UPEI alumnus follows prestigious career path

In 1999, at age 20, Daniel Burka enrolled in history and fine arts history at the University of Prince Edward Island, while balancing a full-time job as a web designer. Just months before enrolling, he had co-founded silverorange, a web agency in Charlottetown. Near the end of Burka's university studies, his work and client demands picked up so much so that he moved to Toronto and completed his courses at the University of Toronto. In 2005, after a prolonged undergraduate career, he graduated with his bachelor of arts in history with specific emphasis on British history.

'It was interesting to be a founder of a web agency in Charlottetown, just as the first internet bubble was bursting,' said Burka. 'I was fortunate to meet several friends in high school who were interested in the same pursuits as I was and we put together a small company with the goal of becoming a globally recognized web firm.'

As the bubble continued to burst, silverorange saw increased success and separated itself from the pack as companies started to focus on quality, instead of glitzy web experiences. Unlike weaker firms who started to go under, silverorange built up a solid clientele including government agencies, large e-commerce companies, and an alternative rock band, Sloan. silverorange won an award from the Neilsen Normal Group for intranet design, which helped put the company on the map.

In 2004, Steven Garrity, creative director at silverorange, caught the attention of Mozilla and before long, silverorange was voluntarily involved in the rebranding of the web browser, Phoenix, known today as Firefox. The team at silverorange was involved in the overall rebrand, and particularly contributed to the logo design. Burka drew the original marker-board sketch and got the chance to design the Mozilla.org website, from which Firefox was downloaded millions of times around the world.

'It's pretty cool to see the Firefox logo printed 40-feet across a billboard on the side of the freeway near Mountain View, California,' said Burka, who now resides in California.

Soon after silverorange's work with Mozilla went live, the team was contacted by US entrepreneur and television personality, Kevin Rose, who was starting a new web application aimed at democratizing the news, and he wanted help from silverorange. After a few months, the 'app' started gaining considerable traction; Rose raised a few million dollars from venture capitalists in San Francisco, and asked Burka to move to California to take on the role of creative director. After seven years at silverorange, Burka decided to take Rose up on his offer, and he moved to California where he became creative director of the well-known web application, Digg.

Burka worked at Digg for five years, during which time the site grew from a niche web start-up company, to one of the top 100 most visited websites in North America. When asked, Burka explained that it was an interesting ride to see the company grow from four to about ninety employees. He then decided to move on and pursue something new.

In 2009, Burka joined a small gaming start-up company created by Stewart Butterfield and other founders of the photo site Flickr. He worked with the team for a year and a half designing a massively multiplayer online game.

Then in 2011, Rose, Burka, and Jeff Hodsdon joined forces on a new venture, and founded Milk, a labs-style company to create several mobile projects. The first project they created was known as Oink, a mobile application for rating items at various locations. After only a few months of the app going live, the team discussed the project with some friends at Google. The Google team expressed an interest for the Milk team to join them to help with their mobile efforts. As of May 2012, Burka runs the Google design team responsible for creating mobile applications for the Google+ project.

UPEI congratulates Daniel on his exciting career and wishes him all the best in his future endeavours!