Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Refresh Pittsburgh Meet-up (Pittsburgh, PA)

This month’s meet-up will be hosted by our friends at AlphaLab. AlphaLab is located at AlphaLab is located at 2325 East Carson Street in the historic Southside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Click here for a map and directions.

AlphaLab is a catalyst for launching the next generation of software, entertainment technology and Internet-related companies. Created by Innovation Works, one of the nation’s most active seed-stage investors, AlphaLab provides funding, hands-on business assistance, access to a network of entrepreneurs and expert advisors, and free office space as part of an intensive 20-week program in Pittsburgh. AlphaLab helps companies rapidly develop their technology, gain user feedback from early product releases, develop go-to-market strategies, and move toward successful commercial launch.

Presentations

Val Head is a Senior Designer/Developer at New Perspective and is also the brains behind the FlashPitt conference. She’ll be presenting “Observations on Client Relationships and How We Deal with Them”. She’s also provided us with one of the most colorful topic descriptions: The relationship between the designer, or developer, and client can be complicated. They can make you want to dance in the streets, or stab yourself in the eye. Val will talk about some common relationship patterns and how we to make the best of them.

You can read more about Val at her blog thisisportable.com.

Next, we’re really happy to be joined by Samantha Warren. Samantha is a web designer and typophile at Viget Labs, an all inclusive web agency outside of Washington, DC. In addition to being a board member of the Art Directors Club of Washington, DC she also teaches part time at Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts DC campus. In her spare time she updates her blog BadAssIdeas.com.

Samantha will present “Typography is the Foundation of Good Web Design”. She will illustrate how typographic legibility, hierarchy, and expression contribute to the success of a design through a step by step web-site redesign.

You can find out more about Samantha and the cool work she does at her blog BadAssIdeas.com as well as the Viget Inspire blog.

Please RSVP!!

As usual, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org so that we have a good idea of our headcount. It’s especially important for this meet-up as I need to get a headcount to AlphaLab a day in advance

Posted in Calendar | Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Refresh
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(Design Pittsburgh) x Pecha Kucha Night (Pittsburgh, PA)

(Design Pittsburgh) x Pecha Kucha Night
20 x 20
A dynamic dialogue with local, creative talent
121 7th Street, 6th floor
Friday, October 24
7:20 p.m. social hour, 8:20 p.m. start time, $10 per person20 images x 20 seconds = 400 seconds of your best work!Join the conversation and discover a place where local creative talent can meet, network and display their work in public in an informal, relaxed, and dynamic environment. To learn more about Pecha Kucha Night click here. If you are interested in presenting click here.Pecha Kucha Night is presented in partnership with AIGA Pittsburgh. It is devised and shared by Klein Dytham architecture.
Matt

Good design in just six minutes: AIA and AIGA bring Pecha Kucha to Pittsburgh

What happens when architects, designers and artists have six minutes and 40 seconds to present their latest labors of love?

Posted in AIGA | Calendar | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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Refresh Pittsburgh October Meetup! (Pittsburgh, PA)

Wednesday, October 8th

7:00pm.

 Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

AIP is located downtown at 420 Boulevard of the Allies. We’ll be in room 440. Take the gold elevator up to the fourth floor. Take your first right and the room will be a few doors down on the left. There may be a security guy at the door - if there is just let him know you are there for the Refresh Pittsburgh meetup.

A HUGE thank-you goes out to our friend Norm Huelsman for offering to host a Refresh meeting at AIP.

Presentations

We have three presentation on tap for this one:

Michael Fulk is a an interactive developer at Wall to Wall and also does freelance work as Future Designs. He’ll be presenting “Bending the Pipes” - which will give us a crash course on making mashups, feeds and recombining web content with Yahoo Pipes and Dapper.

Next, Olivia Blonde is a web designer at the University of Pittsburgh and previous worked at the Carnegie Libraries where she was responsible for the redesign of the Carnegie Library website. She’ll present “Design Process in a Nutshell”. Each designer - or design group - develops a method for solving problems, then evolves that method over time. While no one person or group may view a problem from the same perspective, general similarities often appear in their approach. Olivia’s presentation will take us from requirements to concepts to design and to handoff.

Finally, Isaac Gierard, a new media developer at Elliance with be showing off a recent project of his, a “CSS Combiner”. Isaac will give a brief introduction to a recently developed open source CSS preprocessor for combining multiple CSS files into on and it’s benefits for website performance.

Also, we’ll be giving away one free pass to the Flashpitt conference taking place the following Friday!

Please RSVP!!

As usual, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org so that we have a good idea of our headcount. I’ll make sure to bring the usual cookies and coffee too.

