Refresh Pittsburgh

The next Refresh Pittsburgh Meet-up will be on Thursday, February 26th at 7:00 pm. We’ll be at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

AIP is located downtown at 420 Boulevard of the Allies. We’ll be in room 740. Note that this is a different room than our usual one! There may be a security guy at the door – if there is just let him know you are there for the Refresh Pittsburgh meetup.

We’ll be trying a different format for this meeting – we’ll be having our first panel discussion. The topic will be “Surviving a Recession as a Web Professional” it will be moderated by our good pal Geoff Barnes from Elliance.

We are asking that you help us out by submiting questions in advance by emailing me at gjhead@refreshpittsburgh.org. We expect the discussion to take a life of it’s own, but anything questions in advance will help us plan!

We have a good mix of people on the panel:

Lauren DeMichiei is a Project Manager & Designer for her own Orionvega, LLC. Her company is a video, web and print design production house focusing on creative ideas and innovative media to attract and target the desired market. There are 4 partners in the company and 2 part-time employees.

Joshua Powell is the lead senior web developer at PixelTalent. He has been designing and developing websites since 2005. Over the past several years he has worked for and collaborated with architectural & construction companies, automotive organizations, schools, universities, health organizations, pharmaceutical companies, artists, design firms, advertising agencies and photographers. He is proficient in designing and developing solutions in a range of software packages and platforms. Joshua works primarily with open source packages like Drupal and WordPress. He has also create many specialized solutions based on PHP, MySQL, jQuery, XML, Flash, ActionScript and AJAX often combining several of these technologies to fit specific needs.

Joshua worked for Actual Size Creative in Pittsburgh, PA, before striking out on his own forming DevelopedSimple and joining PixelTalent.

Nicholas Zographos is the President of Nezen Creation, LLC. Nezen Creation specializes in custom web application development, including ecommerce, content management systems and online applications using PHP and MySQL. They are also a full service web consultancy, providing web design, marketing, and consulting services to businesses of all sizes.

John R. Carman is a Communication Designer/CEO & Founder of AJAX Street, Inc. John serves as a communication designer and social media consultant for my consulting firm, Avenue Design Studios, as well as co-founder of AJAX Street, a software startup at AlphaLab.

S. Scott Connelly, Freelance Software Engineer/CTO & Founder of AJAX Street, Inc is a freelance software engineer and co-founder of AJAX Street, a software startup at AlphaLab.

As always, please RSVP to gjhead@refreshpittsburgh.orgso we can get a good idea of our headcount! We look forward to seeing you on Thursday!

I’m happy to announce the next Refresh Pittsburgh meet-up is scheduled for Thursday, November 13th at 7:00pm. We have a really awesome lineup and a fantastic speaker from out of town. We’re really proud of the night we have lined up.

This month’s meet-up will be hosted by our friends at AlphaLab. AlphaLab is located at AlphaLab is located at 2325 East Carson Street in the historic Southside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Click here for a map and directions.

AlphaLab is a catalyst for launching the next generation of software, entertainment technology and Internet-related companies. Created by Innovation Works, one of the nation’s most active seed-stage investors, AlphaLab provides funding, hands-on business assistance, access to a network of entrepreneurs and expert advisors, and free office space as part of an intensive 20-week program in Pittsburgh. AlphaLab helps companies rapidly develop their technology, gain user feedback from early product releases, develop go-to-market strategies, and move toward successful commercial launch.

Presentations

Val Head is a Senior Designer/Developer at New Perspective and is also the brains behind the FlashPitt conference. She’ll be presenting “Observations on Client Relationships and How We Deal with Them”. She’s also provided us with one of the most colorful topic descriptions: The relationship between the designer, or developer, and client can be complicated. They can make you want to dance in the streets, or stab yourself in the eye. Val will talk about some common relationship patterns and how we to make the best of them.

You can read more about Val at her blog thisisportable.com.

Next, we’re really happy to be joined by Samantha Warren. Samantha is a web designer and typophile at Viget Labs, an all inclusive web agency outside of Washington, DC. In addition to being a board member of the Art Directors Club of Washington, DC she also teaches part time at Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts DC campus. In her spare time she updates her blog BadAssIdeas.com.

