Where: IT-oLogy (map)

What: Beer Tasting & Design Talk

The event is free to everyone, however if you want to participate in the beer tasting it’s $12. Just to cover the cost of your beverages.

If you like finely crafted design & printing then you’ll love it when it’s paired with finely crafted beer. Our next meeting is a mixer between the South Carolina AIGA and our little RefreshColumbia group. We’re going to be doing a full on beer tasting mixed with a talk from Nick Wilson of The Half & Half design & print making studio.

The Design Talk

Nick Wilson will be talking to us about the “craft” of design and printing – something he knows tons about. Plus he’ll be showing off some really amazing work for us. Nick Wilson attended The University of South Carolina, graduating from the graphic design program in 2007. The Half & Half studio opened above Sid & Nancy, in Five Points, later that year. They’ve since moved to 2119 College St.

Their work is as passive, yet aggressive as their dynamic. A discordant, nevertheless familiar arrangement leaves the viewer with the sense of a profound tensile strength; ferocious, like a hungover lion…The female one, they are actually the hunters, which is surprising…At least to this reviewer. I mean, they have no mane, you know?* – The State

The Beer Tasting

We’ll be pouring five beers of inspired design representing a broad spectrum of styles, from the brightest gold to pitch black. Tickets for the beer tasting are set at $12 – you can still enjoy the evening as the event is free to everyone.

Your Beer Sherpa for the evening:

Brian Cendrowski is the newly elected president of the Upstate Brewtopians homebrew club. He’s been a homebrewer and beer blogger since 2007 and has been honing his taste buds to the deliciousness of craft beer for over 10 years. After being inducted into the Columbia Flying Saucer’s Wall-of-Fame as plate #40 in September 2004, he realized his life’s calling and has pursued great beer ever since.

Sign Up

Our ideal candidate is someone that considers himself/herself to be a self-starter. A highly motivated person who loves technical challenges, is comfortable solving complex problems, thrives in a collaborative environment, and is always ready to learn from others. As a member of Mariner’s technical team your role will be part systems builder and part architect. Our vision for 2012 includes an ambitious product roadmap and are we looking for people who can develop rapidly and step up to the challenges of being a critical member of a highly skilled team.

We are looking for software developers with 5+ years experience with .NET, C-Sharp, and general web development experience. Silverlight/Flash experience would be a plus. Experience working with Agile development methodologies (SCRUM, etc) is a definite plus. The candidate will work in our downtown Columbia office and some travel (20%) would be expected.

• Microsoft.Net 3.5, 4.0 C# Development 5+ Years
• .NET, C-Sharp, and general web development experience
• Proficiency in Silverlight (versions 3 and 4) a plus
• Mobile development on iOS or Android platforms a plus
• Strong experience developing and working with SQL, XML, XSLT, JMS, and HTML
• Strong experience developing web services
• Strong Object Oriented Design (OOD)
• Microsoft Sql Server, Visual Studio, Xml Databases, Business Rule Engines
• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
• SOA, SOAP, REST, HTTP, XML, XSD, RDF, Distributed Computing , Multi-threading
• Participate in all aspects of the development life cycle, from design to development to deployment and on-going enhancement

www.themarinergroup.net

Please submit resumes to:
Greg Richardson: grichardson@themarinergroup.net

A little background: the competition was designed to be the “Anti-Addy’s,” meaning that instead of having a huge category structure with many tiers and multiple awards, InShow’s concept was a simple one: You’re either “In” or you’re “Out.” Once submitted, work is divided up by category and three judges from outside of the South Carolina market decide their fate by judging it either “In” or “Out.” Judges are not given quotas, or rigid judging requirements, so the show totals and types of entries vary from year to year.

There are some pretty cool judges this year, who are really hip to interactive work. So you should seriously consider entering this year.

User Experience & Enterprise Software

By: Sean Rankin

Come out August 31st at 6:00 PM @ IT-Ology – 1301 Gervais Street

If you’re a designer or developer working at one of the fancy-pants design studios around town, this talk is going to make you cringe and want to drive sharp objects under your fingernails.

Increasingly, companies that build enterprise tools are trying to insert experience design into their development process. For practitioners, that spells opportunity – but it’s important to note that this opportunity comes with many challenges. This session will focus on the ins-and-outs of user experience design in the feature-rich, overly-complex, and head-spinning world of enterprise software; The software that runs businesses.

Selling your ideas in a culture based on technology rather than design can be tough. Sean will offer some background on what to expect if you decide work with these guys, as well as some ways to pitch the concept that the UX discipline is a valuable asset that should have the proverbial “seat at the table”.

As a bonus, you’ll be treated to a carefully curated Enterprise Software Wall of Shame that he only brings out on special occasions.

