Refresh Austin

Update

We’re moving across the street to Texas Coworking as Buffalo Billiards has another event scheduled on Tuesday.

If you’re interested in presenting, you need to e-mail me by noon on Tuesday so I know how many people will want to speak. After the meeting, we’ll head downstairs to B.D. Riley’s pub for networking.

Given the proximity of this meeting to SXSW, we’re going to try something different. Anyone who has a panel at SXSW 2010 will be welcome to present a shortened version of their presentation. This allows the presenters a chance to run through their work in front of an audience and gain feedback as well as ensure that people who can’t make it to SXSW can learn from their. Even if you are going to SXSW this year, I highly recommend you join. Odds are good that you’ll be double-booked for many time slots, so why not get a taste for the panels that are of interest prior to the big event?

This is also a great time to meet other Austin Refreshers before the big event.

RSVP on Facebook

Bonus! Don’t forget about the Refresh Lunch the Friday of SXSWi.

Refresh Lunch on Facebook

Contact Alex if you would like to do a short version of your SXSW panel at the March meeting.

Tags: Events, meeting, SXSW

I’ll skip the top ten lists and rehashing last year – it’s time to look forward and I’m psyched about what January and the rest of 2010 has in store for Refresh. So let’s hit it.

Event Details

7:00 – 9:00p.m. Tuesday, January 12th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos
Texas Coworking 200 E. 6th Street (3rd Floor of the Hannig Row Building)

IMPORTANT UPDATE The location has changed to Texas Coworking, which is across the street from Buffalo Billiards and directly above B.D. Riley’s Pub.

RSVP on Facebook

weLost™: A Case Study/Discussion of a Hybrid iPhone/Web/REST App

Presented by Andrew W. Donoho

Our team released weLost™, our iPhone app, and its accompanying social weight loss network to the iTunes App Store in late December 2009. This hybrid app is both a native code and web application. I’ll be describing the high level choices we made in creating the app and social network.

What’s in Store for Refresh Austin in 2010

Presented by Alex Jones

We’re a dynamic group that has built a solid foundation that allows us to help each other improve on many levels, which is the only way we can truly judge our success. While our membership has grown significantly and attendance has steadily increased over the last few years, we’re not going to rest. Just like you, Refresh Austin is constantly improving and 2010 is shaping up to be a pivotal year. I’ll review the plans that we have for the next year and we’ll open up the majority of the time for discussion for what you would like to see out of the group.

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Tags: development, iphone, meeting, web development

Event Details

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

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Building Add-ons for Firefox and Fennec

Presented by Mark Phillip

We all use add-ons, but how is it to actually build one? A heck of a lot easier than you think. With an install base 10 times the size of the iPhone, a codebase that’s child’s play to any web developer, and a barrier-less approval process, it’s a puzzlingly underutilized app platform.

We’ll walk through how to build add-ons for Firefox, as well as for Fennec, Mozilla’s upcoming mobile browser, and there’ll be sample code at the end to help you get started.

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Tags: extensions, fennec, firefox, meeting

Event Details

7:00 – 9:00p.m. August 11th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

Drupal – An Introduction

Presenter: Lauren Roth

The days are long gone when the height of sophistication in web development and design was applying a style sheet to your static HTML. You could instead hand code a custom web application to serve your content, but not have an easy way for your client to log in and change content themselves. Along came blogs and with blogs, and more sophisticated client-side scripting, dynamically loaded content. A powerfully flexible way to organize large amounts of content is to use a Content Management System like Drupal.

So, what is Drupal? You may have heard of it. You may have tried Wordpress and considered it a lightweight CMS. You may have also tried Joomla! Drupal is a content management system, written in PHP, which can be used to build websites as simple as blogs or as complex as full-scale community sites. You can use its abundance of community contributed modules toward building a web publishing platform, a social application, or a even a magazine like The Economist, which is currently being converted to Drupal.

Documentation as Conversation

Presenter: Anne Gentle

Even if your documentation system does not converse with your users, your documentation can help customers talk to each other and make the connections that help them do their jobs well or learn something new as if they were in a classroom with a community for classmates. This talk describes how you can think about documentation and user assistance in a conversational way, with the help of social media technology. I’ll discuss the topics in my new book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. I’ll describe the use of in-person Book Sprints that combine wikis and community events to gather together writers to accomplish documentation goals.

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Tags: Events, meeting

Event Details

7:00 – 9:00p.m. July 14th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

An Overview of Usability

The newly restarted Austin chapter of the Usability Professionals Association will present on Usability and how it fits into business and development processes. There will be a brief overview of usability followed by an open discussion where we will take audience questions, share strategies, and learn from each other.

Demo Slots

We’re going to try a small experiment during this meeting – giving two members a chance to demo their product and gather feedback from other members. Each demo will last up to 5 minutes and will be followed by 10 minutes for questions and suggestions. The key here is that you’ll have a chance to gather the thoughts and ideas of your colleagues, this isn’t a pitch session.

Interested in presenting? E-mail me off list with the name of the product and the type of feedback you are seeking and we’ll set things up. If you can’t demo during this meeting, don’t worry, if we get a lot of responses we’ll use this format for a longer meeting.

Books

We will also have a couple of books to give away courtesy of O’Reilly and Peachpit.

RSVP on Facebook

Tags: event, meeting, usability, web design

November 11th, 7:00 p.m.
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

IE 8 in Depth

Christian Thilmany from Microsoft will discuss the release of IE 8 and what it means to us as Web professionals. In addition to the new browser, Christian is happy to cover other topics in which you may be interested, such as Silverlight or Microsoft’s cloud computing efforts.