Samantha will present “Typography is the Foundation of Good Web Design”. She will illustrate how typographic legibility, hierarchy, and expression contribute to the success of a design through a step by step web-site redesign.

You can find out more about Samantha and the cool work she does at her blog BadAssIdeas.com as well as the Viget Inspire blog.

Please RSVP!!

As usual, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org so that we have a good idea of our headcount. It’s especially important for this meet-up as I need to get a headcount to AlphaLab a day in advance.

Hi everyone! I’m happy to announce the next Refresh Pittsburgh meet-up is scheduled for Wednesday, October 8th at 7:00pm. Like our last meet-up, This month’s meeting will be downtown at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

AIP is located downtown at 420 Boulevard of the Allies. We’ll be in room 440. Take the gold elevator up to the fourth floor. Take your first right and the room will be a few doors down on the left. There may be a security guy at the door – if there is just let him know you are there for the Refresh Pittsburgh meetup.

A HUGE thank-you goes out to our friend Norm Huelsman for offering to host a Refresh meeting at AIP.

Presentations

We have three presentation on tap for this one:

Michael Fulk is a an interactive developer at Wall to Wall and also does freelance work as Future Designs. He’ll be presenting “Bending the Pipes” – which will give us a crash course on making mashups, feeds and recombining web content with Yahoo Pipes and Dapper.

Next, Olivia Blonde is a web designer at the University of Pittsburgh and previous worked at the Carnegie Libraries where she was responsible for the redesign of the Carnegie Library website. She’ll present “Design Process in a Nutshell”. Each designer — or design group — develops a method for solving problems, then evolves that method over time. While no one person or group may view a problem from the same perspective, general similarities often appear in their approach. Olivia’s presentation will take us from requirements to concepts to design and to hand off.

Finally, Isaac Gierard, a new media developer at Elliance with be showing off a recent project of his, a “CSS Combiner”. Isaac will give a brief introduction to a recently developed open source CSS preprocessor for combining multiple CSS files into on and it’s benefits for website performance.

Also, we’ll be giving away one free pass to the Flashpitt conference taking place the following Friday!

Please RSVP!!

As usual, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org so that we have a good idea of our headcount. I’ll make sure to bring the usual cookies and coffee too.

the next Refresh Pittsburgh meet-up is scheduled for Wednesday, July 16th at 7:00pm. This month’s meeting will be downtown at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

Did you catch that? Let’s make sure you read that again: This month’s meeting is at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh – no Treehouse this month!

AIP is located downtown at 420 Boulevard of the Allies. We’ll be in room 440. Take the gold elevator up to the fourth floor. Take your first right and the room will be a few doors down on the left. There may be a security guy at the door – if there is just let him know you are there for the Refresh Pittsburgh meet-up.

A HUGE thank-you goes out to our friend Norm Huelsman for offering to host a Refresh meeting at AIP.

Presentations

We have a really cool lineup for this month’s meeting. Here is what you can expect:

Nathan Swartz of clicknathan and is one of those freelance web designer-types living and breathing in Pittsburgh, PA. When not indenting <p> tags or cursing IE6, he likes long walks through the city with his son and wife or enjoying summer afternoons at the Harris Grill in Shadyside. On Wednesday night, Nathan will be sharing some of the lesson’s he’s learned from being a full-time freelancer in “How to Work from Your Underwear: Some Freelancing Tips for Web Designers“. You can find out more about Nathan at his blog or a recent feature on freelance switch.

Jonathan Brodsky graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2005 with a degree in design. He now spends his days working on web development, and nights as a musician and artist. Jon will be showing tools for programmers to improvise live music and visuals using text editors and code as their instruments. This practice, generally referred to as “livecoding”, is about exposing the audience to the mechanics of a computer based performance. He’ll also give a demo of a livecoding tool that he is developing in javascript and openGL. Read more about Jon at his website.

Finally, Geoff Barnes is currently the Senior Information Architect at Elliance, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based e-marketing agency. From 2005-2007, Geoff was the UI Engineer for Collaborative Fusion, a Pittsburgh-based consultancy to state and federal emergency management authorities. Geoff has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Oregon. In 1999, Geoff co-founded San Francisco web firm Trendmedia, Inc., and came to Pittsburgh in 2001 to help create the Media Arts BFA at Robert Morris University, where he served as a full-time faculty member until 2005.

