I’ve talked about how great 2010 was for me, but how about some friends? Two have stuck out to be doing some great new things I feel deserve recognition.
Tech Animation What?! Mulango is a coworker on my former full time job at MTS, and has been bouncing around some creative ideas for a while now. Sometime in mid summer, he grabbed a Tumblr page, setup a schedule for himself, and attacked it. He’s figuring out how Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress work into his flow and helping to get people to sample his comic, which can be most easily described as Penny Arcade for tech geekery (and almost a perfect companion to the AwesomeCast, I might add…)
V-Rock Studios Veronica is a long time friend from my Art Institute days, and I always knew was a great photographer. This year, she really hit the ground running. The first big thing that popped out at me was her having the fortune to take a run through The Scarehouse with her camera, showing the details we’re not seeing in the dark. Veronica’s been popping up all over the Pittsburgh scene with Crazy Scary, BruFest, Podcamp Pittsburgh 5, and the ZombieFest in recent months, and is one of the reasons I pay more attention to my Flickr connections these days. She’s started a new blog to showcase her work, which has been tremendous to follow, which has been tremendous thus far. I’m pretty sure she’s just scratching the surface of her creativity here.
Cafe Solstice And of course there’s the venture that I’ve no choice to see first hand. My wife has been adamant over the years about her hope to open a bakery in the future. She’s always loved to cook, but was hindered by her exhausting career and a small kitchen at our first house of our coupledom. This year, she stepped up, started making new things, and made food guinea pigs out of plenty of our Pittsburgh Social Media friends out there. If you’re on her Twitter, you may have been a victim of a random Pie By trip I’ve accompanied. She’s done charity events for some great causes and even managed to create a cookie that’s been declared the Third Best Cookie in Pittsburgh by WPXI (pfft. Truffels). Even if the brick and mortar side of her business doesn’t happen in 2011, she’s going to be plenty busy, and keeping my nose pleased with the smells coming out of that kitchen. Plenty samples of her work can be found here.