Sean Rankin

User Experience Designer
Duck Creek Technologies (Now: Accenture)
sean [at] internetwonderboy [dot] com
Twitter: @srankin

Sean’s Bio

Sean Rankin is one of those relics that witnessed the dot-com bust and lived to tell. His story starts back in 1994, when he wandered into a computer lab at USC to check out this new thing they were calling the “world-wide web”. Thankfully, that encounter derailed a future career in law enforcement, and our community is a safer place.

Over the last ten years, Sean has focused his career around software design in the insurance and financial services industries. He currently spends his days leading the user experience efforts at Duck Creek Technologies, a provider of enterprise solutions for the insurance industry. When asked by the technology folks about what he does for a living, he proudly replies “my job is to make technology easy and fun to use”.

In his spare time, Sean can be found running downtown with his dog Isabel, freaking-out about first-time parenthood, and cramming for one of his b-school exams.

Slides from Sean’s talk

For those of you who are looking for this, here is a link to Sean’s presentation slides.

Questions you may have might be something like:
“How do I get into mobile development?”
“Should I start using Fireworks for my web designs?
“Why do I always have color matching issues when I save for web?!”
*And for those of you that are just really shy, submit your anonymous questions as a comment on this post.

Where/When

We have reserved the side room of the Publick House on Devine St (Google Map) for Wednesday, 27th 6-8ish.

If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a great mingle space with mostly tall bar tables, pool tables and dartboards. This is a casual meetup to get people talking and maybe answer some questions for a few people. And also Beer.

Come out May 25th at 6:00 PM @ IT-Ology – 1301 Gervais Street

Dean Schuster of Truematter will show us how to:

Create better sites and apps by actually getting to know the people who use them.

The manic drive to create websites and mobile apps quickly and cheaply requires huge sacrifices. Is complex functionality the first to go? Hardly. How about the content management system? Goodness no. Trendy design? Please.

The first casualty of most Web projects is, unfortunately, concern for the people who will use them. The drive to build right now overcomes the small voice that asks, “Build what? For whom? Why?” We’ve created a culture of compromise. Most Web teams prefer to dive into work. Perhaps they possess supreme confidence or (gasp) make things up as they go.

I propose a radical idea. Maybe, just maybe, we should talk to the people who use our websites and mobile apps before we build stuff for them.

I do not trust my instincts. Neither should you trust yours.

Also, help spread the word too. Looking forward to seeing you all again!

However we are going to move to having 6 a year instead of 12. This will allow for extra time to plan meetings and get presenters lined up.

We’re always looking for some of you great people who have come to love RefreshColumbia to get up there and share your knowledge with us, anytime you want to present something please volunteer. WE NEED YOU! The same for organizing a meet up, if you have a great idea or know of someone who would give a great presentation let’s get it going.

There is no meet up this month for April, we’ll be getting together next month for May on the 25th (details coming soon). So as we ramp up to the next Refresh meeting, help spread the word and let’s get as many of us together as we can for it.

On March 31, join us for March Madness, Dribbble style. Come show off what you’ve been working on, or anything you want to share that you think is awesome. Since this is an officially sanctioned Dribbble event, we’ve got plenty of schwag to hand out to those who want to take part.

If you want to take part, just let us know by filling out this form. All you need to do is bring slides, paper, handouts, marble tablets or just yourself. Or you can just show up to see what everybody else is doing. It all starts at 6pm at IT-Ology. We’ll have the space setup with a projector and computer connected to the internet.

When:Thursday, March 31st, 2011 at 6pm
Where: IT-Ology – 1301 Main Street Columbia, SC 29201 (map)
Topic: Share your stuffs!
RSVP: On Facebook

This month features an evening of design talks from the crew behind unmatchedstyle.com. You know us already, but be the first to experience our new series of talks that we’ll be taking on the road. You can be our beta-testers. As friends and peers in our community, you can provide valuable feedback, so please join us.

This Month’s Talks:

Jay Barry (@petridisc)
Craftsmanship and Code
Jay will talk about the way professionalism, ethics and standards relate to design and front end development and how new technologies like HTML5 and CSS3 facilitate simple, meaningful code.

Gene Crawford (@genecrawford)
Microcopy & Web Design
What is Microcopy, why should you care as a designer and how it can add up into more conversions and love from your clients, plus examples of really great microcopy.

Giovanni DiFeterici (@giodif)
A Button By Any Other Name
Symbolic Imagery in Interface Design. A discussion about the inherent symbolic nature of UI elements, how people interact with them in relation to their real world analogs and how to build a description of an element’s function into its visual presentation.

Featured Book:

Thanks to the user group partnerships advertised in the sidebar, we give away a free book at each of our meetups. This month we’ll be giving away the third edition of Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards. We’ll choose a random attendee from the sign-in list, so be sure to show up and sign-in for a chance to win.

When: September 23rd, 2010 at 6pm
Where: USC Swearingen Faculty Lounge – 301 Main Street (map)
Topic: Design Talks from unmatchedstyle.com
RSVP: On Facebook