Meeting Notes

November 2012 Meeting

UPDATE (January 15th, 2012):

Jason Mark just sent over a follow up recap for this engagning blitz, here's the scoop:

Hello NEAUG!

Thanks again for inviting Gravity Switch to your November meeting. We had a lot of fun with our FIRST EVER public Blitz Build.

I had intended to keep you all up-to-date on the progress on the Epi-Center website, but between the holiday rush, and my talks at Android DevCon in San Fran the first week of December, I haven't had the chance.

For those of you who are curious about how the process panned out, you can see the finished site here:

http://www.epi-ctr.com/

There were a few tweaks to the design, but it pretty much stayed the same.

We found stock background imagery that was *just right* for the client's target audience, these three photos alternate with a page refresh.

We did some fun slide-out options on the left-hand side of the page for "contact us".

We worked with their copywriter to get the content polished.

We went live just about a month after you saw us working.

Thank you all again for joining us, and we hope to see some of you at the Western Mass Drupal Camp at UMass this Saturday (both Jason and Kayleen are presenting):

http://drupalcampma.com/

Thanks for the awesome turnout to this November meeting! What an experience....

Thanks so much for having us up on Tuesday.

Please also pass along my thanks to everyone who attended and was part of our grand experiment. There were a lot of firsts for us:

First public blitz
First time we've done the GAPS (Goals Audience Problems Solutions) *before* the blitz
First time we worked in such a limited timeframe
First time we left the client alone in the middle of a blitz
First time we used Go To Meeting to share screens
First time we used that particular software for presenting designs
First blitz in VT

Many of the technical things we did were brand new, as was the design and the client too, and as I mentioned it's the first project I've managed in years.

Some of the new things worked great, some worked OK, some need work, but that's all part of agile, you fail quickly and do better next time! We learned lots, build something awesome and came away inspired by the positive energy that people gave back.

So thanks to NEAUG for having us and being a great audience!

And Mark Madison, a member and attendee has the following feedback on the day:

Good morning,

I just wanted to thank you all for the best NEAUG meeting ever and I've been coming to them for a long time. What Jason accomplished yesterday in 3 hours was mind blowing. Thanks for all your efforts.

I was just thinking how cool it would be if I could post these comments on the website.

Thanks again,

Mark

Madison Computer Services

Here's a recap of the presentation

Agile in Action - Why Agile Web Development Means Less Risk & Happier Clients.

Think about the last web project you worked on? What were the most successful and rewarding parts? What were the most painful?

Like most modern web firms, at Gravity Switch we're always trying to improve our process. A few years ago, we did an audit of our workflow and we realized the most challenging parts of our web design process were around waiting and delays.

   * Waiting for feedback.
   * Waiting for answers.
   * Restarting that thing you were working on last week.
   * Forgetting what was talked about last month.
   * Staff changes at a client's location
   * Strategic changes for a client over the development process

So, we made a concerted effort to eliminate risks and improve communication but removing any unnecessary "empty time" in the project. What we ended up with is an amazing process that is more fun, more successful and less risky for everyone involved!

You can read a little about our very successful process here: http://bit.ly/STN07Q. You can also join us for a real-world demo and see Agile in action!

This event will be presented and moderated by Jason Mark. In addition to his college teaching experience, Jason consistently gets top ranks on his talks on topics such as: project management, web development, mobile development, graphic design, and business development. With Jason at the helm, Gravity Switch continues to be the leader in New England at Web and mobile applications development. In addition to software design, Jason has written and collaborated on a handful of children books. Jason also created ePub books, some of which are currently available in Apple's iBook store.

Feel free to tweet @JasonNMark (http://www.twitter.com/jasonnmark) if you have any questions or specific points you'd like him to cover in his presentation (careful there's a double "n" in that twitter handle).

Jason also shared a link to a recently published article "6 Steps to Becoming a Better Programmer".

NEAUG Site Redesign Strategy

At our October meeting we learned about the three most popular open source Content Management Systems and then had Matt Nelson of First Tracks Marketing walk us through a session discussing how site functionality could be improved using Word Press.

Here's the comparison chart that we created from the presentors (click on image to enlarge):

Barb and Dawn, our co-managers, had already determined they wanted to re-make the site in WordPress, partly as an exercise in learning more about how to do clever things with Word Press, and to make the site easier to maintain.