Posted in Calendar | Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Refresh
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Stuart Morgan lecture: Giving Form to Vision: Balancing the Three Disciplines of Leadership, Innovation, & Execution (Pittsburgh, PA)

School of Design Fall 2008 Lecture Series Speakers

Giving Form to Vision: Balancing the Three Disciplines of Leadership, Innovation, & Execution
Stuart Morgan, Director of Industrial Design and Human Factors for Ethicon Endo-Surgery. Thursday, September 18, 8:00pm
Margaret Morrison Breed Hall, on the Carnegie Mellon main campus

For design to play a significant role in the success of an organization, the three disciplines of leadership, innovation, and execution must be active and in balance. Over the past six years, the role of design at Ethicon Endo-Surgery has changed from one of support to one of leadership. Through recent product examples, Morgan’s lecture will outline guiding principles, strategies, processes, methods, and tools employed to deliver significant results to the company, and show the importance of balancing the three disciplines of design.

Morgan is director of Industrial Design and Human Factors for Ethicon Endo-Surgery, a Johnson & Johnson Company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that develops and markets advanced medical devices for minimally invasive and open surgical procedures. He is responsible for product branding and usability in the corporation, including design strategy and user research. He envisioned and led the development of ethnographic research methods and visualization tools, transforming the new product development process within the corporation and establishing usability as a standard of innovation in the surgical device industry. Under his leadership the industrial design and human factors group has moved from support into a leadership role.
http://www.design.cmu.edu/show_news.php?id=187

Posted in Calendar | IDSA | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Tags: CMU design usability human factors
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IXDA Pittsburgh Happy Hour (Pittsburgh, PA)

Please join IXDA Pittsburgh for a summer Happy Hour (half price appetizers and 1$ off drafts, wine and well liquor) and discussion about submitting to the IXDA conference.

Date: Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008
Time: 5:30 - 7 pm
Place: Walnut Grill
5500 Walnut Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15232

Posted in Calendar | IxDA | Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Social
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FlashPitt 08 - Flash Conference for Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA)

FlashPitt 08
Design. Develop. Art. Flash.
On The Fridge LLC & Pittsburgh Adobe Flash Users Group

Date: Friday, October 10, 2008
Time: 9:00am – 6:00pm
Location: Sheraton Station Square Hotel
300W Station Square Drive, Pittsburgh, PA

New Media conference announced for Pittsburgh

Another push for Pittsburgh’s new media and web technologies market: a conference that will bring some of the big names in the national Flash community to the “Steel City” in October.

PITTSBURGH, PA [April 15, 2008] On the Fridge LLC and the Pittsburgh Adobe Flash Users Group (PittMFUG) announce the first Flash-centric New Media conference for the Pittsburgh area. Flashpitt 2008 will take place on October 10th 2008 at the Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh. National industry leaders will be present to educate, inspire, and engage the region’s New Media community.

Flashpitt 2008 is for the Pittsburgh region’s designers, artists, students, and developers working with Flash, Flex and AIR. Two tracks of sessions will run from 9am until 6pm. The day will be finished off with an after party full of fun and networking opportunities.

Visit flashpitt.com to sign up for the event notifications mailing list and to be notified when tickets for the event go on sale.

Posted in Calendar | Conference | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Tags: AIR | flash | flex
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PodCamp Pittsburgh 3 (Pittsburgh, PA)

PodCamp Pittsburgh is a FREE community UnConference, run by and for people who create, enjoy or are interested in learning more about:

• blogs
• vlogs (video podcasts)
• audio podcasts
• web video
• social and content networks
• new media monetization
• more!

PodCamp Pittsburgh 3 will take place on October 18 and 19, 2008, with a meet-and-greet the evening of October 17.WHEN: October 18 and 19, 9am to 4pm each dayWHERE: Art Institute of Pittsburgh, 420 Boulevard of the Allies, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 (map/directions)COST: free! Register on the websitehttp://www.podcamppittsburgh.com/

Posted in Calendar | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Tags: blogs | PCPGH3
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Refresh Pittsburgh Meet-up (Pittsburgh, PA)

Hi everyone! I’m happy to announce the next Refresh Pittsburgh meet-up is scheduled for Wednesday, July 16th at 7:00pm. This month’s meeting will be downtown at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

Did you catch that? Let’s make sure you read that again: This month’s meeting is at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh - no Treehouse this month!

AIP is located downtown at 420 Boulevard of the Allies. We’ll be in room 440. Take the gold elevator up to the fourth floor. Take your first right and the room will be a few doors down on the left. There may be a security guy at the door - if there is just let him know you are there for the Refresh Pittsburgh meetup.

A HUGE thank-you goes out to our friend Norm Huelsman for offering to host a Refresh meeting at AIP.