Christian is ready for a wide array of questions and is knowledgeable about a range of issues. He’s also realistic about the frustrations that many of us have experienced with previous versions of Internet Explorer and should be able to answer more in-depth issues around the new browser. Plus he’s local and has recently joined Refresh.

If you have questions or particular areas that you would like to cover, please send them to Alex so we can compile them and Christian can research any answers that he may not know off the top of his head.

View the event on Upcoming.org.

After the meeting, head to the bar downstairs for their Tuesday specials: half-price appetizers, and dollar-off select drafts, well drinks, and house wines.

Tags: Christian Thilmany, IE, IE8, internet explorer 8, meeting, Microsoft

October 14th, 7:00 p.m.
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos

We’re really excited about the October meeting! Alex has lined up some fantastic presenters who will speak on the following topics:

Who are these people?! Bridging the gap between developers and communicators
Jenn and Hayes Davis

It often seems like developers and communicators (like designers, writers and marketers) are speaking two very different languages. It can be difficult to effectively communicate ideas and requirements across the gap between these two groups. This session aims to create some mutual understanding to help improve communication and narrow that gap. We want to facilitate a conversation that gets both sides talking about what they want to know about the other side, as well as what they’d like the other side to know about them.

Some of the questions we will address include:

• Why do developers do things the way they do?
• Why do designers, writers and other communicators think the way they do?
• How can developers and designers communicate more effectively with each other?
• Is there any common ground?
• How can we better communicate technical topics to a nontechnical audience?

How to write JavaScript without losing your mind
Andrew Dupont

Andrew will talk about the tools he uses to debug JavaScript, including an in-depth look at Firebug and a discussion about how to diagnose and circumvent common frustrations and browser bugs.

Update: Andrew will also give out three copies of his book Practical Prototype and script.aculo.us.

View the event on Upcoming.org

After the meeting, head to the bar downstairs for their Tuesday specials: half-price appetizers, and dollar-off select drafts, well drinks, and house wines.

Tags: andrew dupont, communication, hayes davis, javascript, jenn davis, meeting

Tuesday, September 9th, 7:00 p.m.
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos
View the Event on Upcoming.org

We have a great meeting set for September 9th (this Tuesday) with a focus on the future.

Google Chrome

First up is a group discussion about Google Chrome, and the implications it has for our industry. Google’s new browser has a lot of potential, but as it was just released, we thought it would be an exciting topic of discussion. Some of the questions that we’ll touch upon are:
– How will Chrome change the user experience of the Web?
– What work will it add to the day in and day out lives of designers and developers?
– Does it provide tools that you’re excited about?
– At what point will Chrome become important enough that you’ll officially support it?
– What tools does it need to tempt you to switch to it from your browser of choice?
– What excites you about the browser

Looking into the Future of Refresh Austin

This will be a mixture of topics related to Refresh Austin, including:
– Gathering feedback about our past meetings and ideas for future presentations that you would like to hear or would be willing to present.
– The topics that we’ll be covering over the next few months of meetings
– Discussion around the direction you think we should take with the group:
– Should we have more or less advanced topics?
– Do we strike the right balance of design, technical and business topics?
– Do we provide enough social opportunities?
- Our Plans for improving the way members post job opportunities
- Your thoughts on other groups in Austin that we should know about and work with.

Tags: chrome, event, google chrome, meeting, refresh austin

Photos from the August Refresh Austin meeting are online. They’re also part of the Refresh Austin Flickr group. If anyone’s got additional photos and you’re a Flickr user, please add them to the group “Refresh Austin.”

Tags: flickr, meeting, photos, refresh austin

Join us at our next meeting!

August 12th at 7 p.m.

PLEASE NOTE THE VENUE CHANGE

This month only, we’ll meet at the Blue Fish Development Group Offices
701 Brazos, Suite 700
Austin Centre building (the business half of the Omni Hotel). Theirs is the first office on the left on the 7th floor.
The business elevators are on the West side of the building near the security desk (the hotel elevators are on the East side next to the hotel check-in).

Refresh Austin’s August meeting will include two presentations:

Find it on upcoming.org.

Writing for the Web Presented by Sheila Scarborough

• How to let your own voice come through your writing.
• How to use an editorial calendar to organize your blogging and avoid writer’s block.
• How to present material on the Web so that it’s easy to read and absorb.
• How to interact with commentators on your blog, and how to get more of them.
• Discussion topic – when is a blogger a journalist, and when is he/she not? Are there fundamental tenets of print journalism that we should bring online?

Notes from Sheila’s Presentation

Books on writing:

• Anne Lamott, “Bird by Bird – Some Instructions on Writing and Life“
• Stephen King, “On Writing“

Blogs about writing great Web content:

• www.skelliewag.org
• www.copyblogger.com
• www.successful-blog.com

Blogs with good conversational writing:

• Heather Armstrong’s dooce
• Penelope Trunk’s blog (separate from her Brazen Careerist site)
• Leif Pettersen’s Killing Batteries

I’m @SheilaS on Twitter and am always open to further questions….

Introduction to Django Presented by Jon Loyens

Django is one of the more recent crop of lightweight web frameworks designed to help people create dynamic web applications while avoiding the redundancy and tedium often associated with the task. The Python-based Django has recently gained a lot of momentum within the web community for it’s ease of use and clean, maintainable code and is currently the only framework supported by the Google AppEngine. Being born out of a newspaper publishing environment, Django is particularly well suited to creating content driven applications (though, as the co-creators are quick to point out, Django itself is not a CMS, though a very good platform to build a CMS on). Django is billed by it’s co-creators Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Adrian Holovaty as “the Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines”.

Notes from Jon’s Presentation

• Django Notes
• Django Presentation (PowerPoint)
• Code from the Django Presentation

Update: Links and files from each presentation are now included above.

Tags: django, meeting, python, web development, writing