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On March 27, 2013 Local First held its 5th Annual Sustainable Business Conference. I was invited to speak on a panel about sustainability initiatives in business. My fellow panelists were Marcia Rapp of the Grand Rapids Community Foundation, Kris Spaulding of Brewery Vivant, and Matt VanSweden of Integrated Architecture. Bill Smith of CompuCraft was our panel’s moderator. Participating on…
It’s not every day that a new meetup group springs up in Grand Rapids, but it’s not an altogether uncommon occurrence, either. What is uncommon is the start of a group that gets me personally excited and draws a sizable crowd. It happened with the GR Web Dev group in early 2011, and now it’s…
Local First held its annual meeting and Local Motion awards on January 29, 2013 at the Goei Center in Grand Rapids. These awards recognize successful, sustainable local businesses in West Michigan. Atomic has sponsored this event for the last two years, and we were the proud recipient of Local First’s Change Agent award in 2011….
When others said it was too risky or a hardship to be in Detroit, we saw opportunity and a chance to be involved in change. So we announced our intentions in March and officially opened a new office in June. We’ve made our home in downtown Detroit on Randolph Street. It’s not your typical office…
“Have you ever thought about learning to program?” That’s the first sentence in a recent blog post by the Swedish game company Mojang, creator of the hit game, Minecraft. The post describes their recent and upcoming work to create a virtual environment where beginners can explore the power of programming on a low-cost, open platform….
I recently attended RubyConf 2012 in Denver, CO. I had a great time, and I learned a lot. While getting a clearer picture of the Ruby development community was interesting — particularly the tension among MRI, JRuby, Rubinius, etc. — the talks I keep thinking about were essentially language-independent.
Atomic has company shirts made for our employees and families every couple of years. We have a strong pride in our people, so clothing them seems like a good way to show it. You might think we would send off a design and be happy with whatever we got back. After all, we make software…
The evening of September 6th, Design West Michigan event was a panel discussion on “What is the difference between art and design?” The panel was moderated by Susan Szenasy, Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis, and consisted of Andrew Blauvelt, Design Director and Curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and Joseph Rosa, Director of the University…
The Gender Gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields and in Silicon Valley is a hot topic right now. We hear the same questions over and over, from many different directions: What are the causes of this phenomenon? What are the solutions? Is it even something we ought to be concerned about? (I won’t…
I’ve wanted to write about the merits of Detroit for a while now, and after having an especially disconcerting conversation with a close family friend, I’ve decided that now is the time. When I mentioned that Atomic Object was opening a Detroit office, my friend was shocked and incredibly negative about the viability of a…
Carl is the president and co-founder of Atomic Object