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 !

Here are slides and info from both of our speakers.

Norm Huelsman, “WordPress 3.0″

• Slides on Slideshare
• Audio files from Norm’s presentation
• normanhuelsman.com

Sean Geng, “The Future of Web Design”

• pdf file of Sean’s Slides
• Sean’s Website
• designmess.com

First, Norm Huelsman will be starting the evening with a review of WordPress 3.0.

WordPress 3.0 is scheduled for release on June 14th. Norm will be showing us what is new, and what has been improved. He will also review some of the new features including; multi-site, menus, installation, and child themes.

A co-organizer of Podcamp Pittsburgh, Norm is a long-time blogger at his site normhuelsman.com and a popular Magic: The Gathering blog, Casual Magic. During the day, Norm focuses on visual communication and branding in the PR department at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

Next, Sean Geng will be presenting, “The Future of Web Design”.

Web design is a fickle industry. In this constantly changing field, there are always new techniques being invented, and technology that is always being upgraded. In this presentation, he’ll cover topics including HTML 5, CSS3, designing for mobile devices (including the iPad), and some of the latest techniques. He’ll also showcase some upcoming trends and discuss what lies ahead.

Sean Geng is a freelance designer located here in Pittsburgh. He runs the online design community at Designmess. For more information, you can check out his website or follow him on twitter.

As always, please RSVP by sending an email to info@refreshpittsburgh.org or just let us know you are coming on the Facebook event page so we can plan accordingly!

Our next Refresh Meetup will be Thursday, May 6th.  We realize that there may be a Penguins playoff game this night, that’s why we’ll be kicking everything off at 6:00 PM in room 740 at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

AIP is located downtown at 420 Boulevard of the Allies. Take the gold elevator up to the seventh floor. Take your first right and the room will be a few doors down on the left. We’ll be in room 740. There may be a security guy at the door – if there is just let him know you are there for the Refresh Pittsburgh meetup.  As always, A HUGE thank-you goes out to our friend Norm Huelsman for offering to host a Refresh meeting at AIP.

We have a an interesting presentation this month.  Jon Dascola will be joining us and presenting:

“A Designer’s Take on Apple’s iPad SDK”

While Apple’s iPhone SDK provides a wealth of information for developers, designers are often at a disadvantage when it comes to getting started building mobile apps. I’ll talk about what documentation a designer should understand, the basics of application architecture and show working examples from an iPad app currently under development.

Jon Dascola is an Interactive Designer at Elliance, Inc in Pittsburgh PA.  You can learn more about him at his website or seek him out on twitter @dascola .

We look forward to seeing you all this Thursday!

• Slides on Slideshare
• Slides as PDF
• Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6 at Amazon.com

Drupal: A Content Management Framework
by Joshua Powell

• Slides on Slideshare
• Slides as PDF
• Using Drupal at O’Reilly
• Joshua’s Website

Please join us on Tuesday, January 26th at 7:00 pm for the next Refresh Pittsburgh meet-up.

This month well be back at one of our favorite locations, at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. AIP is located downtown at 420 Boulevard of the Allies. We’ll be in room 740. Take the gold elevator up to the seventh 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’ll be focusing on CMS’s for this meetup – and will be specifically highlighting Drupal, a popular open source CMS and Expression Engine, a non-open source CMS that is really picking up steam lately.

To start the evening, Joshua Powell will be presenting “Drupal: a Content Management Framework”

Josh’s presentation will cover:

• What Drupal Is & What It Isn’t
• Advantages & Disadvantages to Using Drupal
• How to Get Started Using Drupal

Joshua Powell is the designer, developer, and information architect for Developed Simple and is also a senior partner of Billions Now Living.

Next, Patrick Fulton will present “Better Know a CMS: ExpressionEngine”

Pat’s presentation will be a quick intro to ExpressionEngine, a PHP-powered CMS. He’ll discuss some of the positives and the negatives of it as well as why he’s chosen EE over other content management systems for specific projects.

Patrick Fulton is a front-end web developer at Elliance.

This month’s meet-up will be at Alphalab – located at 2325 East Carson St. in the Southside. (About a block away from the Doublewide Grill.) Check out some detailed directions.

This month, we’ll be hosting a panel discussion entitled “Flash, What is it Good For? – Where Does Flash fit on the Web?”.

