Dave Nelson | SecretPenguin Blog

Earlier this year in March, HDR and the City of Omaha hosted a series of meetings to involve the community to get input for the new Downtown 30 Year Master Plan. It was a great idea, however not everyone could make it.

Beth Katz thought there could be another way for those people to give input that can’t make it to the meetings (prior engagements, work nights, night class, have kids, etc.).

OmahaDowntownPlan.com
So that following morning, we developed a quick website in time for the next meeting. This site offered the community a way to leave comments and watch the presentations as they’re happening or at a later date.

Over 200 people tuned in to watch the live video.
Over 300 people have watched the videos at a later date.
And 114 comments were left on the website.

Omaha World Herald did an article on what we had done.
(Check out the photo! Perhaps it should have been a photo of Beth Katz or the website, but I like that they used a photo of our penguin. ha!)

Our hope was to help the city utilize technology and design as a way to be more inclusive and have more community members involved.

And they have!

Beth Katz, Craig Moody and I met with Jed Moulton (Manager of Urban Design) and Steve Jensen (Director of City Planning) from the city to talk more about the next steps.

Since then, we helped Environment Omaha set up a Ustream account and they streamed a presentation live for people that couldn’t make it.

And last night was the Presentation of the Master Plan, and the city had set up their own website with a public forum and streamed the meeting live.

Yay!

Through skateboarding and being a part of Divvy (the design co-working space), I learned a lot about community vs. competition.

At Divvy, we were a community. We all learned a ton from working and sharing with each other, and all of our businesses grew. We didn’t leave anyone behind.

On the flipside with cut-throat competition, people suffer. There’s some shop rivalry among skateboard shops in Omaha. With this cut-throat attitude, I’ve seen skateboard shops talk poorly about other shops and their riders and it hurts themselves (some have put themselves out of business), hurts the skateboarders involved and makes it hard to put on large events together. All in all, it makes the skateboard community suffer.

I believe when we can all get along, we can all work together to build a better community as a whole… come together on events, educate the importance of design and it’s process, and simply learn from each other.

Matt mentioned a good point in his BIGOmaha post a while back,

“Cut-throat competition is dead. Undermining your competition is a disservice to your community. We can all benefit if we commit to helping each other thrive.”

This is one of the reasons we put out The Paper Family for anyone to use. It has helped us stay organized as we continue to grow, and we were hoping it can be useful to help others grow.

We’ll be posting more of the family soon. We would love to hear any feedback… suggestions, if it’s helped you, etc. Leave a comment below, or email us at thepaperfamily@secretpenguin.com

Thanks everyone! We love being a part of this community.

Matt and I recently flew out to LA for a photoshoot of our new client, Dr. Lisa. Andrew Marinkovich from Malone and Co shot the photos (and did an amazing job).

The first night we went there, Kurt Daradics called and invited us to the Web TV Meet Up at Mania TV. Jeff Slobotski from Silicon Prairie News introduced us the day before.

The next day we stopped by to meet with Kevin Imamura at the Nike SB offices in Culver City.

That night we stayed with our friends Richard and Sarah Mulder. They took us to a delicious Mexican restaurant. They are the nicest people. Thanks again guys!

We woke up the next day and visited our friend Anthony Carney at RVCA. There was so much good artwork all throughout that place.

The photoshoot with Dr. Lisa was on that next Saturday and it went really well. It was almost all day, and she did great. It was really fun hanging out with her and her boyfriend Roland Osborne and their friends.

The next day, I went down to The Sanctuary and grabbed lunch and coffee. Everyone from The Sanctuary is so genuine and nice. I love seeing them.
(Pictured above: Ben Cerullo, Jay Haizlip, Me, Nic Couillard and Christian Hosoi)

Nic Couillard, an old friend that I grew up skating with, works for Incase out there and I got to see him and his wife, Ayako. It was super fun to skate and hang out again.

This was a fun trip. I can’t wait to go back and see everyone again. Thanks to everyone that we hung out with and worked with!

