RefreshColumbia.org

February 2010 Meetup

Jason Beaird — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:32:27 +0000

The end of February is fast approaching which means it’s almost time for the next Refresh Columbia meetup. This month we’re bringing back lighting talks with 5 speakers presenting for 15 minutes each on a wide variety of web-centric topics:

The Lineup:

Every Designer’s Nightmare: Fear of the Blank Page

Jennifer McSwain (@jenmac24)
Jennifer will talk about finding inspiration to keep your work fresh, innovative and satisfying.

Sign Up Form Design

Gene Crawford (@genecrawford)
Gene will cover some basics behind the sign up form: psychology, patterns & design review.

What the @font-face

Jay Barry (@petridisc)
Jay gives us practical steps for using @font-face today.

YQL: Query the Web

Justin Shearer (@justinsane98)
Justin will give us a quick walk through of how to grab RSS feeds and other types of data for display on your site without using any server-side code.

The Care and Feeding of a Developer

Jason Johnson (@jason_johnson)
Jason will show us how to keep your developers challenged, focused and happy.

Featured Book:

Thanks to the user group partnerships advertised in the sidebar, we’ll be giving away a free book each month. This month we’ll be giving away a copy of Microformats Made Simple by Emily Lewis. We’ll choose a random attendee from the sign-in sheet, so be sure to show up and sign-in for a chance to win.

When: February 24th, 2010 at 6pm
Where: USC Swearingen Faculty Lounge – 301 Main Street (map)
Topic: Lightning Talks!
RSVP: On Facebook

January 2010 Meetup

RefreshColumbia — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:39:55 +0000

Well here we are in 2010. No teleportation devices or flying cars yet, but there’s a lot of new stuff going on in the world of web design. Advances in HTML5, CSS3 and @font-face are quickly making their way into browsers and therefore into our work flow. We look forward to covering some of these developments in the coming months, but none of those changes mean anything without design.

The Beautiful Web

Jason Beaird (@jasongraphix)
The key to designing beautiful, effective websites is learning to think like a designer. In this talk, Jason will explain how principles and theory can only take our designs so far. We’ll look at landmark designs from both on and off the web, digging up inspiration and discovering the secrets to being better designers.

New Location:

We’ll be trying out a new venue for this month’s meeting: The Faculty Lounge at USC’s Swearingen Engineering Center which is located at 301 Main Street in Columbia. Unlike the directions to most rooms in Swearingen, these are quite simple. If you come in through the glass doors on the Main Street side of the building, the Faculty Lounge will be the first door on your right.

Featured Book:

Thanks to the user group partnerships advertised in the sidebar, we’ll be giving away a free book each month. This month we’ll be giving away a copy of Designing Web Interfaces by Bill Scott & Theresa Neil. We’ll choose a random attendee from the sign-in sheet ~~between the first and second talk~~ (Only 1 talk this month, thanks for catching this Levi) Be sure to show up for a chance to win.

When: January 27th, 2009 at 6pm
Where: USC Swearingen Faculty Lounge – 301 Main Street (map)
Topic: The Beautiful Web
RSVP: On Facebook

Columbia Code Camp

Jason Beaird — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:44:12 +0000

The Columbia Enterprise Developers Group is hosting Columbia’s first MSDN Code Camp on January 30th, 2010. MSDN Code Camps are community events where developers and enthusiasts come to learn from and network with their peers. The Columbia Code Camp will feature many speakers including Microsoft MVPs, book authors, and local talent. Visit http://columbiacodecamp.com for more information.

When: January 30th, 2010
Where: USC Swearingen Bldg – 301 Main Street, Columbia, SC (map)
Cost: Free!

The 2009 Survey

Jason Beaird — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:21:20 +0000

In the graphic design field, many people depend on the yearly AIGA | Aquent Survey of Design Salaries to see where they stand among other graphic arts professionals. The A List Apart’s Survey for people who make websites provides a similar service for the web industry. Sure, AIGA includes some web jobs, but the ALA Survey is by web makers, for web makers. I highly recommend that anyone who makes anything for the web go take the survey – right now. It’s completely anonymous and the more people who participate, the more accurate their State of the Web report will be.

http://alistapart.com/articles/survey2009

Game Night Tomorrow

Jason Beaird — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:36:09 +0000

Just wanted to post a quick reminder that our holiday game night party is tomorrow in the back room at Delaney’s. We’ve checked out the venue and have figured out the logistics for running both 4 player Mario Kart AND 4 player Rock Band at the same time. (Thanks to Cyberwoven for letting us borrow a projector!)

