Geoff has been extremely active with Refresh for a while now – he gave a fantastic presentation, helped moderate our recent panel discussion and was also a big help with encouragement while organizing Web Design Day.  Some of you may know him from twitter or his blog.

Refresh Pittsburgh has grown remarkably fast in the last year and it’s becoming harder to keep things organizing and running smoothly.  With Geoff’s help we’ll be getting better at having regular monthly meet-ups and other events.

We should have an announcemnt shortly for the upcoming June meet-up, as well as better information on future meet-ups and other Refresh Pittsburgh doings.

So, join me in offering a big welcome to Geoff!

Message boards will be upgraded this week – you may need to re-register.

Hoping to get a redesign going soon too.

Yay!

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!

The more questions we get, the easier it will be to get the panel off to a good start and encourage discussion between our panelists, moderator and attendees.

Check out the meeting announcement for more information on the next Refresh Meetup, Feb. 26th at AIP.

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!

We still have at least 3 openings on our panel.  If you are interested in being on the panel, please email me, Jason Head, to let me know of your interest.  We’re shooting to have the next Refresh the last week of February, so let me know asap!

The plan is to have a list of moderated questions and also questions submitted through our website, and additional questions depending on where the discussion leads.

Also, if you would like to submit a question for our panelists you can also email me with those too!

I’m slowly, but surely, gearing up for 2009. I’ve started organizing the upcoming Refresh Pittsburgh events, but can use a little help.

I’ve put together a short survey that I hope you can take the time to fill out to help me get a better idea of how Refresh is doing and how we can improve in the new year.

Check out the survey and let us know how we are doing!

• Observations on Client Relationships, Val Head
• Typography is the Foundation of Web Design, Samantha Warren

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.

“Design Process in a Nutshell“, Olivia Blonde

“CSS Combiner“, Isaac Gierard