We are evolving our business model to focus more attention on community and referrals, and are looking for an experienced, motivated person to help us get there.  You should be smart, tech-savvy, and connected to some part of our existing community.

What we’re looking for

The ideal candidate will be passionate about people and technology, and enjoys meeting and networking with freelancers, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, startups and small local businesses. He or she should understand the concept of coworking and the value of creating an intentional community.

The Community Manager will act as the right-hand person to the Founder/CEO, helping create a culture focused on supporting members and helping grow their businesses. Additionally, this role will handle day-to-day operations of the space, field requests from vendors and partners,  and oversee events and programs for members. This is a very entrepreneurial position with potential to grow into a greater role as Tech Liminal grows. The right candidate will be involved in many aspects of the company and join Tech Liminal as a key member of the team.

What you’ll be doing:

Community Connector & Member Liaison

• Support and facilitate the development and implementation of plans to support and grow the Tech Liminal community at large.
• As the Community Curator, you will help members of the Tech Liminal community make connections they need to help grow their business.
• Respond to inquiries from new and current members via phone, email and social media.
• Be a great communicator and wonderful people person – online, in person and everything in between.
• Have a positive, entrepreneurial attitude. We’re going to have fun here and hope you do too.

Marketing Related Items

• Assist in the development and management of marketing related items for Tech Liminal, including but not limited to: social media, events, press-related items, guerrilla marketing promotions and blog writing.
• In collaboration with the Founder, develop and implement “member features” as part of the Tech Liminal marketing efforts.
• Think of and implement new ways to promote Tech Liminal and our unique service offering.
• Create and publish our monthly newsletter and printed calendar.

Operations and Organizational Items

• Open the Tech Liminal space several mornings a week & prepare it for members
• Administer your own monthly budget, and provide weekly progress reports.
• Assist in organization and planning of events.  Publish and create events on several ticketing and promotional sites.
• Manage procurement of all office supplies; negotiate with vendors and manage vendor relationships, including potential sponsorships and.
• Identify and implement new ways for Tech Liminal to become more efficient.

What we think we need:

This role will be a very critical piece of our small, effective team. We think it’s important to have at least the following skills:

• Good communicator: written, in person, on the phone, and via web conferencing.
• Effective technology user, takes initiative learning new technology skills.
• Good general business knowledge and practical understanding of marketing, management and finance/accounting.
• Punctual, professional, fast-learning, and entrepreneurial; self-starter that works well in a fast-paced, start-up environment and is able to manage own schedule.
• Able to use the web effectively to learn new technical skills.
• Able to handle and address conflict in a professional manner.

Here are some of the tools we use to manage our business

• Practical knowledge of Google Apps, Microsoft Office and other such business tools, especially spreadsheets and printable documents.
• Practical knowledge of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, email newsletters, etc.
• Experience working with online event-management tools:  Eventbrite, Brown Paper Tickets, Facebook Events, evite, etc.
• General knowledge of WordPress, Wikis, and other community collaboration tools.

What we offer:

You will get a salary package with a generous vacation option.  Your compensation will be directly tied to your ability to grow the community business (memberships, events and workshops).

You will have access to all our events, workshops and meetups, which include a plethora of educational options.
At the moment, we do not offer healthcare benefits.

We are open to innovative approaches to filling this position, such as job-sharing between working parents.

How to apply

Please send us your resume, along with a writing sample, to jobs@techliminal.com.  We will be interviewing qualified candidates in the coming weeks.

The post TL is Looking for a Community Manager appeared first on Tech Liminal.

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Next Sessions:  March 28, April 4 & 11,  2013   3:00 – 4:30 pm (Thursday Afternoons)

1. Learn how self-hosted (or “wordpress.org”) sites work
2. Set up WordPress at a supported Hosting Provider
3. Review basic editor functionality, such as adding posts and pages
4. Import content from your WordPress.com installation
5. Learn to search for themes, and evaluate premium themes
6. Learn about plugins and widgets
7. Install popular plugins, such as Google Analyticator, Contact Forms, and more
8. Deploy your site so it’s available to search engines

Please come to class with a laptop (or let us know if you don’t have one, and we’ll provide one). This class can also be useful if you have inherited a WordPress site, or if you’d like to get a better handle on how to operate a site developed by someone else. Register online, or come by Tech Liminal and sign up in person.

Session Overview

For those if you that can’t attend all three sessions, here’s what we’ll be doing in each:

1. Session 1: Learn about self-hosted WordPress, Import Content from another WordPress site, install WordPress (if you don’t already have it).
2. Session 2: Learn to search for themes, evaluate premium themes, install themes. Learn about Sidebars and Widgets.
3. Session 3: Plearn about plugins. Install Google Analyticator, Contact Form, and one more plugin chosen by the class from a list including Slide Shows, Audio/Video tools, Galleries, and more.