Presentations

We have a really cool lineup for this month’s meeting. Here is what you can expect:

Nathan Swartz of clicknathan and is one of those freelance web designer-types living and breathing in Pittsburgh, PA. When not indenting <p> tags or cursing IE6, he likes long walks through the city with his son and wife or enjoying summer afternoons at the Harris Grill in Shadyside. On Wednesday night, Nathan will be sharing some of the lesson’s he’s learned from being a full-time freelancer in “How to Work from Your Underwear: Some Freelancing Tips for Web Designers“. You can find out more about Nathan at his blog or a recent feature on freelance switch.

Jonathan Brodsky graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2005 with a degree in design. He now spends his days working on web development, and nights as a musician and artist. Jon will be showing tools for programmers to improvise live music and visuals using text editors and code as their instruments. This practice, generally referred to as “livecoding”, is about exposing the audience to the mechanics of a computer based performance. He’ll also give a demo of a livecoding tool that he is developing in javascript and openGL. Read more about Jon at his website.

Finally, Geoff Barnes is currently the Senior Information Architect at Elliance, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based e-marketing agency. From 2005-2007, Geoff was the UI Engineer for Collaborative Fusion, a Pittsburgh-based consultancy to state and federal emergency management authorities. Geoff has a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Oregon. In 1999, Geoff co-founded San Francisco web firm Trendmedia, Inc., and came to Pittsburgh in 2001 to help create the Media Arts BFA at Robert Morris University, where he served as a full-time faculty member until 2005.

Geoff will present “What Purpose IA?”. What is the purpose of a marketing website? While marketing websites are more application-inclusive than ever, the fundamental marketing task of persuasion is still the purpose nexus of any marketing-driven website. The site’s IA needs to go beyond content organization, and embody the persuasive goals driving the project. The difference between creating systematic order and creating a systematically ordered, compelling argument is often the difference between a me-too site and a persuasion machine. Learn how to protect your client’s marketing objectives with purpose-driven discovery and IA.

Please RSVP!!

We think we have a great lineup for the next meeting and we’re really looking forward to it.

As usual, please RSVP to info@refreshpittsburgh.org so that we have a good idea of our headcount. I’ll make sure to bring the usual cookies and coffee too.

Posted in Calendar | Pittsburgh, PA, USA | Refresh
Tags: refresh
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Web 2.0 and Beyond: How New Internet Technologies and Trends are Shaping Our World (Pittsburgh, PA)

Social Networking. Instant mobile communications. Unprecedented worldwide information accessibility and organization. Massive political outreach. These are today’s internet.

In this session we’ll explore, in an interactive setting, how the internet is affecting our lives and our businesses at an ever-increasing pace and in an ever-increasing number of ways. We’ll examine how businesses are embracing the new outreach opportunities the internet is providing, and where they’re failing. We’ll discuss how communities are utilizing the internet to fight crime, and how one company is taking on the world.

About the Speaker: Robert Faletti is a Principal at Blue Archer, a Pittsburgh-based application and website development group.

Mr. Faletti has over 12 years of management, consulting, and entrepreneurial experience. Prior to Blue Archer, Robert founded two successful ventures and spent two years with Arthur Andersen where he participated in building the national practice for E-Commerce Strategy.

Mr. Faletti is Past President of ACG Pittsburgh, President of BNI of Western Pennsylvania’s Circle of Excellence chapter, and regularly speaks regarding internet strategy, marketing and website development. Robert is an active volunteer, a Duquesne University graduate, and currently resides in Gibsonia with his wife and two daughters.

Sponsored by: The Council on Realizing Excellence in Management (CoREM). www.CoREM.org

Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Time: 4:00-6:00 PM (Discussion) 6:00 – 6:45 PM (social time and snacks)
Location: Conference Center, Forbes Road Career & Technology Center, 607 Beatty Road, Monroeville
Cost: Free
Event Information Contact: Brien Palmer, CoREM Director of Publicity, at 724-733-5007
To Register, Contact: Brien Palmer, bpalmer@interlinkbusiness.com

Posted in Calendar | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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IXDA Pittsburgh June Meeting: An evening at Fit Associates (Pittsburgh, PA)

When: Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Refreshments and Networking: 6:30-7:00 PM
Presentation and Discussion: 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Post-event Mingle: 8:30 PM onwards

RSVP:
Please let us know you’re coming: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pXQ-v5NgcfQnvYmkxLZzReQ&email=true
 

Thanks,

Michele Marut

IXDA Local Ambassador for Pittsburgh  

Questions?
Direct inquiries about this event to Dana Pruszynski at Fit Associates, dana@fitassociates.com

We look forward to meeting and sharing ideas with you soon! 

Posted in Calendar | IxDA | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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