Refresh Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Web Design Day is a one-day, local web design conference to highlight local talent as well as those with strong ties to Pittsburgh who have gone on to be leaders in our industry. Web Design Day features a number of high-end web design presentations, a tasty lunch catered by our friends at Franktuary and a great networking opportunities – all in a professional (and totally sweet) meeting space!

Registrations are $75 for the day, strictly limited to 90 people. Last year’s registrations sold old very quickly. We keep the registrations limited to ensure a comfortable as well as intimate event where you can network not only with other attendees, but also our speakers!

Registrations for Web Design day, 2010 are now open. You can register at our website: webdesignday.com !

This year’s lineup includes:

• Geoff Barnes, Director of User Experience for Elliance
• Margot Bloomstein, Brand & Content Strategy Consultant at Appropriate, Inc.
• Chris Cashdollar, Creative Director for Happy Cog
• Jon Dascola, Interactive Designer for Elliance
• Matt Griffin & Michael Hellein, Co-founders of Bearded Studio
• Kevin Hoffman, User Experience Director for Happy Cog
• Elliott Munoz, Sr, Web Designer for The Washington Post
• Zack Naylor, User Experience Manager at Pikimal

We’re really excited to put on an event of this caliber, and are psyched for our speaker lineup this year.

Registrations are capped at 90 attendees, so register as soon as you can to avoid the waiting list!

Register at our website: webdesignday.com !

With only a week left for the conference early bird tickets, I figured now was the good time to send out an announcement about Flashpitt 2009.

Flashpitt will be held on Friday, October 16th 2009. This year, we’ll also be having a day of workshops on Thursday, October 15th too!

Flashpitt is a conference for interactive designers and developers. Flashpitt 2008 was Pittsburgh’s first major Flash-centric conference and we’re back for a second year, officially making it an annual event! Flashpitt is a great chance to take a break from the daily grind to network, learn, and recharge. It’s a large scale interactive conference – all without venturing too far from home. The event features four half-day workshops, followed by a day packed full of sessions. Each night also features a networking after party

This year’s speakers include:

• Ian Coyle, Superheroes
• Julian Dolce, of Fuel Industries
• Boris Pique, Lead Developer at Odopod
• Dan Mall, of Big Spaceship
• Seb Lee-Delisle, of Plug-in Media

And more! See the Flashpitt Speakers Page for more information.

Don’t let the name scare you!

Flashpitt is not just for flash developers. Creative professionals, developers, students, educators, artists and business owners working with and in the interactive industry should join us. Designers, developers and students looking to find inspiration, pick up new techniques, or network and meet industry leaders should attend. You get the idea. If you’re involved in the interactive and creative industry, Flashpitt is the event for you.

Take a look our sessions schedule. This years topics include “Hacking the Newsroom” by Jer Thorpe, “Flash and Web Standards: Getting Along on the Playground” by Dan Mall and “Plays Well with Others”, tips for design/developer workflow by Stacey Mulcahy.

Workshops

For those who are interested in getting more in-depth to some topics, we’re also having a day of workshops on October 15th. Topics include:

• Beginning ActionScript 3.0
• Flash Video and Flash Media Server
• iPhone Development for Flash Developers
• Intermediate ActionScript 3.0

View our sessions schedule for more details.

Registration

Early bird tickets are available only until September 13th! Register soon to ensure the early bird price.

Visit our registration page for pricing information on the conference as well as the individual workshops.

Thanks!

Thanks for your support of Refresh Pittsburgh. We hope to continue to help to put on great events like this in the future. We have a great community here – and we couldn’t do things like this if it wasn’t for you.

Pittsburgh Web Design Day will be held on Saturday, April 4th 2009 at Left Field Meeting Space.

Pittsburgh Web Design Day is a one-day, low-cost conference for web professionals in the Western PA region.  No high priced registration fees, no expensive travel  For a registration fee of $40 you get a full day of learning from Pittsburgh web gurus …and lunch!

Registrations will be open this week, but hurry: we’ll be limiting our attenance to 85 people!

Speakers include:

Geoff Barnes, Elliance 
Information Architecture as Storytelling

Christopher Cashdollar, Creative Director, Happy Cog 
Creative Springboard: What Web Design Can Learn from Magazine Design

Val Head, New Perspective 
“Getting Past the Blame Game” – Designer-Client Relations

Whitney Hess, User Experience Consultant 
Misconceptions in User Experience

Jason Robb, My Happy Planet 
“What the Wireframe?” – A Pragmatic Approach to Wireframes

Josh Sager, joshsagermedia.com 
The Story of a Web Project

Samantha Warren, Viget Labs 
Pimp Your Website!

Refresh Pittsburgh is really happy to be organizing such a great event.  We hope that our members enjoy it as much as we are going to!

Flashpitt is a one-day conference for multimedia designers, developers, and artists.  It will be held on Friday, October 10th, 2008.

It’s the first event of it’s kind in the Pittsburgh area.  National and international industry leaders will be present to share inside tips, new technologies and behind the scenes looks to Flashpitt’s attendees.  This event is not just for Flash developers; we have sessions for Designers, Web Developers and Students just starting out in the industry, too.

Usually, events like this are held in other cities, such as Chicago, New York, Boston, DC and other places.  Flashpitt is a conference based in Pittsburgh and hopes to become an annual event.  An impressive list of speakers are lined up and the schedule has something for everyone and consists of two tracks of sessions which will run from 9am until about 6pm.  (We’re particularly excited to see Dan Mall from Happy Cog!)

For more information and to purchase a ticket, please visit flashpitt.com.  We’re really looking forward to the conference and are very excited to help put on an event of this calabre here in Pittsburgh.  Please check out the schedule and join us on October 10th!

A reminder to all our members that this weekend is the 24 Hour Creative Marathon organized by our good buddy Josh Sager.  Some of you may remember Josh when he gave a great presentation on producing a web comic at our first meeting.

The 24 Hour Creative Marathon is a two-part event, beginning with a 24-hour artistic marathon and culminating in a gallery show and sale the following day. Beginning Friday, September 28th, at 8pm, artists will have 24 hours to create a piece of work pertaining to the theme “Lost and Found.” Registration is FREE for marathon participation.

It’s shaping up to be a really cool event for both makers of art and fans of art.  Visit the website for more information on how you can participate.

On a personal note, one of my door-shifts is late Friday night, so feel free to come out and talk about Refresh and maybe, um, bring some coffee!