Geoff will present “What Purpose IA?”. What is the purpose of a marketing website? While marketing websites are more application-inclusive than ever, the fundamental marketing task of persuasion is still the purpose nexus of any marketing-driven website. The site’s IA needs to go beyond content organization, and embody the persuasive goals driving the project. The difference between creating systematic order and creating a systematically ordered, compelling argument is often the difference between a me-too site and a persuasion machine. Learn how to protect your client’s marketing objectives with purpose-driven discovery and IA.

Please RSVP!!

We think we have a great lineup for the next meeting and we’re really looking forward to it.

As usual, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org so that we have a good idea of our headcount. I’ll make sure to bring the usual cookies and coffee too.

With the Easter holiday arriving a bit early this year, it’s resulting in scheduling the next Refresh Pittsburgh meeting one week later than usual. Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, April 1st at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

To start the evening, Pat Collins will present “CakePHP: Rapid Application Development with PHP”.

Why learn a new programming language when you can use your existing PHP skills to become a better coder and increase your productivity? Let Pat show you how to build a blog application in no time, and how you can help!

Then, Val Head will be presenting “A, B, C, D-esign!“

Val’s presentation will be a discussion of the basic building blocks of design as they apply to designing fo the web. She’ll show examples of concepts like colour, typography and hierarchy and talk about how these fit in to a web page design.

As usual, if you would like to show off a recent project or pose a few questions to our group, please let us know and we’ll fit you in.

We’ll make sure to provide a good supply of coffee and cookies and other sweets to get you through the night.

RSVP

Please RSVP to info at refreshpittsburgh dot org, to let us know if you will be joining us. We need to make sure we have enough seats and most importantly, coffee and cookies! And by all means, please pass this invite around.

Directions

To get to the Creative Treehouse, please visit our directions page. It’s a very short drive. If anyone needs a ride or has some extra room in their car, please post on our message board to connect with some other folks.

It’s time to kick off the new year for Refresh Pittsburgh. We’re excited about some of the topics we have lined up, and we’re going to jump right in with our next meet-up.

Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, February 26 at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

Cynthia Closkey from Big Big Design will be presenting “Google-Friendly Blogging in Five Easy Steps.” She’ll be discussing basic search engine optimization for WordPress — and by extension, other blog tools. There are lots of misconceptions about SEO in the first place, and there are some simple steps one can take to improve one’s search ranking.

Next, Jeff Hunter, organizer of Devhouse Pittsburgh will be presenting introduction to Ruby. Jeff will show us what it is, why you may want to consider using it for your next project. When I asked Jeff if was interesting in presenting, I asked him to explain “What the heck is ruby and why do I keep hearing about it (and why do people yell at me when I confuse ruby and ruby on rails?!?)” So you can expect to get answers to those questions too!

Our friends at O’ Reilly Publishing have provided us with a few Ruby books as giveaways for the night as well.

Finally, if anyone would like to show off a recent project or pose a few questions to our group, please drop me line!

As usual, we should have a good supply of coffee and cookies and other sweets to get you through the night. Depending out what time we wrap up, we can try to take the conversation down to Affagoto’s.

RSVP

Please RSVP to let us know if you will be joining us. I need to make sure we have enough seats and most importantly, coffee!

Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, December 11th at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

We currently have 2 presentations for the evening:

First, Jason Head will be presenting “10 Ways to Provide Top-Notch SEO Without Doing any Extra Work!”^* Clients are always asking “how can I make it into the search engines”.  I’ll show you how you can get results for your client by following rules of web standards, good design and taking advantage of one or two free tools along the way.

(* Well, maybe a little bit of work…)

Next, Founding Developer and CEO of JoinSources, LLC, Don Charlton will be joining us to show a very impressive project he has been working on here in Pittsburgh: Join Sources. For his presentation, “Let’s JoinSources and Conquer Web Content” Don demos a new Web-based CMS meant to equally empower Web site developers, designers and their clients. They’re also giving away free hosting and CMS usage to 50 JoinSources recruits who develop a site on the beta platform.

I’ve seen a preview of the CMS and it’s a sharp product. While it’s always nice to see a creative and useful product developed in our own community, it’s even better when it’s something that we all may be able to put to great use. If you run a small business or do a good deal of freelance web-site work, you should make an effort to check this one out!

