Whenever my daughter brings a piece of “artwork” home she pushes it in front of my face and wants an instant critique. Of course the drawing or painting always receives a glowing review from me and it immediately goes up on the fridge door.

It doesn’t have to look like a sailboat or a horse or resemble anything that she describes as being in the picture. Even if I have to squint my eyes and tilt my head to make out a shape, I’m still a proud poppa because my little girl did the artwork.

I feel a similar sense of pride when it comes to the eventIQ corporate website. I’m just so happy with the re-design that I feel the need to share.

Maybe you don’t build websites for a living and you may not notice a big difference. Every car has windows and doors, right? This website has words and pictures…so what’s the difference?

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During a bout of inspiration where I churned out some ElectionBuddy blogs, I was browsing the internet to see if I could find any tidbits on voting.

Bells started ringing in my head when I came across an article about a debate on whether the Park Slope Food Co-op in New York should have a referendum on having a vote. Confused? Watch the video below which gives a great overview of the issue facing the Co-op members.

To me, the question Co-op members voted on was interesting but so was the process. They used paper ballots with a simple yes or no question. Would online voting software like ElectionBuddy help move the process along? Votes were counted on site, behind yellow caution tape — talk about pressure!

And in cases where people want to debate an issue would they be better to have an off-site election after the debate, giving people a chance to calm down? Otherwise this makes for a long evening for everyone, but especially so when you have babysitters at home and a job to go to in the morning.

In the end the democratic process worked (I guess) as members had their vote on whether to have a vote and the final tally was….Total votes: 1,662. Votes in favor of a referendum: 653. Votes against: 1,005. The nays had it. Click here to read more.

Online voting has really gathered steam lately and now it appears even the Academy Awards will move to an online system for nominating excellence in the film industry.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences advised its 6,000 or so voting members that an online system for Oscar voting is being used for the 85th Annual Academy Awards, held next year.

As far as we know, Election Buddy isn’t the choice, though it suits almost any voting or election model. And we have over 250,000 ballots under our belt so people are finding us a useful service for everything from condo board elections to voting on a high school’s student council.

In the past, the Academy Awards voting has been done on paper ballots and sent through the U.S. mail. A small team of PricewaterhouseCooopers accountants tackled the tabulating duty.

The move to online nominations is a bit of a surprise move as the Academy is so steeped in tradition and is famous for going to great lengths to keep the nominees and winners a secret and so far this has never occurred, even in the age of Twitter and Facebook. So this shows how much confidence now exists in online voting processes.

We’re sure the Academy did it’s due diligence in picking the company to develop its online system, but I bet Election Buddy stacks up fairly well with whoever they use. In fact, Academy members, I bet one of those little gold statues that I’m right!

“Never vote for the best candidate, vote for the one who will do the least harm.”

– Frank Dane

The Design Studies Program at MacEwan University allows students to learn about design: Digital Media, Motion Image, Photography, Illustration and Exhibit Presentation. Every year, we have had the opportunity to work with one student from the program as an intern for three weeks to help the student with hands-on experience in the industry and how to deal with real-world problems.

Name
Kaitlyn Moore

Major
Illustration

College/University
Grant MacEwan

Internship Position
Graphic Designer

Tell us a little bit about your College/University experience
I started my first year of university at Grant MacEwan in the Design Foundations program and finished my diploma in design there with a major in illustration there. I loved going to the arts campus, it has such a different vibe than city centre. I also lived in the Grant MacEwan dorms for the first 2 years, which was fun for the first year, but wasn’t my favourite the second year. It’s been a good change coming from a small town to a big city, but it was nice to have my 2 best friends make the change with me.

What inspires you?
I’m inspired by other great designers, I love looking through books and different sites and finding different illustration or design that is well done. But, bad design also inspires me. There is too much awful design in the world so it’s really great to create something usable that is also interesting to look at.

What made you decide to intern with EventIQ?
When it came to picking an internship I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go so I talked to our program coordinator Dianne, and she suggested I go for an interview at EventIQ because it would be somewhere that I could work independently and have a lot of control over the projects I received.

What did you like most about EventIQ?
Honestly, not having homework when I got home. It’s really great to get up in the morning and go and do something you love, but then come home and be able to do something else you enjoy

What did you learn or gain from your internship?
I learned more about illustrator and creating type and expanding images in illustrator and about more about branding.