We’re excited to be sponsoring this upcoming art show of underground Omaha artists. I was always the most inspired by underground art… skateboard graphics, street art, etc.

Mighty, Jeff King, Powell, Miss Cake and special guests: Andrew Hershey and Amy Morin.
Feb 7-22 at the gallery at Bancroft Street Market (10th and Bancroft)

Opening Reception: Sat, Feb 7. 7-10pm

Open Forum: Wed, Feb 18. 7-9pm

A while back I agreed to do an interview for former Mayor, Hal Daub about his support of Robert’s Skatepark for the upcoming election of Mayor.

I later found out that it was a bit controversial if he really supported it in the first place, and this concerned me since the reason I agreed to do it was because I’ve always vowed to help anyone out that has helped support skateboarding in Omaha… especially during a time when skateboarding wasn’t widely accepted.

I wanted to know the full story, so Hal invited me up to his office to talk about it. He was quick to give the credit to Marc Kraft, which was nice to see. We worked a lot with Marc, and the skatepark would not have happened without him.

Hal ended by basically saying it was passed while he was in office. If he was really against it, it wouldn’t have passed. He was very kind, very respectful and surprisingly down to earth when we met.
I was impressed.

His campaign talked with us at SecretPenguin about doing their design work, but they continued to want spec work and we decided to pull out. They then went with hiring an out of town agency.

This was a bit odd to me. Why hire a non-local agency for a local election? I’m not concerned that they didn’t hire us, I’m more concerned that they outsourced the work.

I later met up with my friend, Gary Di Silvestro. Without his help as well, there would be no skatepark in Omaha. He worked side by side with all the skateboarders, and helped organize us and get us in contact with the people of the city.

I found out he was helping with Jim Suttle’s campaign, and I had the opportunity to meet with Suttle and he was a very nice guy. I was impressed with his hard work on getting the venues to be able to stay open for people under 21 to enjoy live music.

Music is one of the many things that makes Omaha such a great place to live, and I really liked his approach on this issue.

Suttle already had branding and a website, but they needed some help on a separate website about Suttle’s vision for the future of Omaha and how the local election effects you, and after talking and learning more about what Jim Suttle is about, we were happy to work with them.

It just makes sense for a candidate for Mayor to hire local businesses for a local campaign. That’s something I can definitely support.

Jim Suttle, you have my vote.

Here’s the website we created, OmahaNext.com

The PLAY page is my favorite, with the skateboarder rolling across and doing a kickflip.

I just received the project schedule for the new public skatepark from Joan Baillon, Special Projects Coordinator of Omaha Parks, Recreation and Public Property…

• Wed 10/1/08 - Execute D/B Contract
• Fri 10/10/08 - Phase 1-Design 60%
• Mon  11/3/08 - Phase 2-Construction
• Thurs 1/15/09 - Winter Shut Down
• Wed 4/1/09 - Mobilize
• Thurs 4/2/09 - Grading
• Wed 4/15/09 - Utilities
• Thurs 4/23/09 - Footings/Foundation
• Mon 5/4/09 - Skate Bowls/Structures
• Mon 6/1/09 - Perimeter Flatwork
• Mon 6/15/09 - Landscaping
• Wed 6/24/09 - Punch list
• Fri 6/26/09 - Substantial Completion
• TBA - Grand Opening

Brad Siedlecki from Pillar Action Sports Development sent me the plans and said we’re limited on budget, but wanted to know if there’s any tweaks I think could be added.

I talked with Kelly McManus (a local skateboarder and friend) and we came up with a couple ideas. I wanted to consult with Jeff Chase too (he helped design the first park here as well, and helped with Cream City Skatepark), but he was out of town, and we needed to get this back to Brad asap.

Here’s the original plans with a few of our thoughts in red, plus a drawing for the new center piece along the strip:

Click to enlarge

Brad said he liked the ideas, and will incorporate them. I’m really excited for this park, and to be working with such a great skatepark designer. Huge thanks to the City of Omaha and to Pillar Action Sports Development!