Here are some notes about functionalities that were briefly discussed -- we'll be working more on this in the coming months -- let us know if you'd like to be involved -- I'm sure there will be points towards our software drawings for the worker bees! We'd also love to hear your great ideas of how to make the site more useful. Email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Barb’s wish list of functionality:

Forward emails from Adobe to be posts in a News from Adobe category?
Meetings and past meeting notes combined into one blog category – reverse chronological by meeting dates.
Allow commenting – for sharing a summary, keypoints, or questions / clarifications from presenter. Matt suggested that the presenters would “subscribe to the feed” for that particular post and then would get emails when a comment or question was posted.
Page for member benefits – one place to find it all -- could be a protected page with a password (which we would share with google group members)
Submit book reviews directly -- Could this be a custom item type with author title publication date, publisher fields? -- Sortable list or table of reviews? Matt suggested a custom post type and /or Gravity Forms for users to submit book reviews.
Member directory: graphic artists, web developers, etc.? Submit info and have it be approved for “active” members -- decide how to define “active” Matt said there was a plugin called Magic Members that might work for this.
Sponsors would be another custom post type.
Page to explain and highlight Google Groups signup – clear up confusion about “membership” in this group.
Social “Share This” links on all posts – make it easy for folks to invite their friends and colleagues to our meetings.

Primary goals of site:

Public announcements of meetings
General time /place / directions
Specific agendas
Book Reviews (so that publishers will keep donating)
Communication re: benefits for Neaug members
Communication of news from Adobe

October 2, 2012

Thinking Beyond the Web Page… and Building A Website

Drupal, Joomla! or Wordpress?

joomla

Do you need to re-vamp an older website or set up a new one? Do you want to be able to make changes to the site yourself without having to learn a bunch of code? Do you know HTML and CSS but want to take it a step further? Would you like to have a chance to meet local web professionals with the experience to either build a site for you or point you in the right direction to build your own? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then the October 2^nd New England Adobe Users Group (NEAUG) from 1pm-4pm at the Marlboro College Graduate Center in Brattleboro, Vermont is the meeting for you to attend.

Most modern websites are built with a “content management system” (CMS) and there are three popular open source solutions available: WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. In the first half of the meeting, Matt Nelson (FirstTracks Marketing, Keene, NH) , Meg McCarthy (Meg McCarthy Design, Brattleboro, VT) and Beth Armour (UMASS Web Designer/ Production Administrator) will provide brief introductions to these three popular CMS platforms. You’ll get an overview of how these systems work and the strengths and cautions associated with each.

During, the second half of the meeting, we’ll begin the process of building a new site for our organization and we invite you to observe and contribute. Matt Nelson will demonstrate his process of working with a client committee to determine the goals, scope, and appropriate solutions for this website. The client committee for this demonstration will be Anne Campbell (Anne Campbell Design, Greenfield, MA) Barb Ackemann (IrisLines, Brattleboro, VT), and Dawn Russell (Artisan Web and Print, Putney, VT).

The New England Adobe Users Group is an ongoing community of folks who work in design, print, publishing, website design and development, video for the web, and all things digital! We meet on the first Tuesday of the month, 10 times a year (no meeting in January or July). Meetings are held at the Marlboro College Graduate School in Brattleboro and lunch is provided by our sponsors. For further information see http://www.neaug.org or contact the co-managers Barb Ackemann and Dawn Russell - email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

20120911

September 11, 2012

Book Publishing: Exploring Current Options, with an Emphasis on Self-Publishing

On Tuesday, September 11, 2012, the New England Adobe User Group will be hosting a panel discussion on book publishing: Panelists will talk about their experiences with traditional print publishing with a publishing house, self-publishing, and e-publishing, and any other formats attendees would like to share.

Panelists include Patti Jacobs, Kathleen Kennedy, and Leda Scheintaub.

Patti Jacobs (self-published) Blue Sky Day photo journal: 2012 Published, with co-author Hannah Morgan, photo journal featuring unique "blue sky day" photos with inspirational quotes and space for journaling on facing pages.
Kathleen Kennedy (self-published), Consciousness Code: Beyond 2012 Kathleen Kennedy is an agent of change, an inventor, artist, teacher, spiritual entrepreneur, and author (Consciousness Code is her third book).
Leda Scheintaub, Cookbook author and editor; recently coauthored Easy, Sexy Raw, with Carol Alt. Currently working on an ebook series called The Sage and the Cook with Rebecca Wood.

The meeting will be held at the Graduate Center at Marlboro College at 28 Vernon Street in Brattleboro from 1 to 4. The meeting is free, and a free lunch will be served.