Recently there has been a lot of buzz about the role of Flash online. With some well known Flash shops — like Big Spaceship — opting for a site that’s more blog than Flash and HTML 5 on the horizon there seem to be more and more speculation as to what will be the next Flash killer.  Have the times changed?  Has the Flash microsite been killed by blogs and social media?  What role does Flash play on the web now – especially when dealing with web standards.  Where might it fit in the future?  These are the kinds of questions we’ll be discussing on the panel.

So far, our panelists include:

• Josh Sager, Pittsburgh Technical Institute, joshsagermedia.com
• Jeremy Shank, Artist/Illustrator and Multimedia Designer at Atlas Design Group. jeremyshank.com
• Wayne Lincoln, Interactive Art Director, New Perspective, Adjunct Professor, CMU
• Nathan Peretic, Developer, Full Stop Interactive
• Geoff Barnes, Information Architect at Elliance, Inc.

We may have an additional panelist or two added before the meeting. We’re doing our best to put together a panel with many different opinions in order to have a good discussion.

Val Head, Senior Designer/Developer, New Perspective, Manager, PITTMFUG will be moderating the panel.

Like our last panel discussion, it will help to have some questions in advance. If you would like to submit any questions in advance of the meeting, send them to us at info@refreshpittsburgh.org. It would be a huge help to have a nice pool of questions to pull from in advance.

Feel free to forward this invite to a friend.

As always, please RSVP by sending an email to info@refreshpittsburgh.org or just let us know you are coming on the Facebook event page so we can plan accordingly!

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.

We have a great evening planned!

Priya Narasimhan, president of Yinzcam will be giving showing off their awesome technology and giving us an in-depth look at what went into producing the Yinzcam!

This talk will discuss YinzCam, an experiential in-stadium technology that was deployed for 40 Pittsburgh Penguins home games for the 2008-9 regular season, the 2009 NHL playoffs and the Stanley Cup Finals. The YinzCam Mobile solution allows fans, right from their seats during the game, to create/view their own instant replays (by rewinding live video — think Tivo on your phone), catch the action from different camera angles (think Crosby-Cam, Malkin-Cam and Bench-Cam for the Penguins), get automated instant replays seconds after a play has happened (from all the different camera angles), and get stats, game rules, roster, etc., all on their own wifi-enabled cellphones, and all without violating broadcast rights. They also provide personalized digital keepsakes for fans on their cellphones, that they can purchase high-resolution prints of (e.g., think of a digital picture keepsake or cellphone wallpaper that shows a fan seeming to appear on the jumbotron). More information is available at yinzcam.com

Priya Narasimhan is the President of YinzCam, Inc. She joined Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, and is currently an Associate Professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Mobility Research Center. She has extensive experience in distributed systems, reliability and mobile systems. She was previously the CTO and Vice-President of Engineering at Eternal Systems, Inc., where she was responsible for the company’s overall product strategy and product releases. She has received an Alfred Sloan fellowship, a Carnegie Science Award for Emerging Female Scientist, an NSF CAREER Award, two IBM Faculty Partnership Awards, a Raytheon Company Best Paper Award, an Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Teaching Award, amongst other honors. She received her Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. More information can be found at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~priya.

Next, Jay Fanelli (The Designer) and Nathan Peretic (The Developer), of Full Stop Interactive will present “Quit Your Job: How Two Pittsburgh Web Workers Used Unwavering Principles, Boundless Frustration, and NERF Basketball To Form Their Own Business.”

Jay is the creative muscle behind Full Stop, as well as the primary client and project manager. He’s had success with every flavor of client during his 8 years in the Pittsburgh web industry, from local businesses and private schools to Fortune 500s and major conference universities. Superpowers include: elegant web designs, serious knife skills, and a near encyclopedic knowledge of modern architecture.

Nate is a budding polymath whose day job encompasses advocating for phenomenal user experiences and obsessing over perfectly crafted code. He cites influences ranging from Elliot to McCluhan to Rutledge and intends to use that foundation to make you a better website. Vices include but are not limited to: obscure book references, an unhealthy love of The Office, and Mt. Dew addiction.

Last, but not least, one lucky Refresher will be leaving with 1 ticket of the user’s choosing to this years Flashpitt conference! If you already have a ticket, that’s ok – you can choose a free workshop instead!

As always, please RSVP by sending an email to info@refreshpittsburgh.org or just let us know you are coming on the Facebook event page so we can plan accordingly!

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!