Meet the People Of Vingo / Up Your Media

Dan LaRocque has been a creative industries and media entrepreneur since he moved to Vancouver in 1991, with experience as a writer, musician, video producer and radio programmer. He’s been studying search engine techniques since the mid ‘90s and has skills as a web designer, developer and marketer. He’s written for Exclaim, Vice and Euphony magazines and has contributed reviews, interviews and essays for CFRO, CHUO and CBC radio.

He first fell in love with Vancouver island in 1988 after hitchhiking his way from Ottawa to Yellowknife, to the Sunshine Coast and finally to Protection Island off Nanaimo. He spent a month camped in a vacant lot and regularly ferried into town to busk Commercial Street and eat in the cafes around the Bastion. The lifestyle and the pace of the Islands were suited to his character, but it wasn’t until 2000 that he made a final move to the area around Parksville BC.

Dan regularly travels the length and breadth of the island as a member of the Apple Consultants Network and independent mobile Macintosh technician. His professional territory runs from Ucluelet and Tofino to Victoria, Nanaimo, Duncan, Comox and Campbell Rver and he knows each curve of the road and coffee shop around.

He enjoys good food and loud music, hotel sheets, hot tubs, and rough camping. He’s a cursed fisherman but keeps trying, loves to hike, canoe and lay on the beach.

Shirra Wall is the graphic designer and video host for Up Your Media bringing 10 years of Photoshop and Illustrator experience to the team. She was the designer and head honcho of Shining Sun Gardenworks for six years, a metal art manufacturer based in Parksville BC. By the time she sold the company in 2008, she had grown the cottage business to include 300 + wholesale accounts in North America, and online sales of $60,000 per year.

She enjoys mountain biking, art and design, hiking, shopping, kayaking, tubing Mount Washington and enjoying everything Vancouver Island has to offer with her 2 beautiful sons.