June 5 2012

Adobe CS6 Release Party

Working with Photoshop Comps

James Lambert will present on:

Making a design comp with an eye on easy conversion to your website
Presenting a design comp to a client
If I time allows, some basic typography sets for websites.

James Lambert is a website developer and college instructor in Rutland, Vt. He holds a master's degree in information technology from Marlboro College Graduate School.

Meet CS6

Meg and Barb ran some demos of features of Dreamweaver and Fireworks' CSS3 capabilities.

May 1st 2012

1:00 at the Marlboro College Graduate School.

This month's meeting may seem like it's for graphic artists, but really it's for everybody. Web designers are often asked to help with logo design, business cards and other print collateral.

1st presentation:

Logo Design for Non-Designers

NEAUG members have asked us repeatedly for a presentation on logo development. You can't teach it in an hour-long presentation, but we thought a panel discussion with some of the designers in the group might be a fun and informative approach.

Each panelist will show one or two logo designs, and talk a little about how they arrived at that solution;
They'll tell us a little about their approach / process with logo design and give us some advice about logo development
There will be a Question and Answer period

The panelists are: Laura Breidis, Anne Campbell, Bob Rondeau and Sunny Tier.

This will NOT be a technical demonstration of software but we can follow up with that at a later meeting!

2nd presentation:

Getting your Business Card ready for the Printer

Dawn Russell of Artisan Web and Print will be demonstrating how to use Adobe InDesign to format, build, and layout a 2 sided business card that incorporates a logo, text, and background color. The business card will then be exported into a format that can be easily uploaded for pre-press production. Font characteristics, linking, guidelines, bleed, color profiles and margins will all be covered during this presentation.

April 3, 2012

Our April meeting is All About Photography. We'll have two presentations from our members, and after the meeting we'll raffle of a copy of Focal Press's History of Photography, a hardcover book and DVD combination with a retail value of $100.

As always, lunch is provided, and the meeting is free and open to the public. Invite your friends!

First, we'll hear from Deb Lazar. who will talk about digital photography using Digital Raw Capture. We'll discuss the pros and cons of photographing in camera raw, and how JPEG differs from raw.

We will also discuss a how a digital camera creates a photograph, what happens to that image after it is captured by a digital camera and the process it goes through to become an ink jet print.

After the break, Adam Vanderminden will talk to us about Adobe Lightroom. His talk will cover:

Importing images- folder structure, writing removable drive

Library view

1. flagging and filtering

2. setting up collections

3. image thumbnail views

4. develop presets

5. export (resizing, formatting, social media)

Library View Right Panel

1. Quick Develop

2. Keywording

3. Metadata

4. Sync settings

5. Sync Meta

Develop View

1. Retouching tool

2. Develop setting

3. Split toning

4. Vignettes

Quick Overview of functions

-Slideshow

-print

-web

Then, Adam will show us Photoshop 5.5's HDR tools.

About Our Presenters:

Deb Lazar: Artist, Painter, Photographer, Graphic Designer, Videographer, and Book Designer. Owner: Artworking USA LLC

Adam Vanderminden: Marketing and Advertising Manager at Telescope Casual Furniture in Granville, NY. "I started into photography from a Photoshop background rather than being a classically trained photographer, which leads to the sort of new-school digital photography process."

Our meetings are held at Marlboro College Graduate School, 18 Vernon St, Brattleboro, Vermont

Next Meeting: March 6, 2012

Meetings are held the first Tuesday of each month from 1 to 4 pm at the Marlboro College Graduate School in Brattleboro, VT.

Lunch is provided by our sponsors and a typical meeting will have two presentations by members or guests on topics of interest to graphic artists and web developers.

The theme for the March meeting is Responsive Design for Websites. Read the article at A List Apart that started this new direction for web design. Then join us on March 6th and bring your smart phones and tablets!

Is your website mobile and tablet friendly?

Do your customers use smart phones or tablets? Presenters at next month’s New England Adobe Users Group will share ideas and experience working with Responsive Web Design. Responsive Web Sites adjust depending on the device to deliver content that is usable on smartphones, tablets and desktop computer. This is one approach many businesses are taking these days to ensure that their customers can get the information they need.

Halley Silver, web developer for King Arthur Flour, will give a presentation titled

“The mobile-first approach to web multi-platform design”.