Looks like our friends at Silicon Prairie News are making some headway of a coworking space of their own.

Around 2004/2005, Ryan Sorensen (art director at Bozell) called me up and started talking to me about a shared space concept for Omaha.
It sounded interesting, and I knew I had to get out of the house and be around people. I was going crazy not interacting with people outside of the internet during the working day.

I ran the idea by Adam Nielsen (owner of Good Twin) and John Henry Muller (owner of What Cheer), and they both seemed very interested.
John Henry was currently working as Art Director at Sacco, and was planning on doing his own thing. He wanted to use the shared space as a legitimate place to work and bring clients, and felt it was essential to have to start his business.

Ryan Sorensen, Adam Nielsen and John Henry Muller.

We started meeting every Thursday for almost 6 months. We kept it just the four of us to make it easy. We wanted to do this on our own without going into debt and owing any loans.

We covered every topic in planning… finances, ethics, times, cleaning, etc.
Ethics was a huge topic… we were essentially competitors working in the same space. We had a lot of things to hash out.

We got everything worked out, and finally found a space that seemed perfect. Cheap rent, great location, open area for everyone to work, a meeting room and space to expand, however it needed A LOT of work.

John Henry scraping the tile off the wood floors. (I think this was Adam’s idea. I remember being annoyed that he wanted to scrape all of this, but in the end the wood floors were beautiful. Thanks Adam!)

Divvy Collective all cleaned up!

Check out more photos of Divvy on Flickr.

John Henry came up with the name Divvy.
And we all worked on logos and taglines for it, as well as the website, divvycollective.com

We summed it up as,

“We are not an advertising agency or a design firm. We are a group of creatives that have come together to share space.”

Overall, it was a huge success. We started out with 4 people sharing space, and ended with 8 people all coworking together (Shannon Wall, Matt Linder, Chris Kollars and Cody Peterson). It was a great time.

We all learned a ton from each other. Tips on how to run your business, different brainstorming methods, working in a team environment where everyone has different goals, and so much more.

At the end, everyone’s business had at least doubled, and we walked away with Divvy making a profit.

I’m excited to see the guys at Silicon Prairie News revisit this idea and create another coworking space in Omaha. Keep it up guys!

We re-released a shirt and made a new logo shirt for Black Friday. Thanks to everyone that came out!

I wasn’t expecting to sell through the shirts so quickly, so we’re putting together a December order and will get those in before the holidays. There’s still a few shirts like the one Chad Tim Tim is wearing above available online.

Thanks for the support everyone!

Jay Haizlip from The Uprising wearing a SecretPenguin shirt.

Actor, Stephen Baldwin wearing a SecretPenguin shirt.

ps - If anyone has any photos of themselves wearing SecretPenguin shirts, email them to me and I’ll put them up online.

My dad told me this again the other day. It’s something my Mom’s dad told him…

“Worrying doesn’t help anyone.
Never be worried… be concerned,
and then take action.”

I love that. I wish I could have gotten to know my Grandpa before he passed on.

On a side note, the other night, Sara Jean and I went skateboarding downtown.

We took the elevator up to the top of a parking garage.

Here’s Sara Jean ducking under as we go down.

When we got to the bottom, security was waiting to escort us out.
At least this guy was a little older. It’s always a bit awkward/funny when security guards younger than you kick you out for skateboarding.

I made a website directed towards the people that are voting for McCain because of the abortion issue, and why they should take a second look at Obama.

I feel kinda dorky talking on a video, but I thought it might get some people’s attention that know me through ministry.

There are so many reasons why I’m voting for Obama… I believe the way he runs his campaign is a testament to his character, I appreciate the way he thinks through each answer, his ability to inspire and unite people, and so much more.

If you are a person of faith and you’re not considering Obama, I urge you to take a look at this site and check the facts.

WhyIAmVotingForObama.com

Thanks.