off to finish more work before we jet.

Hello?  Oh hi, there.  Yes, it’s me Kathy… the one who fell into an abyss and got lost somewhere between Thanksgiving and Groundhog Day.  If I haven’t said it enough we’re super busy… a good problem to have!  But busy bees nonetheless.  I am packing (and preparing meals for a 2 year old so that he doesn’t eat hot dogs and jello for 4 days straight) and getting ready to pair up with my other half, Joelle, for fun, festivities and technology galore at SXSW Interactive this weekend in good ‘ol Austin, Texas. 

I’ve never been to Texas in my life.  Not even for a flight layover.  So, bring on the BBQ!  Joelle and I haven’t yet been able to attend an event together either so watch out Austin, The Moxie Girls are coming to town and they are armed with cocktail shakers.  We’re doing a quick book reading for The IT Girls’ Guide to Blogging with Moxie on the Day Stage at 11:30am on Saturday the 8th so if you’re coming to the event and want to pop in and say hi, please do!

While we’re attending SXSW, Moxie Design Studios does not sleep.  We’ll be back in the swing next week as usual.  I’ll at some point be booking new projects for April/May but for right now I am up to my gills in design.  We appreciate your patience if you’ve submitted a questionnaire.  We’re climbing Mount Paperwork as soon as we return.  Now if I could only find pink mountain climbing gear…