Refresh the Triangle

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

WANTED: Best Web Designer in the RTP

We’re Looking for the Best Web Designer in Town
Are you passionate about pushing pixels? Are you a typographic genius? Do you always design on a grid? Can you produce gallery-worthy designs in a variety of styles?

Are you one of the best and brightest in the web world? Do you thrive on delivering top-quality work time after time? Have you thought about joining one of the premier web design and development firms around?

Learn more on our site and we look forward to chatting with you.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Refresh 006 — Dr jQuery (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DOM)

Durham, NC — Thurs, Apr 24, 2008, 6:30-8:00PM

The web isn’t what it used to be: with advanced browsers and powerful Javascript frameworks like jQuery, websites deliver user experiences that rival those of traditional desktop software. Nathan Huening, Director of Web Development at OnWired, will share the nuts and bolts of jQuery and how you can use it to build rich, professional interfaces. It’s easy! No programming experience required ... and feel free to bring your laptop since you can expect live, hands-on examples. To participate, you’ll need a copy of Firefox with the Firebug extension installed.

Location:

Blackwell Interactive
Duke Office of Information Technology
334 Blackwell Street
(American Tobacco Campus)
Durham, NC 27701

Friday, March 28, 2008

005 Meeting Recap

The laid back, free-form approach to the meeting was sincerely enjoyable and on spot. Thanks to Ogilvy and specifically to Callie, Noah, Chris, and Kendall for making it all happen. If you missed the meeting but have the chance later, make a reason to head over to Ogilvy for a visit — awesome people, immaculate space, and a ton of engaging work. There was no lack of sharing either — thanks to everyone for being plugged in and willing to speak up. If you’re looking to catch up on what went on, here’s the flow:

• 30 minutes of conversation, seen here
• Noah on Ogilvy Durham, what they’re about, their philosophy, the “Big Ideal”, and a cool project
• Peyton with some smaller points from a larger overview on Mobile Web Book, thoughts on the local Edward Tufte course, and the new Viget site and blogging strategy
• Rolf with a Shoeboxed update and a call for the motivated
• Mike on Carrot2, asides on Clusty and Solr, and some interesting points on clustering
• Clinton on GitHub, a distributed version control system, and his contribution
• David with a live coding demo on REST and Curl
• Nathan on Acid 2 and Acid 3, a cool related milestone, and some live photos
• Adam on the Email Standards Project and the Email Acid Test
• Wayne on looking ahead to BarCamp RDU and a reminder to keep up via Social Carolina
• Jackson with props to MuxTape
• Nick on the very handy Skitch
• Drinks and conversing outdoors at Alivia’s after the meeting

See you next month, and thanks for blogging, tweeting, etc about Refresh the Triangle. The word’s getting out and cool things are happening.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Refresh 005 — Kick Back, Freshen Up

Durham, NC — Thurs, Mar 27, 2008, 6:30-8:00PM

For various reasons, we’ll take a break from the formal presentations this month. Come on out to Ogilvy where we’ll socialize a bit more than usual, eat, drink, and share. Share what? We’ll take 30-45 minutes to geek out on some of the latest web industry news and share some personal favorites, well kept secrets, tips, tools, or whatever you feel could benefit the group.

Come ready to share anything you’d like — a headline or news item, a site, a tool, a snippet of code, a device, a book excerpt — anything large or small that you feel is current and elevates our web knowledge. And don’t think it has to be entirely unique (as in no one else knows about it already), it’ll kill the vibe. Just come with something that you know has been valuable/noteworthy to you, and don’t over-think it. It can be as quick as sharing a URL and a sentence about why we should visit the site. Or it can be as long as 5 minutes in a text editor demonstrating a few lines of code.

So stop for a few minutes before you head out and think of something to share. Do that, come relaxed, and the results will be sweet. See you there.

Location:

Ogilvy
115 North Duke Street
Durham, NC 27701

Friday, January 25, 2008

Refresh 004 — Justifying Design

Durham, NC — Thurs, Feb 28, 2008, 6:30-8:00PM

Great design requires every design decision to be rationalized and justified. Explore the design process of great designers and discover tools and techniques to justify your own work.

Rob Goodlatte is an award-winning interactive designer and developer. Currently an undergraduate at Duke, his short design career has included work for Disney, Microsoft, and Stanford University. After graduation, he will be joining Facebook as a product designer.

Location:

iContact
2635 Meridian Parkway
Durham, NC 27713

003 Meeting Recap

Last night we gathered at Bronto’s inspiring office for our first “Lightning Sessions” meeting. If you missed it, you should check out the flickr photos and Wayne’s video. Attendance was awesome as the Refresh momentum continues to build - we had about 35 people come out.  The Lightning Sessions approach was successful - presentation links are below. We hope to do Lightning Sessions about 4 times per year, but we have some ideas for improving the model next time around.

Our presenters were highly prepared and I think everyone left with something new to think about, but next time we’ll aim for more spontaneity and fewer bullet points (in fact, maybe no slides!), with the goal of making the night a bit more interactive. Lightning Sessions should be distinct from a typical presentation style and ideally, people would do demos and live coding. If anyone has input on these ideas, please comment. We’re open to suggestions. Thanks again to the presenters last night.