Many online retailers now offer mobile sites and apps and must juggle the requirements of designing for tablet computers along with their e-commerce sites. How can retailers use common design elements and avoid having to reinvent the wheel when designing for each platform or app? Learn how a mobile-first approach and the concept of responsive web design solved those problems for King Arthur Flour.

Halley Silver joined King Arthur Flour in October 2007, and since then has led the web team through two site redesigns, the launch of the Bakers' Banter Blog, and numerous web technology changes. Before joining King Arthur, Halley managed online development at several companies, including the former Excite@Home and VeriSign. She also built and launched Hoofpicks.com, a free web-based, equestrian-event management service.

Barb Ackemann, co-manager of the Adobe Users Group, will share her approach in developing a responsive Joomla! site for Portabrace, a Bennington, Vermont company that makes cases for professional video and audio gear. Short presentations from User Group members Matt Nelson and Dawn Russell will get us up-to-date on responsive themes and templates for WordPress and Joomla!

Responsive Design is not necessarily the right choice for all businesses or situations – a separate site for mobile devices may be appropriate – or a mobile app. A theme of all of the presentations will be the criteria for making the decision to use responsive design.

Graphic artists, web developers and business owners are welcome to join us for this meeting on March 6th from 1 to 4 at the Marlboro College Graduate School. We provide lunch for these monthly meetings. Because this topic may draw a larger crowd than usual, please rsvp to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it "> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it so we’ll be sure to have enough food. See http://neaug.org or call 257-7391 for more information.

Topics for the rest of the year:

At our February meeting we did some brainstorming and goalsetting for the rest of the year. We'll be contacting presenters and nailing down the details and dates for presentations on some of the following topics -- and posting those details here as soon as we can so you can make plans to attend! Of course, we're also open to other topic suggestions, especially if you have a presenter in mind!

Focus on Photography: Camera Raw and Lightroom
JUNE 5: From mockup to html and css -- Photoshop and Fireworks
(fall) Agile Development -- Jason Mark of Gravity Switch will share their team approach to shortening the development cycle.
Flash development and Adobe's new product Edge for producing html5 and css animations.
(fall) SEO, Google Webmasters Tools and Google Analytics -- a changing scene!
InDesign scripting to incorporate data in the design of a print catalog
Building a custom WordPress theme from a static html / css design.
LESS -- a different way to write CSS (see http://lesscss.org/ ) -- or SASS ( http://sass-lang.com )
Building a mobile App with Dreamweaver and PhoneGap

If you would like to be a presenter, (major presentation OR a short session on a related topic or example), or if you know someone we should invite, please be in touch with us -- Meg McCarthy and Barb Ackemann, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

February 7, 2012:

Adobe Fest! Featuring short presentation from our Adobe Users Group members on Cool Tools from Adobe:

Meg McCarthy showed us how she made a clickable table of contents in an interactive PDF with InDesign. On hover, the page numbers at the side of her document revealed the contents of that page. Click on the page number and you're taken there. Downside, if the pdf is opened in a browser or in Preview, the buttons will not work. They do work in Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Pro.

Dawn Russell on developing websites for multiple devices using new features in DreamWeaver CS5.5. She provided a Dreamweaver template to explore the tools for building responsive websites that adapt to different browser widths.

Matt Nelson gave us his top ten reasons for using Fireworks vs. PhotoShop for website design comps.

Deb Lazar showed us how she uses Bridge to organize her photos.

December 6, 2011 Meeting:

Kevin VanderWoude presents a How-To Session on AJAX

You've heard the term AJAX, but what does it mean? How does it work? And more importantly, what can it do for you? Learn the answer to these and other perplexing questions during this afternoon session.

Many exciting web features you've come to depend on over the past few years rely on AJAX. Google auto-suggest, Facebook status updates, and countless other examples of web functionality are made possible by AJAX methods.

You will leave this session with practical AJAX examples that you can customize for your own web pages. This session will be geared towards web developers of all experience levels.

Kevin VanderWoude is currently a Coldfusion/ASP web developer for WorldWide Computer Solutions of Keene. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Matt Nelsom presents on ecommerce solutions for WordPress sites

Over at FirstTracks Marketing Group @MatthewTNelson has been doing A LOT of WordPress work over the past two and a half years and now wants to share some experiences and opinions in regard to what he feels are the current best ecommerce solutions for WordPress based on his personal development and design experiences. During this presentation Matt will be discussing his personal experiences with three popular WordPress ecommerce plugins: WooCommerce, Shopp, and WP-ecommerce. What are they like to use? What features do they offer out of the box? How easy are they to set up and integrate into a site? What are potential pitfalls and limitations of the plugins? If setting up an online store with WordPress is something you have been thinking about doing then you do not want to miss this session!