Finally, we would like to add an additional short presentation for the evening. If you would like to present on a topic or show off a recent project, please drop me a line!

As usual, we should have a good supply of coffee and cookies and other sweets to get you through the night. Also, if anyone would like to stick around after the meeting and take the conversation down to Affagoto’s that would be a good deal too!

Please RSVP to let us know if you will be joining us. I need to make sure we have enough seats and most importantly, coffee! And by all means, please pass the word along about our next meeting.

Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, October 24th at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

We currently have 2 presentations for the evening:

First, our good pal Josh Sager will be making a presentation titled “Rapid Design Techniques in Fireworks that make PhotoShop Jealous”. Rapidly create mock ups for web content with Fireworks CS3. Learn time saving tips for organizing multi version designs, reusable layout elements, generating web prototypes with only a few clicks, and easy integration with Adobe Flex.

Next, Val Head and Joe Kromer will be making a dual presentation on two new web technologies: “Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight. What are they and why should you care?”.

Joe and Val’s presentation will give you an overview of what each of these technologies are and talk about what impacts they’ve had on our industry so far. Then they will discuss their opinions — and hopefully some of yours as well — as to how these might impact you and your work in the near future.

Also, now that it’s nice and cool, we don’t expect to need nearly as many fans as we had at the last meeting! In fact, I’ll be providing some tasty hot coffee this time!

To get to the Creative Treehouse, please visit our directions page. It’s a very short drive. If anyone needs a ride or has some extra room in their car, please post on our message board to connect with some other folks.

If you will be attending, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org by October 23rd, so we have a good idea of how many attendees to expect. And by all means, please foward this invitation to anyone you like.

Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Thursday, September 6th at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

We currently have 3 presentation on tap for the evening:

Jason Head will start the evening by giving a review and a demo of  Wufoo. Wufoo describes itself as “an Internet application that helps anybody build amazing online forms”. I recently  found myself using Wufoo on the recommendation of a friend and I was extremely impressed. I’ll show you how easy it is to use not just for it’s  form processing, but also for it’s amazing form-builder. I’ll even remember the power-cord for my laptop this time!

Next, Val Head will be giving a presentation on “Fun with Definition Lists”. She’s going to show you  some valuable and neat CSS tricks to go along with this often-overlooked (x)html element.

Finally, Kevin German from the Pittsburgh-based company CastGrabber, LLC will be on-hand to  show off their extremely cool product “CastGrabber“. CastGrabber is an internet-appliance that allows you to download Podcasts,  anywhere in the world, directly to your iPod/MP3 player without the need for a PC. It’s a neat product that is being developed  right here in Pittsburgh.

It’s shaping up to be an interesting meeting with a little something for everyone. Like last time, we should have a few give-aways, hot coffee and maybe even some soda if I remember to pick it up this time!

To get to the Creative Treehouse, please visit our directions page. It’s a very short  drive. If anyone needs a ride or has some extra room in their car, please post on our message board to connect with some other  folks.

If you will be attending, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org by  September 4th, so we have a good idea of how many attendees to expect.

We’re excited to announce the next meeting of Refresh Pittsburgh!

Our next meeting will at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, July 25th at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue.

Jason Head will be starting the evening with a presentation on Mailbuild. He’ll show you how to use their service to create newsletter templates for your clients. Mailbuild allows your client to use it’s easy CMS-like system to create e-mail newsletters based on templates you design. It also allows you to to generate income every time they send a campaign.

Josh Sager will be presenting “Web Comics on the Internet: From Analog to Digital”. Learn more about web comic process from concept and Illustration to scanning and publishing. Leveraging technologies like MySQL, PHP, Blogger, XHTML, and CSS you can create a CMS to support your drawing, sketching, or art habit.

We’ll also have one copy each of NetNewsWire, FeedDemon and TopStyle Pro to give away, thanks to our friends at Newsgator.

To get to the Creative Treehouse, please visit our directions page. It’s a very short drive. If anyone needs a ride or has some extra room in their car, please post on our message board to connect with some other folks.

If you will be attending, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org by July 23rd, so we have a good idea of how many attendees to expect. And by all means, please forward this information to anyone you like.

If you are not on our mailing list, you can view our most recent newsletter.  Please check it out for additional group news and information.