The Fine Print About Hosting Providers

You can get web hosting from a variety of different providers, but some of them work better with WordPress than others. You can learn more at wordpress.org – but here’s the skinny: If you aren’t familiar with FTP or uploading files to your web server, you should pick one of the hosts with a “one-click installation”. Here are some options: Blue Host (Which we like a lot, so we’re affiliates); DreamHost (A Bay Area company), GoDaddy (Where you might have purchased your domain), Page.Ly (Sponsors of the East Bay WordPress Meetup). Please come to class with a hosting provider already chosen. While BlueHost or Page.ly will let you get started with WordPress within minutes of purchasing hosting, some of the others will take a little bit of finagling before you’re all set up. We can help configure WordPress on most hosting providers, but we’d like to do that before or after class so that we don’t take up too much time with gnarly technical issues. So, if you don’t have a “one-button” WP install from your host, let us know!

The post Working With Your Self-Hosted WordPress Site appeared first on Tech Liminal.

In this blog post I want to share with you some of my favorite plugins that help make images simpler, and easier to use, or just add fun options to your wordpress site.

SEO Friendly Images

This is another straight out of the box simple plugin that does something simple, subtle, and useful. SEOFI changes how your images are tagged to make their more accessible to search engines, and help them get a higher ranking on image serarches. This helps your whole site become more visible and receive more traffic. Something every site could use. Most useful in sites with a larger number of images so the small adjustments the plugin makes can have a larger impact.

Page Flip Image Gallery

An interesting plugin that allows you to display image galleries in a more familiar fashion, as if they were the pages of a book. It is relatively easy to install, and implement and may be just what you’re looking for to give your website a special something.

Yet Another Photoblog

This is a fun plugin that makes it easy to integrate photos into your website, allowing each post to be assinged an image to be displayed with it. It will alter your dashboard a little, but it is easy enough to swing with. It will specialize your website for images, so be sure this is what you’re looking for. It is free to download and install, so if you think this could be what you’re looking for, feel free to download and try it. .

jQuery Image Lazy Load WP

This plugin does a very simple thing which helps tremendously. Instead of gathering all the images on a page at once and loading them as a batch, jQILLWP makes the images load separately from the page, from the top down. This allows long pages to load significantly faster, and that helps with both the user experience and SEO.

This is a very simple plugin to use, all you have to do is load it onto your site and activate it. No setup required.

While this plugin is far from necessary for most sites, almost any site can benefit from this simple solution to long load times. It’s ease of use is just one more reason to try it out.

The post Interesting Image Plugins appeared first on Tech Liminal.

What you will learn:

• A Home Page
• About Us, Products or Services Page
• Contact Form
• Blog

Class Schedule:

Instructor: Erik Rocha

The post Learn to Build a Website with WordPress appeared first on Tech Liminal.

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We Moved! We now reside at:

555 12th Street, Suite 110 (enter on Clay St), Oakland, CA 94607

We are celebrating on Friday, February 15, 2013 from 7pm – 9pm!

Come join us!

The post We’ve Moved and We Are Celebrating! appeared first on Tech Liminal.

The new building, right in the heart of Downtown Oakland!

Here are some recent photos of the space. We haven’t moved in yet, but these will give you an idea of the kind of space we’re working with. Lots of high windows and even higher ceilings to let in lots of light & give the space a relaxed, yet professional atmosphere. We’re eager to get in and start putting our own, Tech Liminal spin on the new building. Painting, furniture, art galleries and the ever present patter of energized typing.

We’ve got a crowdfunding campaign in full swing, and there’s still time for you to participate. Some of our friends and members are very generous, so you can look forward to some parties and other events in the coming year.

We appreciate everything you have contributed. All of it is going to make this a better and brighter space, whether you’re sponsoring an event, or just kicking in a little something, all of it is making a difference! Please help spread the word on the social network of your choice. We’re over the half way there, and we want to call upon your help for the final push! Your support is what makes Tech Liminal possible!

Thank you!

Check out the full gallery of out new space here

And, just in case you missed it the first time: Participate in our Crowdfunding Campaign.

The post Yes, We’re Really Moving! appeared first on Tech Liminal.

Call or Email us

Phone: (510) 832-3401

Email: Info@TechLiminal.com

 

How does it work?

This special offer is for when you need help getting something specific done.

Once you call or fill out the form,  we will schedule an in-person or phone session with one of our staff to help you complete your task.

How much does it cost?

The first hour costs $50, and will result in either a completed project or an estimate for the remainder of the work. We will base our estimate on our regular hourly rates.