What did you consider as your biggest accomplishment during the internship?
Being able to choose what time I come to work and making it every day before 9 am. It was very tempting to sleep in more some days. I’m also pretty happy with some of the graphics I made or redid in Illustrator.

What is your future career aspiration?
I’d like to do corporate identity work, it’s exciting to create a logo and be able to carry that aesthetic throughout so many different pieces. I’d also like to try exploring a lot more types of design, like silk screening or stain glass making. There is always too much to do and too little time!

It’s been a pleasure to work with you Kaitlyn and everyone here at EventIQ wishes you good luck in your future career!

Check out Kaitlyn Moore and other design students during the MacEwan University Design Student Exhibition on Tuesday April 24, 2012. Click here to learn more about the exhibition.

In the movie Animal House, one of the most memorable scenes involves John Belushi sliding his food tray along the lunch buffet in the school cafeteria and piling layers of food on top of it.

Belushi packs his tray until it’s overflowing with every item he can get his grubby hands on including bananas, donuts and burgers. Then once his tray is overflowing, he stuffs his pockets with more food and finally, after a quick glance over his shoulder, slurps Jello right off the plate. No matter how many times I watch this scene, I still think it’s funny.

How things have changed — we are in a different era now where students are more health conscious and schools ban unhealthy food options. And now there’s a growing movement where cafeterias are going tray-less. Why are schools dropping their trays?

• Ditching diner trays means ditching the tons of plastic used in making them
• Eliminates the needs to waste gallons of water to wash them clean!
• Less food is wasted when you can’t just grab-and-go. Say goodbye to the “my eyes are bigger than my stomach” excuse.

Seems like going tray-less has a lot of upside to schools. The downside? Without trays, the scene from Animal House can’t be reenacted — I mean can you imagine a high school student willing to carry a surplus of dishes? And it’s likely you will never hear the words “food fiiight!” again.

For 250,000 Albertans, the provincial election is going to be the first time they get to vote and the election is shaping up to be on the most exciting in decades.

Early polls have two political parties tied in terms of popularity, most of the parties have new leaders and a new party is in the race this time so this election is much more exciting than previous ones. And students can play a pivotal role in who the election’s winner will be.

The Students’ Unions at the University of Alberta, University of Lethbridge, and University of Calgary want you to pledge to vote, so check out www.getoutthevote.ca to see how to register as a voter and how you can rally fellow students to vote as well.

A study from Elections Canada reports that that the decline of voter turnout among youth nationally is a long-term trend that started in the 1970s (only 44% of youth in the 18-24 age bracket voted in the 2008 federal election).

This is your chance to reverse the trend!

With all the controversy around “robocalls” in Canada recently, the ElectionBuddy team thought we would examine types of election fraud.

And while there’s plenty of rhetoric to read, we’re just like a dog with a bone when it comes to digging up good stories about voting and elections. Sure enough, we found a story we think will start tongues — and tails — wagging.

A New Mexico man wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to commit voter fraud so he registered his dog, Buddy, to vote. Watch the video below for the full scoop:

The man, whose name wasn’t used because he was granted anonymity by the local news station that sniffed this story out, admitted to making up a birth date and social security number. He submitted the paperwork and in two weeks he had a voter registration card in his hand for Buddy.

No word on whether the New Mexico clerk’s office is pursuing charges, but they sure aren’t barking up the wrong tree if they did.

What do mathematicians and magicians have in common? I’m not actually sure if there’s a right answer but I’m convinced there’s a connection.

Inventing a magic trick and inventing a theorem are very similar, so magicians and those who excel at math have a lot in common. Of course charisma and showmanship is what gets you a permanent show on the Las Vegas Strip like David Copperfield. Then there’s people like Arthur Benjamin, more math whiz than magical wizard; this guy doesn’t even have a hat with which to store a rabbit, much less performs card tricks and saw people in half. Benjamin though performs to packed houses and receives standing ovations from his audience at every performance.

Benjamin is known as a mathemagician; someone who is so brilliant at math that he mesmerizes his audience with nothing but a lightening-quick ability to calculate complex problems:

Benjamin, from what I’ve seen and read, doesn’t levitate or make the Statue of Liberty disappear like Copperfield did in his heyday. But, as you can see, that doesn’t make what he does any less amazing.