Upcoming Events
via the Digital Event Board
A monster year for work this year. I rebuilt the new website for work (http://www.newcastle.co.uk/) and its sub sites. I also designed and built the SuperMondays website for the user group of the same name. I also started a personal project called the Digital Event Board to share events, conferences and training with IT professionals.
I have redesigned the category tiles on the Digital Event Board to match the latest iteration of the logo. Also changed the main background to white and changed the layout to that using 12 column 960 grid which gives a better proportion of whitespace between elements such as the tiles and the right column. The slightly wider tiles also look better with the new rounded style, although ie6-8 users beware – this uses the border-radius property!
I recently decided to bin the Web Event Board, and re-launch with the Digital Event Board to expand the range of events avaiable as there was a lot of cross over with other feilds such as security and mobile. Take a look and let me know what you think. It is still a work in progress so may be a bit buggy, but I am looking for a formal lauch in 2012. If you have your own event, why not add it!
I recently wrote a function for wordpress to get posts by a certain category, which I thought I would share as it took ages to find enough information to write my own. This is useful for displaying certain posts on a page.
I define myself as a developer who can design, and as such my designs can be good, but not great. I have an appricaiation of what good design is but not what makes a good design, so I thought I might learn something at this event from SuperMondays which I can apply to make a better website design.
I’m looking forward to the DIBI Conference at the Sage, Gatehead that is on June 7th! I went to last years which was great, and 2011 looks even better. It will be great listening to the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman, Jared Spool and Mike Kus.
I was looking forward to the recent SuperMondays lightning talks on April 26th 2011 with some interest, especially the HTML5 topics. Praise and thanks to all those presented, although I have a couple of points for the organisers to improve the session; I think an extra minute or two for each speaker to extend the Q&A to allow for an extra question or two from the audience, and I found the adjudicator calling remaining time a little distracting considering there was a visual cue.
Moving on to the speakers. Here are a couple of reviews on the talks that were useful to me…
SuperMondays is a strong and vibrant community in the North East of England who meet up on the last Monday of the month to talk about technology and to network with like minded professionals. After attending several events, I approached SuperMondays with a redesign for their website as their current site does not fit well with what they do. The current SuperMondays website is in a blog format hosted using the WordPress platform which allows them to promote their next event as well as display reviews of the previous events. The current design is a generic template, re-badged with their logo.
I designed the new site to help create a strong online identity for SuperMondays. I chose the blue from the Logo to use a base colour for the site; this allowed me to create a unified brand which includes the Newcastle/Gateshead skyline featured above the footer which draws on the regionality of the group.
For some time now I have been working on a website called the Web Event Board. This website will aims to provide a comprehensive list of events, conferences and training for web professionals in the UK, internationally and online. The events are listed for free and can be submitted by anyone including organisers themselves or readers who have come accross the events. Visit the website at webeventboard.xero-g.co.uk.
It was the first time I have attended a flash talk, and I was not sure what to expect, and I was not disappointed. Eight speakers had 7 minutes to talk about a subject close to their heart; 5 minutes talk with 2 minutes for questions. I am sure not all subjects would have appealed to everybody but each of the speakers spoke with passion and had a thorough knowledge about their product.
Some went straight over my head such as Ross Dargan and his FlexRAID product or Derek Frost and developing with the Spring Framework! However I am a web guy, so here are some of my thoughts of the talks that interested me.
Audrius Jankauskas offered a talk on ImpressPages CMS which tries to simplify the whole CMS (Content Management System) process by offering a drag/drop cms tool. Using a desktop program configured to a theme, a user can edit a website by dragging a content type from a menu and dropping onto the appropriate place on the web page then adding the content to the said element. ImpressPages CMS can be installed on any shared hosting like any other popular CMS. Find our more at http://www.impresspages.org/ or follow them on Twitter.
Aidan Garnish talked about his pet project – 65hours.com. This is a site where you can complete a job not for money, but time. Say you do a task for a customer for 4 hours, you have 4 hours to redeem later with another supplier; for example you code up a web design for John, and have Jane write your SQL for your e-commerce site. The site is also well designed and very attractive with some great imagery.
Bobby Paterson told us that by using his website – happie.st - we can help manage our emotional welfare and make positive changes. Currently in its Beta version, you can set your happy habits ranging from wisdom to healthy eating to getting physical which should help the user embrace change and themselves become more positive – and happy. Sign up for the beta at happie.st.
Adrià Mercader showed us that there is to more to finding you way on the web than Google Maps. By using other API’s, such as CloudMade and OS OpenSpace we can offer richer maps with more data, or even just a simple alternative. You can see his presentation at his website.
Keep a look out for the next event at supermondays.org