Call us at (510) 832-3401. We look forward to working with you.

What is NOT included?

This is an opportunity for you to get help with common web marketing tasks and save your business precious time.

The following items are not included in the $50 initial consultation:

• Site Design changes, unless they are already built into your theme
• Creation of new graphics or photos
• Custom programming work
• Troubleshooting hacked websites

The post From Stressed to Stellar – Get Your Holiday Marketing Done appeared first on Tech Liminal.

Here are three sliders I find myself coming back to for their easy flexibility and simple application. I rated each of them for comparison. There are other, more specialized sliders out there, but these are three quality, general purpose sliders I use in many web sites.

Portfolio Slideshow Pro:

Multi-instanced: 4.5/5

Portfolio Slideshow allows you to create sliders from images attached to a post.  It is quite easy to create several separate galleries, though the formatting & settings for them is universal, so you can’t have two radically different galleries with just this plugin. This is true of almost all gallery and slider plugins, so it’s no surprise.

Visual Appeal: 3.75/5

It doesn’t bring a huge range of flexibility, but the options to show thumbnails, prev/next, image counters (or not) makes it useful for a wide range of purposes. Since the short code pulls from a post/page/slideshow’s ID, it can be put anywhere on your site.

Ease of use: 4.5/5 (3/5 for the free version)

For best results with Portfolio Slideshow Pro, upload images to the slideshow section that is added in. It then gives you a code you can paste into any page to display the slideshow.

You can also simply use a page’s or post’s gallery, but that is trickier, as you have to find the post/page’s ID in the url of your edit screen, like so:

this is slightly annoying, but perfectly functional.

The free version only has the second option, which means you’ll have to do a little bit more work, which is time consuming but won’t reduce the functionality of this version.

Support: 5/5

The support is definitely there. It’s built into the back end in a section explaining the short codes, and includes a video detailing the plugin, with links. Most anything you need to know about using the plugin can be found here.

Cost: $19

Though there is a Free version of this plugin, with most of the basic functionality, the free version is functional, if slightly less user friendly in places. (There is also a developer version, which mostly gives you one that can be used on as many sites as you want, for $49. It provides you with no additional features.)

Overall: 4.25/5 (4.0/5 for free version)

Portfolio Slideshow is a well documented, functional plugin. It can be used all over a site for multiple displays with easy. A few controls aren’t intuitive, but with a bit of reading this wont be a hindrance.

Easing Slider:

Multi-instanced: 1/5

Easing Slider is a more specialized plugin. You can have only one slider per site.  It also limits the number of images you can display to 12.

Visual Appeal: 4.5/5

To counter that, Easing Slider is a very pretty plugin and appeals to the user seeking the concept of minimal yet functional style for their page. It makes a great homepage slider, or would work well if  you want to display featured content. Slider Border dimensions and colors are among the basic options so you don’t have to explore the CSS to get the look & feel you want

Ease of use: 3.5/5

While it is very easy to use, I feel that the uploading process is unnecessarily tedious and unwieldy.

Support: 5/5

The slider section has a link to http://rivaslider.com which gives good support for all of your questions and contains a contact form for specific questions that you may need helps with.

Cost: Free

Overall: 3.75/5

Besides from being single instance, the Easing Slider is an excellent free slider option. It looks nice, has a flexible appearance, and is a great way to show off some great images. Particularly good for artists, designers, and anyone who wants to show off beautiful images.

NextGen Gallery & Slideshow:

Multi-instanced: 4/5

The NextGen Slider is capable of handling a very large number of images and sorting them among Galleries to be displayed in the groupings you need.

Visual Appeal: 2/5

Simple and to the point. There isn’t a lot you can customize about it without getting into serious CSS, but if all you need is a basic slider it needs very little work to get it up and running.

Ease of use: 4/5

While you must upload images to NextGen separately from the Media Library, once they are in the gallery they are easy to sort and re-arrange. It can be used in widgets as easily as pages with the widget that comes with the plugin.

Support: 3/5

Support is spotty, and mostly consists of forms on WordPress.org and a few sites focused on the plugin. Most information can be found with a Google search, but it isn’t placed at your finger tips like other slideshows. There are also several other plugins that synch with NextGen Gallery to give you more options with your images

Cost: Free

Overall: 3.75/5

A good free plugin for images, though not outstanding. Simple and functional, NextGen Slideshow is an add on plugin to NextGen Gallery. It’s one of several add ons that are designed to improve your ability to handle images over your site.

While it’s not the best slideshow, this plugin’s use comes in its easy integration with your site and its gallery functionality.

The post Sensible Sliders for Your WordPress Website appeared first on Tech Liminal.