I bet you thought we fell off the planet.  It’s only been like two… oh, wait...that’s ten weeks.  Oops. Sorry about that!  We have a good excuse, though, we swear. Kathy and I have been working like mad women on myriad new client projects rolling out in March, as well as a redesign of this site. Yeah, yeah, you say, you’ve heard that song before. More on that in a sec!

As we’ve mentioned, we’ll be attending SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX again this year. Our first time was in 2006 when I shared time on a panel with other blog designers discussing “How to Make $$ with your Blog Design Skills” (which made the SXSW Honor Roll that year).  The only bummer of that trip was that Kathy wasn’t with me. We skipped 2007 due to our workload, but this year, Kathy and I will not only be attending together, we’ll be presenting our first book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie.  Our reading is at 11:30am CST on the Day Stage if you’ll be at the conference and would like to attend.  The reading should last about 20 minutes and will be followed by a signing at the SouthBy Bookstore.  Come by and say hi!  We’ll be doing a giveaway, including a free signed copy of our book and goodies from our friends at TheBar.com.  We hope to see you there.

And now, about our redesign… we decided that in order for us to effectively finish our client projects and attend SXSW with any semblance of calm, we would postpone our redesign until the SXSW shenanigans have died down a bit. Everyone in the industry tends to release their Next Big Thing, be it a redesign, a new project or software, right before SXSW. Rather than be one of many, we’d rather wait until we can approach it in a less frenzied way.  We refuse to put anything out there that’s less than and when you rush that can happen.  There will be lots of fabulous sites to peruse during the next week or so… I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there.

We’ve always received a nice, steady if not occasionally abundant flow of inquiries, but since Blogging with Moxie came out, we’ve received more than we could ever dare hope for. Thank you, thank you!  But, to that end, while it’s fantastique, we are but two women.  Sometimes people get testy when we’re unable to take their project, hollering (yes, hollering) that we should just “hire more people!”.  But if we hired more people, you’d be getting that person and not us.  It’s not about churning out product, it’s about doing what we love by providing you amazing, personal design and a one-on-one experience.  We care about you and your project.  And we appreciate your patience. 

Right now, we’ve had to put the kibash on new inquiries… even just “questionnaires in waiting”.  They’re knee-deep, kids!  So, until we return from SXSW and have time to scale this mountain of amazing projects, we are just not accepting any inquiries. It pains us to say that, but it’s only temporary.  If you already submitted your questionnaire to us or have otherwise been in contact with us, do not despair!  We’ve got them here and we’ll still be reviewing them in the order in which they were received when we return from SXSW.  Hopefully, we’ll be ready to consider more new inquiries by April.

Again, Kathy and I really can’t thank you all enough for your interest in working with us, for purchasing our book and for your patience.  We’re off to SXSW, so we’ll catch you on the flipside!

xo

We certainly had a good time at SXSW Interactive this year. We had an opportunity to chat and network with many of our colleagues, as well a chance to promote our book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie. Our reading went very well and the signing was such a great chance to meet new people and put some faces to the many names we encounter online.

We also had a chance to meet the team at Ellis Lab, the folks behind our favorite content management system, Expression Engine.  They are such a wonderful group of people and while we loved EE before, seeing what they have in store for their new release of Expression Engine and how passionate they are about their product and their users makes us want to become EEvangelists!

Our interview with BlogTalk Radio went smashingly!  We really enjoyed chatting with John Haven and look forward to working with BlogTalk Radio again soon.  You can listen to our interview by clicking that little player or following this link.

We’re starting to review the very beautiful flutter of questionnaires we received in late January and throughout February.  Kathy and I will respond in the order in which they were received and will do our best to get back to you as quickly as we can.  Kathy’s been feeling under the weather lately, so please be gentle.  We appreciate your patience!

Hope everyone has a wonderful week and a Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!