Miss the October meeting? You can watch it!

Next meeting: November 8, 2011, 1-4 PM Note: This is NOT the first Tuesday in November.
Marlboro College Graduate Center
Brattleboro, VT

Lunch provided by our sponsors
Raffle for free book drawing and Adobe schwag. Books courtesy of sponsoring publishers.
As always, there is no admission fee to attend our meetings.

directions

November 8, 2011 - The Twitterverse / eBook Publishing

(NOTE: This is NOT the first Tuesday in November. When I spoke with Adrian, he was only available on November 8th. Please mark your calendars and help spread the word.)

1:00 Adrian Segar, conferencesthatwork.com

Adrian Segar will tell the story of how he got involved with Twitter and how, to his surprise, it turned out to be transformational for his conference consulting and design work.

He’ll talk about aspects of using Twitter including Twitter chats and using Twitter appropriately to make fruitful connections with others.

_____

Adrian Segar has designed, organized, and facilitated conferences for thirty years. He has been designing participant-driven and participation-rich events, commonly known as unconferences, since 1992. His book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love, published in November 2009, has been described as "THE how-to manual" on creating events that truly engage and capitalize on attendees' collective wisdom and experience. Adrian blogs regularly on event design, logistics, presentations, and many other related topics at www.conferencesthatwork.com. His next book will be on participation techniques you can use to enhance your meeting sessions.

Adrian is an acknowledged innovator and speaker on participant-driven event design. In May 2011, BizBash Magazine named him as one of "The 68 Most Innovative Event Professionals".

Adrian has a Ph.D. in elementary particle physics, owned a solar energy manufacturing company, taught college level computer science for ten years, and was an independent information technology consultant for over twenty years. He lives in Marlboro, Vermont, is the president of two non-profits, and loves to sing and dance.

Adrian Segar can be contacted at 001-802-254-3566, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , on Twitter: @ASegar, or via his website: www.conferencesthatwork.com.

2:30: Andreas deDanaan on developing ebooks with InDesign!

Resources to download:

InDesign to eBook Workflow (pdf)

InDesign to eBook Workflow (epub)

Exporting to ePub (pdf)

The eBook has seen skyrocketing consumer sales recently. Although the ePUB format has been around for years, it hasn’t gotten much attention until recently, and now that attention is intense. If you want to self-publish or do some marketing with content that you own, the ePUB is a great format to publish in.

Andreas deDanaan will present the nutshell version of creating eBooks with Adobe InDesign. InDesign is the industry standard for traditional printed-book design and production. It has some excellent features for exporting a book design to the ePUB format, but the resulting file may leave you quite unsatisfied. Controlling this ePUB export and cleaning it up for public consumption can be quite a challenge. If your intent is to sell on Amazon, Apple’s iBookstore, or Barnes & Noble, you’ll have to create an ePUB or MOBI file that validates to the ePUB standard and hopefully has some typographic polish to it.

Whether you have an existing book that you need to convert or content that you would like to publish directly to ePUB, this talk is for you. Andreas will discuss strategies involving both Adobe InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 and even Adobe Dreamweaver CS5. Inexpensive or free software resources are available to help with the editing of ePUB files after export, and these will be touched on as well. Put your HTML/CSS hat on if you have one; the ePUB is built on these markup languages plus XML. You’ll see a little bit of code in this presentation.

Andreas has designed and produced traditional print books for 15 years. He has worked for a number of publishers in the San Francisco Bay Area including Peachpit Press, Weldon Owen, Inc., and Lonely Planet Publishing among others. He has recently converted books for local publishers including Bauhan Publishing.

Andreas is currently a Web Designer and Developer for New Chapter, Inc and is completing a degree in Internet technologies at Marlboro College Graduate School. He can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . His Web site is www.deDanaanDesign.com.

December 6, 2011 -- NOTE: We're back to the First Tuesday!

BIG ADOBE SOFTWARE GIVEAWAY TO ONE LUCKY USER GROUP MEMBER!

Everybody's a winner with our Book Swap -- bring a book, take home a different one!

Matt Nelson on Word Press eCommerce solutions

Kevin VanderWoude on AJAX

October 6, 2011

Jason Mark presented on developing for mobile devices. The discussion included the difference between apps and the mobile web.

