I have written a recap of the Adobe Acrobat 9 Presentation on my blog, I discuss the ways that Adobe Acrobat 9 will make web design and development easier. It was a great presentation and interesting to see where Adobe is taking their long standing product.

The Computing and Information Technology Division at Wayne State University is looking for a Lead Systems Integrator. This position has lead web designer duties responsible for designing rich and full featured user interfaces for internally developed enterprise-wide web applications.

Successful candidates will have extensive experience designing unique and innovative web sites using all the advanced tools available today. This position works as member of a team of application developers charged with enhancing existing applications and creating new ones when needed. For more information or to apply visit Wayne State’s job opportunities page, Posting Number: 035332.

Mark your calendar! The next Refresh Detroit meeting will be 6:30pm, Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at Ann Arbor SPARK in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. We are fortunate to have Adobe representative Doug Halliday lead the presentation.

Doug will highlight the exciting new features in Acrobat 9 including:

• Flash integration with PDFs
• Forms - simplied workflow to create forms, new ways to collect data
• PDF Portfolios
• Real-time collaboration for shared reviews
• Improved print workflow
• Adobe Presenter
• and many other new features!

Adobe expert Greg Pisocky will join our meeting remotely to explain the accessibility features in Acrobat.

Location

Ann Arbor SPARK
330 East Liberty Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Doug Halliday is Business Development Manager, Manufacturing, at Adobe Systems Inc. In this capacity, he is responsible for driving customer awareness of Adobe solutions in manufacturing, developing partner relationships and formulating strategies with key customers, particularly in the automotive and heavy equipment sectors.

Greg Pisocky is a Business Development Manager in Adobe Systems’ Corporate Product Management Group. As an accessibility specialist, he advises Adobe’s customers on techniques for developing accessible content for those with disabilities.

Ann Arbor Startup Weekend 

We’re putting our heads and our ideas and our skills together to launch startup companies in one marathon weekend. Startup Weekend has been bringing these exciting, community-building weekends to cities all across the country. More than 100 people from all kinds of industries and skillsets will launch 10-12 companies. Friday night we’ll vote on ideas and choose the top dozen or so. After that, you’ll be able to choose which idea/team you want to work on and spend the rest of the weekend putting everything together for a launch. When all is said and done, you’ll be a co-founder of an honest-to-goodness startup. We need all kinds of participants!

We need idea people, marketing people, design people, technical people, business people, etc.; everyone can put their skills to work in creating these new companies. And this is a perfect time to try out something new - if you’re a techie who’d like to try graphic design or an accountant who’d like to try a little marketing, this is an excellent opportunity to expand your horizons. Through the enormously generous support of McKinley, Inc., we’ll be holding the event in office space at Liberty Square, next to the McKinley Towne Centre. There’s plenty of room for us to spread out, good access to public transportation, as well as easy parking.

The registration page will ask you to choose a general area of skill that you’re interested in. You are free to choose whatever you’d like to work on, and during the weekend, you’ll be free to explore different roles on the team(s) you’re working on. Think of the choice as an indication of general direction, not a declaration that locks you into a certain role. Pick what you would like to spend your weekend doing, not necessarily what you do for your day job.

FAQ Why should I attend?

1. Be a part of your local tech community, help build it and connect people.

2. What did you do last weekend? Experience an amazing energy, it could change your life.

3. Meet brilliant, amazing, motivated people. Find people that you know can work hard, finish projects and work well with an unknown landscape. Find a cofounder.

4. Be a part of something bigger, get excited.

5. When is the last time you had a challenge such as launching a company in 54 hours with 100 or so strangers? When is the last time you saw your company on the front page? (more reasons and links at startupweekend.com/reasons-to-attend/ ) Are you starting real companies? Yes. If you have an idea, you can find a team to make it reality. And if you have skills, you can join a team and be a part of something new and exciting. What happens after the weekend? Each team will decide for itself how to proceed. It may be that the team continues work on weekends, or some other structure or plan that works for everyone involved

May’s Refresh Detroit meeting will be on the 21st, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the downtown Ann Arbor District library in Ann Arbor. Map to the location.
SPONSORED BY

TOPIC

We will be having a few quick presentations by members of our great group, and general discussion on the latest news, challenges, projects, and ideas that the group members have encountered in their web related occupations/hobbies/activities.

The event like always is free to anyone who is interested.

The current speakers will be

Nick DeNardis

Designer of the Wayne State University Library and Information Science website. He will discuss the latest release of the website, their goals, process and challenges. Nick was kind of enough to publish his presentation online, thanks Nick!

