• marketing and social media
• choosing meeting topics
• finding venues
• finding speakers

Interested? Send an email to refresh [at] lireo {dot} com.

If you’re interested in attending a great presentation on September 16, might I suggest Josh Holmes “The Lost Art of Simplicity” talk, hosted by the Michigan Usability Professionals’ Association and the Detroit Java User Group.

Building highly interactive software that users love to use is usually a challenging endeavor. However, the open source Flex SDK and Java are a perfect combination of technologies for building very rich and highly interactive software for the Web and the desktop.

The communication between the Java back-end and Flex front-end can utilize a number of different communication protocols, but the easiest and best performing is the open source BlazeDS library.

This session covers the fundamentals of using Flex, Java, Spring, and BlazeDS to build rich and highly interactive software for the web and the desktop.

James Ward is a Technical Evangelist for Flex at Adobe and Adobe’s JCP representative to JSR 286, 299, and 301. Much like his love for climbing mountains he enjoys programming because it provides endless new discoveries, elegant workarounds, summits and valleys. His adventures in climbing have taken him many places.

Likewise, technology has brought him many adventures, including:

• Pascal and Assembly back in the early 90’s
• Perl, HTML, JavaScript in the mid 90’s;
• then Java and many of it’s frameworks beginning in the late 90’s.

Today he primarily uses Flex to build beautiful front-ends for Java based back-ends. Prior to Adobe, James built a rich marketing
and customer service portal for Pillar Data Systems.

Our meetings are free and open to the public. Space is limited; please RSVP: mckinnon.david [at] ymail.com

Food and beverages sponsored by The Epitec Group. Prizes provided by O’Reilly Media and Manning Publishing.

• What: “Usability Tweetup”
• When: 7pm, Saturday, July 18, 2009
• Where: Ann Arbor Brewing Company in downtown Ann Arbor [Google map]
• Why: To discuss web usability, web accessibility, Twitter; socialize; drink beer

Note that this is the night of the last day of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair.

See you on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 when Ben Fraser and Michael Evans will be discussing the client/designer relationship at Wayne State University.

Demo night is a great opportunity to:

• share your work
• find out what others have been working on
• hear how something was built
• find out why it was built
• learn about new tools that can improve your work

Each person has five to ten minutes to demo and answer questions. Demo nights are a great way to get to know other Refresh Detroit members.

Where: Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan. We will be meeting in Room 101 at the Morris Lawrence Building (map). Plenty of free parking is available adjacent to the building.

When: Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

Interested in demoing your work? Confirm by commenting below with your name and application/design/tool/product, so we have an idea of how many people will be presenting.

For those who don’t want to demo this time (hopefully you will at the next demo night!), RSVP at Upcoming.org

Times are tough, and every visitor on your site counts. Too often, companies focus on driving more traffic to their website, and not enough time maximizing the visitors already there.

Increasing your conversion rate, even as little as 10%, can bring a significant increase to your sales, downloads, form completions, or whatever task it might be.

RSVP at Upcoming.org

Discussion Summary

Two customers come to your site, one buys and the other doesn’t, why? Why aren’t you able to generate more leads from your website? In this session we will present actionable items to consider on your site, through The Conversion Framework, in order to see significant increases in your conversion rates. We will also identify what role personas play in optimization from a lead gen to an ecommerce business via case studies.

Background

Ayat Shukairy is co-founder of Invesp Consulting, a landing page optimization company, and co-author of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide. Ayat Shukairy focuses deeply on website usability and has led over 30 conversion optimization projects for companies including ReMAX, HowStuff Works and Discovery. Ayat  Shukairy’s work has helped generate an average 20% improvement in conversion rates for Invesp’s clients.

Khalid Saleh is co-founder of Invesp Consulting, a landing page optimization company and co-author of, Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide. Khalid Saleh has over 12 years of experience in e-commerce architecture, design and implementation, managing campaigns for companies including Motorola, AMEX, Levelor, Citrix, WWT, Nabors. Khalid’s work has helped generated an average 20% improvement in conversion rates for Invesp’s clients.

Company Bio

Since 1995, Invesp founders have architected, designed and deployed 22 of the largest e-commerce websites in North America.  On average, Invesp generates an average 35% ROI on conversion for its clients on optimization work. A values driven company, Invesp focuses on providing measureable ecommerce results through client focused delivery, openness and creativity.

Where: Wayne State University Law School, 471 W. Palmer Street, Detroit, MI 48202 (directions) Room 2103, The Distance Learning Room. (University map)

When: Tuesday, May 19th, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

RSVP at Upcoming.org

Thanks to Angelina Italian Bistro, on Broadway across from the Opera House, for offering drink specials to Refresh Detroit members after the panel discussion. Check out the great drinks offered:

• $5 for a 20-oz. Motor City microbrew
• $4/glass for a selection of wines – two whites and two reds

They’re close to the People Mover, so it should be easy to get to them. They also offer $5 valet parking during the week.

BNI is a business and professional networking organization whose primary purpose is to exchange qualified business referrals. The organization presently has over 5,300 chapters throughout every populated continent in the world. Last year, members of BNI passed over 5.6 million referrals which generated almost $2.3 billion (U.S.) worth of business for each other.

What makes BNI unique is that it allows only one person per profession to join a chapter. Thus, once you’ve joined, none of your competitors can participate.

Seating is limited, so please let me know if you plan to attend; call me at (734) 330-4142, or email (vince@vcwebdesign.com) and I will reserve a place for you! The fee of $15 includes continental breakfast. Remember to bring plenty of business cards to pass around as you will meet lots of local business professionals.

Vince Chmielewski

VC Web Design

Join Refresh Detroit on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 for a panel discussion featuring local experts offering ideas to the many different writers who create content for the web. Learn:

• best practices for writing for the web
• how users interact with copy
• copywriting for search engine optimization
• writing for social media

Panelists

• Shannon Paul, Social Media Specialist, PEAK6 Online
  A social media enthusiast, Shannon is well known for her recent work in the development and implementation of social media strategies for the Detroit Red Wings.
• Dalila Akli, eMarketing Analyst, Cengage
  Dalila helps develop the eAnalytics culture at Cengage. Formerly webmaster at Gedas USA, she has also built websites for small businesses.
• Chris Kochmanski, Partner, Marketing Strategist and Copywriter, Design Hub
  Chris has over 30 years of strategic marketing experience. Before joining Design Hub, he excelled in marketing communications, marketing management, and business development for ADP Network Services, Interface Systems, Cleo Communications, and Mechanical Dynamics.
• Evan Deutsch, Senior Writer, Wunderman Team Detroit
  Evan currently works on Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury interactive media projects. In previous positions, he has been involved with interactive projects at Campbell-Ewald and Bowne Internet.

The panel will be moderated by Marie MacNee, an independent writer and web content manager. Marie works for clients including Cengage, Google and others. She wrote her first web copy and usability studies in the 1980s, and later worked at Campbell-Ewald and Doner, where she was an Associate Creative Director.

Where: Wayne State University Law School, 471 W. Palmer Street, Detroit, MI 48202 (directions) Room 2103, The Distance Learning Room. (University map)

When: Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

RSVP at Upcoming.org.