Events

So it begins

After spending a few minutes waving for the Kare11 cameras the nonprofits met there nerds and as I type they’re forming their game plans. Only 23 hours and 37 minutes left to go.

NerdXSW: Day 2… 3… 4… 5!

I’ve arrived home after 6 days in Austin for the SXSW Interactive Festival. It was, as always, a whirlwind of content, people, and parties. It was really nice to meet up and spend time with other Minnesotans while enjoying the beautiful city of Austin (and the beautiful weather)!

What I love about SXSW (the conference) is the amount of choice in content. Having attended for the past 3 years, I’ve learned that it works best to just “go with the flow” when choosing which sessions to attend. One of my rules for a successful SXSW is to check out a wide variety of content. This year that included a lot of nerdy stuff like web typography, html5 & css3, user experience and wireframing, and a panel on the awesome ExpressionEngine CMS… as well as some totally nerdy-in-a-different-kind-of-way content like DEVO (yes, that DEVO), and my favorite: karaoke!

There were a bunch of Minnesotans doing some awesome panels this year, including Kristina Halvorson (president of Brain Traffic), presenting on content strategy, Greg Swan (who runs perfectporridge.com) on a panel about music blogs in 2010, and Adria Richards (butyoureagirl.com), with her take on how sci-fi shapes the internet.

And this was all but just a small sampling of the content available at the Interactive conference. SXSW really is a great place to hear interesting people talk about interesting things. Equally important to the content, though, are the connections and new friendships that I make every year. This year it was especially great to connect with fellow Minnesotans, and that’s something I hope continues (and that the Minnesota contingent grows) at SXSW in subsequent years!

Well, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, and time to go out and celebrate being home! Then I will begin trying to fit in as much sleep as possible before 9AM Saturday morning, when my team, Pollywog Stew, will come together to dominate at the Overnight Web Challenge.

Signing off,
Gillian

NerdXSW: Day 1 Recap

Well, it’s the first session of Day 2, and I made it only 10 minutes late! (I had to finish my breakfast of crepes–sustenance is key to a successful SXSW). I’m currently in the front row of “Web Fonts: The Time Has Come”, listening to some history of web fonts and writing up this update about my day yesterday.

For the first session of SXSW, I found myself in “History of the Button.” Bill DeRouchey presented a really fascinating look at the history of the button, from its original mechanical incarnation (the lever) to where we are today (flat surface, digital buttons on touch screen interfaces) to the future of buttons (dynamic surfaces that can raise and lower on demand to provide tactile buttons – cool!). Overall, it was an eye-opening presentation about something that we all take for granted in our everyday lives.

Next up was “Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One?,” a discussion about generalists versus specialists in technology. The panelists presented many of the characteristics of generalists and specialists, and walked the audience through a series of yes/no questions illustrating the difference between each. I found the panel quite interesting and engaging at the time, but even better was the discussion that it prompted over dinner later that night. Speaking of dinner…

I spent the last panel of the day camped out in back of ”Time + Social + Location. What’s next in mobile experience?”, tethered to an outlet, furiously twittering to organize dinner plans. While I was thinking about food, the panelists discussed where we are with location-based social media services (like Foursquare and Gowalla, the darlings of SXSW 2010) and what the future might hold.

Once the final session of the day let out, 20 or so Minnesotans at SXSW got together for dinner at The Boiling Pot, a cajun restaurant where they dump shrimp, crab, and crawfish in front of you right on the table. Dinner brought a lot of Minnesota camaraderie, as well as follow-on conversations about the panels each of had attended and what we had taken away.

I’m looking forward to what today holds–it’s shaping up to be a nerdy day for sure, including the web fonts panel I’m currently sitting in, and then a series of workshops: wireframing, CSS3/HTML5, and more web fonts! Wee!

Until next time,
Gillian

NerdXSW: Reporting for duty

Greetings!

I’ve arrived in Austin, TX for the famed nerd mecca, SXSW Interactive. I’ll be blogging a bit from here–sharing some of my experiences, thoughts on panels I attend, and hopefully convincing at least a few of you fine readers that Austin and SXSW is the place to be in mid-March!

All the nerdly goodness starts tomorrow at 2PM. Until then I’ll be emptying my swag bag, charging my mobile devices, reviewing the schedule, and attempting to choose which panels to attend (already there are no less than 5 sessions I’m interested in for the 2:00 time slot).

My most pressing decision at this moment, however: food and margaritas in downtown Austin or the last full night’s sleep I’m likely to get in the next 6 days?

Your faithful reporter,
Gillian

1 Up: Gaming & Advertising, an Agency Primer

If you missed last week’s Agency Primer about gaming & advertising, there’s no need to worry you get an extra life right here. We’ve got video and the slide deck from our one-hour conversation with SnowOwl Studio, a game design company on the topic of gaming as advertising. Some of the things covered in the presentation include:

• 10 reasons gaming is good advertising
• Who’s playing: an overview of modern gamer demographics
• A survey of gaming platforms and their relative development costs

Agency Primer: Gaming and Advertising from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

MnPHP user group tonight; MSP Wordpress tomorrow at The Nerdery

Tonight only, the Minnesota PHP user group graciously yields it usual first-Thursday-of-the-month slot at The Nerdery to make way for tomorrow’s Minneapolis-St. Paul Wordpress group meeting. Please note that Minnesota PHP will return to regularly scheduled programming in March.