Wayne Sutton: Twitter for Fun and Profit
Patrick Reagan: How’s Haml?
Josh Vickery: Simple Gimp
Peyton Crump: Google Map API Tutorial Primer
Julia Kulla-Mader: Evaluating Drupal

And big thanks again to Bronto for hosting the meeting. The food and beverages were great, but the t-shirts and traveling brontos were even better. Any ideas for upcoming speakers or topics? Know of a company that might like to sponsor? Let us know! Thanks again to everyone for coming out.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Refresh 003 — Lightning Sessions

Durham, NC — Thurs, Jan 24, 2008, 6:30-8:00PM

Starting in 2008, we’ll be using the first monthly meeting of each quarter for “lightning sessions”. Think of this meeting type as a 1.5 hour BarCamp or similar event where members shape the outcome, and the approach toward sharing and discussing is rapid fire. The meeting will consist of 5 predetermined presenters each facilitating a 10 minute lightning session on a predetermined topic. Topics will be a mix of web design, dev, and technology. So for the January meeting, we’re looking for 5 topics and 5 presenters. Please share comments on topic ideas and/or express your willingness to lead a session.

As popular topics become apparent through the comments and presenters attach themselves to topics, finalized presenters and topics will be added here:
1) Twitter for Fun and Profit, Wayne Sutton
2) How’s Haml?, Patrick Reagan
3) Simple Gimp, Joshua Vickery
4) Google Map API Tutorial Primer, Peyton Crump
5) Evaluating Drupal, Julia Kulla-Mader

Location:

Bronto Software, Inc.
Washington Building
324 Blackwell Street
Suite 410
Durham, NC 27701

New Refresh Site Calendar

Refresh has now switched over to using the SocialCarolina.org calendar as our event calendar, so update your XML or iCal subscriptions. Feed URLs are found at the top of the calendar page.

Friday, December 07, 2007

002 Meeting Recap

Last night’s meeting may go down in RTT history as the most amusing talk ever.  Clinton R. Nixon has a knack for not just explaining web app security vulnerabilities and solutions, but for doing so with humor and flare.  We had about 30 people in attendance and another 5 or 6 following live on ustream.tv.  If you missed the talk, you can watch the video or check out the photos.

If you want a closer look at the code behind Clinton’s demos, he has generously shared, “The Bank of Aquilonia,” “Upload King!,” and “Festival of Bookmarks,” with us.  He made links available to his demo code, his presentation slides, and resources for addressing security issues.  Big thanks to all the guys at Shoeboxed for hosting and providing refreshments. 

Everyone should get on board for the lightning sessions meeting in January.  Submit your ideas! It should be a good time.  See you January 24th!

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

MySQL Presentation by Jay Pipes

Jay Pipes from MySQL will be speaking at the next PHP/MySQL group meeting on December 12 in Durham.

Jay is the Community Relations Manager for MySQL North America, but don’t let the title fool you.  He’s an engaging and knowledgeable speaker with considerable real world experience building, installing and tuning large scale MySQL installations as well as working with some cutting edge companies and individuals.  If you’ve ever had a question about MySQL, now’s your chance to get it answered in detail, up close and personal with an expert. 

Jay will cover a number of topics relating to performance tuning and scaling, but the meeting will not be limited to just those topics. 

If you’ve never been out to a PHP/MySQL group meeting, Dec 12 should be your first one - we’d love to have you there!

More information can be found at http://www.tripug.org.

Thanks!

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

SocialCarolina.org Launched

Events about technology of some kind happening in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. Check it out at socialcarolina.org.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Refresh 002 — Fortified Web Projects: Fundamentals for Security

Durham, NC — Thurs, Dec 6, 2007, 6:30-8:00PM

Clinton Nixon will share a high level view of common security risks and suggest some very practical approaches for protection. Clinton is a enthusiast for test-driven development, esoteric computer languages, and kittens. He serves humbly as a senior web developer at Viget Labs.

Location:

Shoeboxed
Brightleaf Square, 23D
905 West Main Street
Durham, NC 27701

Thursday, October 25, 2007

001 Meeting Recap

Thanks to everyone who came to the first meeting. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.  About 28 people came out in the rain to hear Jackson’s talk and share in the conversation.  From our informal poll, it seemed that a little more than half of us are developers, a little less than half are designers, and a solid handful of us identify as “in between.” This is exactly the kind of mix we’re going for at Refresh, so we’re off to an exciting start.  We created a flickr account and posted some photos from the first meeting.

Please feel free to join the group and add photos of future meetings. I want to thank Jackson one more time for a great presentation and discussion.  He was kind enough to share his slides - enjoy!

Be sure to post your suggestions for future topics or speakers. See you all on Nov. 29!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

World Usability Day 2007

Durham, NC — Nov 8, 2007, 6:00-9:00pm
Join UX professionals from around the Triangle area for an Interactionary (a live design competition), keynote speech, food, drink, and fun! More at www.triupa.org.

Ready to be Refreshed

We’re really looking forward to seeing everyone on the 25th.  We (at Viget Labs) are sponsoring this month’s gathering, so we’re providing refreshments and hosting the event at our office (908 W. Main Street, across from Brightleaf Square).  I don’t think parking will be a problem.

There is a small parking lot right outside our door and Brightleaf Square’s big lot is just a block away.  If you’re coming to our office for the first time, keep an eye out for Rainbow Chinese Restuarant on Main Street. Turn into the lot when you see Rainbow and you’ll find us - we’re set back from the street a little bit.

You’ll be doing us a huge favor by RSVPing if you are going to attend so we can plan our refreshments ...  To RSVP go to: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/288867 Thanks!

We’re planning to walk over to Aliva’s for a coffee or beer after the event, but I could be persuaded to go to the Federal instead…

Post a reply if you have any questions about the location or what to expect. See you soon.