If you haven’t RSVPd via the Facebook Event page, please do that so we have an idea how many people to expect. Happy Holidays!

When: December 8th, 2009 at 6pm
Where: Delaney’s Five Points (map)
Topic: Holiday Game Night
RSVP: On Facebook

CoffeeCup Jobs

Jason Beaird — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:54:18 +0000

CoffeeCup Software, the folks who put together the WebMaster Jam Session and produce a wide range of helpful software have asked us to pass on the news that they’re currently hiring at their metro Atlanta office. The following positions are available:

Visual Designer (path & pixel ninja)
Flash/ActionScript Guru
Customer Support Specialist (HTML and CSS wizard)

Visit http://www.coffeecup.com/jobs/ for more info.

Wordcamp Atlanta

Jason Beaird — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:37:19 +0000

The first ever WordCamp Atlanta will be held Friday, January 8 – Saturday, January 9 at ATDC in Tech Square (on Georgia Tech campus). WordCamps worldwide connect a community of bloggers, designers, coders, marketers, and enthusiasts of WordPress. If you work with Wordpress or just want to learn more about this versatile and ubiquitous open-source CMS, it’s well-worth the ticket price and the short drive to Atlanta. Visit http://atlantawordcamp.com for more information.

When: January 8-9th, 2010
Where: ATDC 75 5th Street NW, Suite 202, Atlanta, GA 30308 (map)
Cost: $45 ($35 Earlybird – till Dec 13th)

Holiday Game Night v2.0

RefreshColumbia — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:05:39 +0000

You are cordially invited to join us for our second annual Refresh Holiday Game Night. As with last year, we’re combining our November and December meetups into one festive party in early December. This year, we’ll be getting our Rock Band and Mario Kart on in the back room of Delaney’s in 5 Points and the Columbia Adobe User Group will be joining us as well. The party will go from 6pm – 10pm on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009. Be sure to bring your inner rock star and plenty of red shells because we’ll be shredding and power sliding all night long.

When: December 8th, 2009 at 6pm
Where: Delaney’s Five Points (map)
Topic: Holiday Game Night
RSVP: On Facebook

Augusta Code Camp

Jason Beaird — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:26:51 +0000

One of our email subscribers let us know about the upcoming Augusta Code Camp. If you know of any local events for designers or developers that we haven’t announced, please let us know and we’ll post them up here.

“Augusta Developers Guild will hold its inaugural Code Camp on November 7th. It will be a day full of free developer content, regional and nationally known speakers, enough breakfast and lunch to keep us energized, some solid SWAG* to ice the cake, and a social get together after the event.”

When: Saturday, November 7th, 2009
Where: Augusta State University
2500 Walton Way
Augusta, GA 30904
Details: http://augustacodecamp.org

October 2009 Meetup

RefreshColumbia — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:05:24 +0000

Last year we titled our October meetup, “The Bleeding Edge of The Web”. Like a recurring nightmare, our topics this month again fit this bone-chilling theme. We dare you to drop in and be frightened by the latest technology to haunt the web.

Venue Note: We’re back at ETV again this month as the room in the Library wasn’t available. If anyone has a connection for a location that would be consistently available each month, we’d be love to hear about it.

The Lineup:

Bing Mashup

Chris Eargle (@kodefuguru)
In this talk, Chris will show how we can build an ASP.NET MVC website using various resources from around the web. He’ll be pulling in businesses from Bing Phonebook, displaying them with Bing Map and using Flickr to show photos of each business.

Google Wave 101

Rick Stilwell (@RickCaffeinated)
We’ve all heard about it, but very few people have received an invite to try out Google’s latest beta project, Google Wave. Rick was one of the earliest beta testers and will be telling us all about what it is, how to use it and how it will change the Web.

Featured Book:

Thanks to the user group partnerships advertised in the sidebar, we’ll be giving away a free book each month. This month we’ll be giving away a copy of Handcrafted CSS – More Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm. We’ll choose a random attendee from the sign-in sheet between the first and second talk. Be sure to show up for a chance to win.

When: October 28th, 2009 at 6pm

Where: SC ETV (map) – Bank of America Auditorium

Topic: Bing Mashup & Google Wave 101

RSVP: On Facebook