Brian Kerr

Information architecture, user experience, and django development guru. Exact topic details to come…

Paul Tarjan - Yahoo! SearchMonkey

The fine folks at Yahoo! are sponsoring this event and promise to bring lots of swag as well as give a short presentation on their new open source semantic web search in your own applications and websites. This new product they are releasing is called “Search Monkey” and you can read more at:

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000523.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/24/yahoo-open-search…
http://searchengineland.com/080424-113600.php

Where: Ann Arbor District Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 (map). Parking is available in the library parking lot. We’re meeting in the conference room on the third floor. At the third floor stairs lobby, go through the double doors, turn right, and look for the first door on the right to enter the conference room.

When: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:30PM-8PM

Join us for demo night on April 23, 2008 at the Ann Arbor Public Library, as meeting participants will demo their latest websites, designs, applications, tools, and products. Each person has five minutes to present and answer questions.

Demo night is a great opportunity to share your work, see what others have been working on, and get feedback on works in progress.

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

As of April 15, 2008, the following people are planning to present their work:

• Julie Van De Water
• Nick DeNardis
• Vince Chmielewski
• Kevin Dangoor
• Noel Jackson
• John Paul Narowski
• Brian Kerr
• Christina Wallace

Where: Ann Arbor District Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 (map). Parking is available in the library parking lot. We’re meeting in the conference room on the third floor. At the third floor stairs lobby, go through the double doors, turn right, and look for the first door on the right to enter the conference room.

When: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:30PM-8PM

Speaker: Barb Hernandez, User Experience Manager at TechSmith, Lansing, Michigan

Abstract

What can you do when conversion rate is flat? TechSmith is a trialware company by nature, so measuring how many people download, try and actually purchase our software is the best measure of conversion and success.

We know that the thousands – dare I say millions of users who own SnagIt can’t live without it and tell us how it has changed the way they communicate with people. So what were we missing, why were we not getting the conversion rate we wanted? Learn about how we focused on the user experience, what we did, and how the changes impacted the conversion rate.

Barb Hernandez Biography

Ms. Hernandez specializes in using User Centered Design techniques to drive the user experience for technology products. She has led the user centered design efforts for cross-functional teams and has been involved in all stages of product development, including investigation and analysis, defining detailed requirements, creating prototypes, running usability tests and conducting usability evaluations.

She has worked on the design and usability testing of graphical user interfaces, content Web sites, Web-based applications, and interfaces for hand-held devices including cells phones and PDAs. At TechSmith, Barb focuses on helping teams make design decisions grounded in user intelligence.

We had a great meetup tonight as about 20 people attended our February meeting at the Ann Arbor District Library. Almost half the people attended for the first time, many referred by the a2b3 group (thanks for sharing the news about Refresh Detroit!).

Brian Reindel of Niche Retail spoke about JavaScript namespacing, constructors, and callback functions. We had a lively discussion about the various popular libraries, as well as the potential for developers and designers to use JavaScript without consideration for the user experience and accessibility issues involved.

Thanks again to Brian for speaking to our group; I really enjoyed the presentation. For those people at the meeting who asked about the slides and code samples, Brian kindly provided his presentation in PDF format for download (PDF: 103K).

Join us at the fourth annual Internet User Experience (IUE 2008) at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan the week of March 31, 2008-April 3, 2008. Organized by the Michigan Usabiity Professionals Association in collaboration with Washtenaw Community College’s Internet Professional Program, the User Experience Network (UXnet), Refresh Detroit, and other sponsors, the conference promises four days of presentations, panels, training sessions, and workshops on optimizing web sites so they are effective, compelling, and profitable for businesses.

I attended the event the first two years and can tell you I had a great time! Wonderful sessions, excellent panels, and the opportunity to network with other web professionals involved in designing and improving the user experience was, in the words of MasterCard, “priceless”.

The conference is invaluable for

• company web site managers and stakeholders
• product managers
• marketing professionals
• advertising professionals
• web developers
• user experience professionals
• information architects
• professional communicators
• students in any of the programs

Experts in search engine optimization, online communities, and user experience management will lead sessions at the conference. Tutorials and training are also available to attendees with 1/2 day and full-day workshops before and after the main conference days.

Discounts are available for Usability Professionals Association members and several other organizations, as well as full-time non-working students.

The event will be held at the Morris Lawrence Auditorium at Washtenaw Community Colllege (map).

For more information and details on registration, visit Michigan Usability Professionals Association or the conference website.

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