Refresh Pittsburgh

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.

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!