Categories
- General Discussion
- Refresh Events
- Industry Events
- Local Groups
- Jobs
- Speakers
- Announcements
- Sponsors
- Training
Archives
- March 2010
- February 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
Refresh 019 — Edward Tufte and Information Design Strategies for the Web
Posted Jun 26, 2009 | 0 Comments | by pcrump
Durham, NC — Thur, Jul 23, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM
“Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication.” --Edward Tufte.
No matter how sophisticated the technology nor pleasing the design, your Web visitors are really interested in one thing. (No, not that.) They’re after great content like your essay, your photo, your widget, your tutorial. It’s what makes the Web so great: exploring, learning, and sharing what we know. And the task of a designer - whether of user interfaces, graphics, data or type - is to present this information appropriately and elegantly; to remove obstacles to understanding, not introduce them.
In this presentation, Nathan Huening first presents an overview of the work of information design expert Edward Tufte and then discusses concrete applications and examples for applying his principles of analytical design to the Web. Selected themes include: contrast and meaning in design, avoiding “chartjunk” and “computer administrative debris”, clarity and clutter, the value of aesthetics, and simplicity vs. minimalism.
Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus of statistics, information design, interface design and political economy at Yale University. In addition to his touring workshops, Mr Tufte has written four books on the display of information and analytical design: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983), Envisioning Information (1990), Visual Explanations (1997), and Beautiful Evidence (2006).
Speaker:
Nathan Huening is a principal at Sprocket House, a creative firm based in Chapel Hill that specializes in Web and print design. When he’s not writing client copy or puzzling over UI design, he enjoys making messes in the kitchen and falling off his unicycle to the bemusement of curious onlookers.
Location:
Rigsbee Hall
208 Rigsbee Avenue
Durham, NC 27701
Filed under: Refresh Events
Refresh 018 — Everything You’ve Been Told About Entrepreneurship is Wrong!
Posted Jun 15, 2009 | 0 Comments | by pcrump
Durham, NC — Thur, June 25, 2009, 6:30-8:30PM
We’ll be joining forces with Startup Drinks and North Carolina Startup Blog this month, so you’ll hear a short bit from Marc DeWalle on those efforts. Also, be sure to follow in the Startup Drinks tradition and BYOB. Light snacks will be provided.
For the main presentation, Robbie Allen will share how his experience as an entrepreneur runs counter to much of the conventional wisdom in the startup community. He’ll talk about starting StatSheet and what it has been like to build a web startup from scratch in the Triangle.
Robbie is the sole founder and developer of the StatSheet Network, a collection of websites that do interesting things with sports stats. He’s authored or co-authored a dozen books with O’Reilly Media on a variety of topics and has degrees from MIT in Information Technology and Engineering Management.
Location:
Viget Labs
202 Rigsbee Avenue
Second Floor
Durham, NC 27701
Filed under: Refresh Events
jQuery Fundamentals Class
Posted Jun 15, 2009 | 0 Comments | by rmurphey
Announcing jQuery Fundamentals, a two-day class at Carrboro Creative Coworking (July 29-30) that will give you the knowledge you need to properly and effectively start integrating jQuery, the popular JavaScript library, into your web development projects. Over the course of two days, you’ll learn the fundamental concepts of JavaScript and jQuery and tackle real-world exercises to solidify your understanding of the language and the library.
In my work with jQuery beginners, I often find that the library is so easy to learn that it’s possible to skip over the fundamentals of JavaScript. With that in mind, we’ll start the class with a high-level overview of key JavaScript principles, including concepts like logic, objects, variable scope, and closures. From there, we’ll move on to a thorough overview of the jQuery library—selecting, traversing, manipulating, effects, events, XHR (Ajax), and plugins. Throughout the class, we’ll focus on best practices for writing and organizing jQuery code for easy reuse and refactoring. Participants will leave the class as upstanding members of the jQuery community, armed with a solid understanding of the concepts of both JavaScript and jQuery, and ready to start leveraging the library in their projects.
This class is aimed at beginning jQuery users, although intermediate users may also benefit from the more formalized introduction to the library this class will offer.
If you have any questions about the class, drop me an email at rebecca@rebeccamurphey.com, and I hope to see you there!
Filed under: Training