Hi everyone, we’ve been bumped from our normal meeting spot, and our backup location won’t be able to host us this month, so we’re going to change gears. While we won’t have a good venue for topics, we still want to gather and socialize, so please join us at the Gingerman Tuesday evening to meet up, geek out and enjoy a bit of beer.

We’ll return to topic-focused meetings for the September 13th Refresh.

Event Details

7:00 – 9:00p.m. Tuesday, June 14th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos
RSVP on Facebook (it’s not required, you’re always welcome).

Don’t Forget to Kick Ass – Sketching & Prototyping for Product Innovation

Presented by Sara Summers

Process. Everyone has it, but not everyone has the chance to make award winning, wildly successful products people can’t stop talking about. We drudge through tight deadlines, organizational missteps, endless revisions and bug fix cues, and constant pressure to ‘get it right’.. But how do we know what the right experience is if we’re not sketching, experimenting and testing the possibilities?

Together we’ll learn how to summons the brightest ideas, prototype through problems and examine ways to stitch innovation into the product development process. Then, transfer our insights into powerful, collaborative concepts to share and test with clients, teammates and users alike.

Sara is a User Experience Evangelist for Microsoft who lives for big ideas, changing everything, breaking your toys and capturing new ideas.

Have you checked out the new Refresh Austin Facebook page yet?

Event Details

7:00 – 9:00p.m. Tuesday, May 10th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

Let us know you’re coming! RSVP on Facebook (it’s not required, you’re always welcome). While you’re at it, check out the new Refresh Austin Facebook page!

Building a Usability and Analytics Toolkit

Judd Lyon, Partner/Technical Director at Trifecta Interactive

Most of us probably agree that getting user feedback is important, yet why do many of our projects go without it? Judd will explore combining techniques and online tools that can help you drive improvements to your site/app.

Among the topics covered will be:

• Web Analytics
• Online Surveys
• Remote User Testing
• A/B Testing
• Search Engine and Social Media Tracking
• Reporting Dashboards

Using Facebook Social Plugins and OpenGraph for Fun and Profit

Jon Loyens, Director of Bazaarvoice Labs

Sure it’s easy to add a Like button to your website but what do you do with it once it’s there? How can you use Facebook Login to make registration for your site easier and get more user information all at the same time? What kind of data can you mine out of Facebook OpenGraph? In this presentation, I’ll take everyone a step beyond the basics of Facebook’s social plugins and demonstrate how to use the more advanced features of the Facebook platform and give everyone a glimpse of how much data is really there to be had and used.

Event Details

7:00 – 9:00p.m. Tuesday, April 12th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

RSVP on Facebook (it’s not required, you’re always welcome)

Building cross-platform mobile apps (with your existing chops)

Presented by Rob Jones, 2Sides Design

So your client asks you for a mobile app that needs to run Android and iPhone. While both platforms have their strengths, designing and deploying for both can be a challenge: The development environments are very different, and their interface patterns are different enough to require different interaction design. On a lot of client budgets (and for design shops that have traditional web dev backgrounds), this can be troublesome.

To solve this problem, mobile frameworks based on traditional web technologies such as HTML/Javascript have emerged. We’ll take a brief tour of Sencha Touch and jQuery mobile, two frameworks that allow you to build cross-platform apps. (As an added bonus, we’ll look at how designers can theme Sencha Touch using LESS/CSS).

We’ll also take a brief look at how you can use Phonegap to get your apps ready for the various app stores.

What is the buzz about Social Business? Is it the same as social media and is it here to stay?

Presented by Elizabeth Quintanilla, EQ Consultants Group, LLC

Be entertained as Elizabeth Quintanilla shares her unique approach to tech, business and social media. Learn her distinct point of view of “Social Business” and learn about a valuable concept that should be in every tech, entrepreneurs, biz leaders, analysts, and marketers toolkit. Learn why all of us now wear multiple hats such as customer support, PR, marketing, and more in this current environment of Social Media. Remember Social Business helps you get smarter not harder while (if well implemented) more effective.

Important Note: We’re meeting at Spider House this month! We will not meet at Buffalo Billiards this month due to a conflict, but we’re actively working on a spot for the meeting and will post it as soon as it’s set.

Event Details

7:00 – 9:00, Tuesday, November 9th
Location: Spider House

RSVP on Facebook (it’s not required, you’re always welcome)

Free Ice Cream and Four Other Truly Evil Marketing Trickss

Presented by Russ Somers

There’s everyday evil…and then there’s the heinous evil known as Marketing. Online and offline marketers scheme to manipulate your thoughts and behavior in ways you scarcely comprehend. But you’re too smart for that, right? Maybe not. This talk will tour the twisted mind of a Sith-lord marketer and ask how those powers might be used for good instead of evil.

Open Government: An Overviews

Presented by Andrew Dupont

We know that the Internet can be used to donate to political candidates. Or make fun of them. But, with a little help from citizens, it can also make government work better. First, we’ll look at a handful of sites that aggregate government data and present it in useful ways. Then we’ll explore the process of distilling government data dumps and APIs to build our own sites.

7:00 – 9:00p.m. Tuesday, October 12th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

RSVP on Facebook (it’s not required, you’re always welcome)

How to use JavaScript Templates

Presented by Garann Means

If you work with JavaScript and aren’t already using templates, you should start! The syntax is simple and the organization and maintainability advantages are huge. If your application uses XHRs to update the page, if you write plugins, or if you’re trying to minimize the markup in your app that’s generated on both the client and server, templates can help there, too. This talk will cover the basic syntax of one engine, jQuery templates, and give some examples of templates in use.

7:00 – 9:00p.m. Tuesday, July 13th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

RSVP on Facebook

It’s time once again for one of our most popular topics – the Refresh Tool Roundup. Unlike most meetings, we divide this one into 5 minute segments to give you the chance to brag on your favorite tools, share a tip or reveal that secret weapon that takes a project from good to great. Anyone who is interested will have five minutes to show off an app, service, tool, plugin or method that they think others would find useful. The tools can be for developing, designing, writing, running a small business or maintaining your sanity.

Update: Here Are the Tools

In no particular order…

• Mark Phillip – How easy it is to build Google Extensions
• Ryan Joy – Charles & TotalFinder
• Dave Rupert – whichloadsfaster.com
• Christian McDonald – Passpack
• Alex Sexton – Modernizr
• Chris Larson – App Inventor for Android
• Kyle Simpson – Syn – a Standalone Synthetic Event Library.
• Annette Priest – DIY mobile user testing rig
• Matt Thompson – Secret content editing mode:
  • Go to any Web page in Firefox (AJ: maybe other browsers?)
  • In the address bar type javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true';document.designMode='on';
  • Edit any text in the Web page
• Michelle Greer - using to compete.com measure influence of content online
• Steve Stedman - meetinbetween.us
• Karen Kreps - Tungle.me
• Jesse Crouch - pastee - the secure pastebin
• Flip Kromer - PivotalTracker

Some Quick Guidelines

• No self promotion
• No demos that requires a ton of bandwidth (video conferencing etc.) as we have a small pipe to work with at BB. If you just want to talk about a tool that uses a lot of bandwidth, that's cool.
• Be prepared - bring a laptop if what you're going to show off is an actual app, otherwise, make sure to have the URL with you at the meeting

We have 15 slots available, so if you're interested in presenting, contact Alex and he'll put you on the agenda.