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.

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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.

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

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 2½ years since our inaugural meetup in June of 2008. Since then we’ve gathered almost every month to share knowledge, promote local talent and make Columbia a better place for web designers and developers. It’s been a real joy to see this group grow and I have high hopes for where it will go from here.

Unfortunately though, the time has come for me to bid farewell. My wife and I will be moving to Atlanta at the end of March, so I must step down from my post as the Refresh Columbia organizer. I was hoping to plan meetings for this month and next, but I’ve decided it’s best for me to focus my effort on preparing for the move. As far as future meetups go, there are no immediate plans but I’ve been talking to several people about taking the reigns and I assure you that this hiatus will not last long.

In the mean time, you can check our calendar for the meetup details of other local tech groups…and there are several big conferences that are just around the corner too. I hope some of you will come down to Atlanta to see me speak at LessConf on 4/29-30. After that, I’m looking forward to attending An Event Apart Atlanta on 6/13-15 and I’m definitely be coming back here to Columbia for ConvergeSE on 6/24-25. Converge is going to be bigger and better this year, so if you haven’t yet, be sure to sign up for updates so you don’t miss the early bird registration.

At the end of the day, Refresh Columbia is not about me. It’s about you and the rest of the local web design and development community. To those of you who’ve attended our meetups in the past, thanks for being a part of that community. To those of you who’ve volunteered to speak or who’ve helped me organize the meetups, you are the catalysts that have made this community what it is. I hope that you will continue to share your knowledge, promote local talent and make Columbia an awesome place to be a web professional.

Sincerely,
Jason Beaird
@jasongraphix

This Month’s Talk:

Video for Everybody!

Greg Lunn (@greglunn)
Adding video to a website can be a tedious and confusing chore. Compression settings, aspect ratios, codecs, browser support, playback controls… it’s almost enough to make you give up on the idea completely. Greg will discuss methods for adding video to your Web page, including how to take advantage of the latest HTML5 video enhancements while still supporting older browsers through the use of Flash. He’ll also demystify those compression settings and variables in your video encoder, so you can be confident that your video is of the highest quality and available to the widest audience. Wondering which codecs, bitrates, and resolutions work best on the web? Want to see the easiest way to dive into HTML5 video? Come learn the answers.

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 a copy of Stunning CSS3: A project-based guide to the latest in CSS by Zoe Mickley Gillenwater (who you might remember from last year’s ConvergeSE conference). We’ll be giving this book away to one random attendee and the Adobe User Group will be doing some giveaways as well. We hope you can make it out!

When:Thursday, January 20th, 2010 at 6pm
Where: South Carolina ETV – 1041 George Rogers Blvd. (map)
Topic: Video for Everyone!
RSVP: On Facebook

The main competition for the night will be on the Mario Kart circuit. We’ll be hosting an organized 16-player tournament for those who think they’re the best. The winner will walk away with a signed copy of Aarron Walter’s Building Findable Websites and the sweet trophy you see above – which happens to double as a Zelda cartridge if you have an old NES.

The party starts at 6pm and goes until 10. I know there’s a few other events going on that night so feel free to come and go, but we’ll be kicking off the tournament at 8pm sharp. Happy holidays and we hope to see you all there!

When: December 9th, 2009 at 6pm
Where: Delaney’s Five Points (map)
Topic: Holiday Game Night
RSVP: On Facebook

When: December 9th, 2009 at 6pm
Where: Delaney’s Five Points (map)
Topic: Holiday Game Night
RSVP: On Facebook