Archive for the ‘Meeting Notes’ Category.
The topic of the evening was a brainstorming on where to point this group (locations for meetings, how to brand/advertise, ect). Great ideas were passed around like hot cakes and we’ll likely see some changes in the very near future. Thanks again for all that were able to make it out and helped make this group the wonderful collective that it is.
Little did I realize last night that our April meeting marked our one year anniversary, so happy anniversary to us. We have reviewed a lot of designs, food and even some poetry this last year and I am very proud to be a part of this amazing group of people.
We had 10 people for the meeting and a few joined us at the bar afterwords. First, Bill Burcham presented thoughtpropulsion.com, a site for his personal business that focuses on consulting and iphone development. We spent a lot of time on this site and went through each section. It was nice to allocate two slots to one site, I felt it let us really get to 90% of the site and offer a well rounded feedback.
One of our presenters got stuck in Central Oregon, but Stacey Dawson stepped up the plate and offered up her resume for review.
All in all a fabulous meeting of great minds. Thanks to Ben for the great photo.
What can I say? I’m late on getting notes up this month. On top of that, I have little to offer. There is a very good reason for this though, the meeting was incredibly engaging and we were all focused on the presenters and not on taking notes.
We had 10 people total, a few regulars and a few new faces.
Sam and Rebekah presented on an SQL Schema they are working on. They took 2 slots as it was a really large project and required a great deal of explanation. They both agreed they got incredible feedback and had several “aha” moments in how to deal with their database better.
BenD presented his re-design concepts for the City Repair website. They had a fabulous library of imagery to work from and we discussed typography options as well as Content Management Systems and which one would best solve the issues presented.
Afterwards, as always, we headed to The Side Door for some continuing conversations on Database structure and some great grub.
Many thanks to Igal for taking pictures.
Our February meeting was great, we were missing some regulars due to illness, but in turn got to hang out with some first timers.
During our introductions Ben asked what everyone thought of Ignite Portland 5.
Reid: ip5 should be skipped and ipv6 should be adopted
Audrey: Sock Puppets
Bram: Great for everyone else
Eric: ip5 = blast
BenH: Hooray for streaming
Stacey: Audio on web stream was pretty rough
Nick: videos are out of order on you tube
and Igal (who showed up late and didn’t get his chance to comment on IP5)
First up, Stacey presented her newest website: http://zebandrews.com. A portfolio site for a local photographer. nLots of great feedback was given and a lot of it has already been implemented to make the site more usable. Audrey loved the photography on the site and wants to use some of it for Open Source Bridge.
Eric then presented http://mile.fm, a new way of bookmarking images using mapping concepts. I fear my ability to explain this site, so go check it out and tell your friends.
Audrey then showed us her concept for a location aware mobile MUD. I am looking forward to seeing this again when it is further along in development.
Igal took some great photos for us:
first up, what did we do? there were 5 of us there tonight. not enough reminders? I know that we scheduled for an off week, but what can we do better next time?
back to the business at hand, we got together tonight, if I were to give this one a name I’d vote for the “where the hell is everyone meeting” or more aptly the “*OMG* john these scones are delicious” meeting (seriously, you all missed out).
next: who’s who?
john (jazzpdx.org) is looking to start a new more expansive venture pdxmusicsource.com, and was looking for some answers for how best to get users from the home page to the info that they want. The conversation mostly revolved around what the user really wanted. There was some discussion about the over all design of the site. I don’t know how much we can divulge as the sites still in beta, but lets just say that it could be a very interesting way to help you connect with unknown parts of the music world here in portland.
from there we went and shifted gears slightly and justin talk about tofino’s sign up process (more info at tofinoauctions.com). the main problem is how to best streamline the process of teaching the user about the service while making it easy and exciting for someone to sign up. not the easiest thing to tackle and given the wide target demographic it makes things even more complex. our discussion mostly focused around what the user really wants and what they should expect, how best to deliver that while staying out of there way. there were also a few small side tracks on various solutions to specific form issues and some better ways to solve them.
i had a great time tonight, thanks again to john and justin for presenting.
If you are interested in attending you may RSVP in the comments, or by email. Or, you can just show up! If you are interested in presenting your work, please email us to sign up. See you soon!
Good thing I procrastinated on writing up the notes from the May meeting. Bram did my job for me, and splendidly, I must say. Thank you, Bram!
I was delighted with the first meeting of PDX Critique. The meeting fulfilled my goal of getting a group of smart people together to share ideas on how to improve works in progress.
The first presenter was Stacey, who showed her portfolio site of interactive design work for feedback. The second presenter was BenH, who showed his street-style photographs, seeking advice on how to use his style when photographing an upcoming friend’s wedding. The third presenter was Rebekah, who showed wireframes for a site showcasing personal pursuits which launched a long discussion on the development of wireframes.
During the Quick Crit portion of the meeting, Schwern brought up an alternate funding stream for artists, with a view to removing DRM from media. BenH requested feedback on the the first PDX Critique meeting.
Links and references that came up during the discussions:
Portfolio 101: A blog post from LifeClever about portfolio development.
Dan Brown, Communicating Design: A recently published book about developing web site documentation.
Posted by Janet.