Jil Mac recorded the session and you can watch the whole thing via Adobe Connect: http://experts.adobeconnect.com/p17mwa1zpph/

20110906

September 6, 2011 - Product Databases and Implications for User Interface -- Building a Custom eCommerce Solution.

Presenters:

Bill Tomczak, Grumpy Engineering
Barb Ackemann, IrisLines Design

Bill and Barb have been working on a major product involving database restructuring and a new user interface for a Vermont company, Portabrace. (The new site won't launch until after the NEAUG meeting, but you can take a look at the existing site at http://portabrace.com. You might notice some usability issues on this site that is 8+ years old!)

The first presentation will include an analytical view of the current site and the user interface strengths and weaknesses along with a quick look at the current database structure. We'll follow this with a demonstration of how the data structure is being changed and a preview of the new user interface - a responsive design that rearranges content for different devices based on screen width.

In the second presentation, Bill will show how he set up the new database structure to support the new user interface. He'll discuss the process of developing a custom component in Joomla! 1.7, and touch on the coming post-SQL world.

The meeting, which starts at 1:00 and includes a free lunch provided by our sponsors, includes two presentations, a break in between for introductions and networking, and giveaways at the end. New Adobe CS5 t-shirts are among the door prizes this month.

As always, there is no admission fee to attend our meetings.

August 2, 2011

This month's meeting will be totally devoted to user experience and usability testing.

Jill Hart — Think Like your Customers: Secrets to growing your market share

Find ways to achieve technology and product rhythm with your target customers and increase your return on investment. During this program you’ll explore a multi-disciplined approach to technology and product design that takes the guesswork out of the design equation to potentially save you from failed product designs and costly reworks. You’ll leave this program having experienced actual customer testing and with a template aimed at delivering design success.

Jill Hart's broad range of professional experience spans marketing and sales to training, strategic planning, technology development and human computer interaction. A certified project management professional (PMP), her project management efforts have been focused on complex multi-interfaced e-commerce/application development initiatives as well as innovative mobile application design. She is Past President of the PMI Keene Chapter and a member of the Usability Professionals Association.
Jill holds a BA in Psychology and earned dual masters degrees from Marlboro College Graduate School in the areas of Management and Teaching with Technologies. Throughout her graduate work she retained a focus on Human Computer Interaction, her professional passion, and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the topic. She led the formation of an Innovation Lab at the Marlboro Graduate School where she is an Adjunct Faculty.

In 2007, Jill founded Brain Logic, LLC, a company offering a full range of marketing services, and emphasizing a customer-centered approach to product, technology and process design. Her company’s mission is to work with clients so they understand how their customer’s think and then apply those customer insights to product, technology and process designs to insure they deliver the optimal ‘customer experience’ for their target market. In today’s marketplace, the customer expectation is ‘ease of use’ and Brain Logic leads initiatives so companies successfully deliver it.

June 7, 2011

Mike Hanish, Web Matt Nelson, Wordpress Child Themes

May 3, 2011

Dawn Russell,
Crafting Graphics for the Web in Photoshop

This presentation will oscillate between the language of the web and Photoshop techniques to introduce you to key concepts used in crafting graphics for the web.

Topics covered will include:

Preparing images in Photoshop for multi-layered compositions.
How to select, cut out, and layer pieces and parts of images.
How to blend and obscure those annoying little cutout edges.
Saving in GIF, JPEG and/or PNG file formats to optimize for the web.
Simple Positioning with HTML and CSS to increase download speeds for websites.
Jil Mac — Adobes Connect PRO and Connect NOW - What is it,How can you use it, and how can it improve your interaction with clients for Development, Training & Support remotely.

April 5, 2011

We have two presenters for our April meeting:

Steve Judd of University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension presented

Developing websites and web applications for mobile devices

Steve's presentation can be found here.

Daniel Kinoy will present on

Preparing Video for the Web

Dan writes: "I'll present a review of the best (from high-end, to cheap, to free) tools and methods for both preparing your own videos and for preparing videos for youtube, including how to survive the new CODEC war (Google vs Apple) and how it impacts HTML5 video (I'm just jumping into HTML5 in general, but I'm already a big fan). I will be including a lot of links for resources and so-forth (with a little about Telestream's Screen Flow recording software which I use for this sort of thing)."

Resource: http://kinomedia.com/codecwars/switchplayer.php

As usual, we'll have lunch, courtesy of our sponsors and