Minnesota PHP, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 6-9 p.m.

PHP 5.3 - Mike Willbanks will go over new features in PHP 5.3 (major and some minor you likely wouldn’t know about unless you troll the release logs) as well as anything to watch for in migrating.

Zend Framework Introduction to Zend Application - Nerdery rockstar Justin Hendrickson discusses Zend Framework and utilizing Zend Application.

Please RSVP.

Minneapolis-St. Paul Wordpress, Thursday, Feb. 4, 6:30-9 p.m.

Session 1:

• HTML for Beginners (Tony Thomas)
• Building WP Widgets with the “new” Widget API (Ray Champagne)
• MSP Wordpress Team Meeting to prepare for Overnight Website Challenge: Part I (Tim Elliot)

Session 2:

• CSS for Beginners (Daniel J. Post)
• MSP Wordpress Team Meeting to prepare for Overnight Website Challenge: Part II (Tim Elliot)

Please RSVP.

Both events are free whenever you are.

Also, if you’re looking for even more user groups and other tech community-building initiatives to get involved with, check out Central Standard Tech.

Only 16

When The Nerdery announced a couple weeks ago it had invited 16 (rather than 12) teams of web development volunteers to the Overnight Website Challenge, some who’ve been in the 24-hour needy-meets-nerdy room for extended periods scratched their head while recalling their experience. “That’s a lot of people – and twice as many feet – in some mighty close quarters,” some said.

“The Nerdery went a bit nuts here, even for them,” said one industry observer.

So, while we draw up schematics for the new-and-improved seating chart, here are the 16 (rather than 12) nonprofits coming to the 2010 Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge (listed in no particular order, other than alphabetical)

• Bloomington Chorale
• Centro Campesino
• Child Protection International
• Common Ground
• Dakota Wicohan
• DesignWise Medical Incorporated
• Homeward Bound
• Kinship of Greater Minneapolis
• Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health
• Minnesota Jaycees
• Minnesota Senior Corps Association
• Multicultural School for Empowerment
• Redwood Area Communities Foundation
• Restorative Justice Community Action
• Rural Renewal Energy Alliance (RREAL)
• World Savvy

More on the Big Green Monster.

Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge teams selected

Yesterday the Vikings moved to within just one more glorious win of the Super Bowl. Separation Sunday was easier than expected for them, but it was tougher than ever imagined for the selection committee tasked with picking a dozen teams of volunteer web pros for the next Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge – the Super Bowl for web nerds.

At stake for the hopefuls is a blind date with a bunch of nonprofits (who’ll bring no money for this date).  With 218 volunteers on 22 teams (an embarrassment of riches) vying for just 12 spots, the sequestered selection committee cleared its calendar, took no calls, spurned incoming bribes and contemplated indecent proposals as they stewed over their decision. Then, they punted.

A bigger boat – hey, that’s it! No, wait, what if we stuffed even more well-meaning nerds and needy nonprofits into our existing boat? Is that even safe? Who cares!

No, a nerdy dozen or even baker’s dozen will not do. Introducing The Sweet 16:

.NERD

5 Men, 4 Women and an Animal

ArcStone Super Squad

BIOS – Bold Italic Outline Shadow

Happy Go Lucky Robot Fun Time

MSP-Wordpress

Myths, Mysteries and Legends

Pollywog Stew

Praxis

Rainbow PonyCake

Ratchet

Ruby.mn

Team Placeholder

The JWT Team of Embetterment

The Mighty Polymorphin Power Rangers: Global Warming

Web Mon-keys

So, if your team is on this list, get some rest. If not, please accept a sincere Nerdery thanks for stepping up. It’s gratifying to see so many takers for our ongoing needy-meets-nerdy mad science project.

And, if you’re a nonprofit with an application in, your odds have just improved. On February 1 we’ll announce 15 selected nonprofits (remember, RREAL already has its Golden Ticket).

Good night, and good luck.

Agency Primer: CMS Shootout (WordPress vs. ExpressionEngine)

Nerdery Interactive Labs’ agency primer series of free webinars continues next week with Content Management Shootout. This cordial smack-down between two popular content management systems features in this corner: WordPress, and in that corner, the challenger: ExpressionEngine.

We’ll cover designer-friendliness extensibility and add-ons, as well as budgetary and timeline considerations with both systems.

The webinars will be at 10:15 a.m. (Central) on Tuesday, January 19 and at 3:15 p.m. (Central) on Thursday, January 21.

RSVP to join us ringside as we talk about the strengths of each CMS as part of our ongoing agency primers geared at helping our partners pitch, win, and execute interactive projects.

Agency Primer Notes on Mobile Web Design

If you missed Tuesday’s Agency Primer on Mobile Friendly Web Design, don’t worry there’s still time to sign-up for tomorrow’s primer (that’s Thursday, December 18, at 3:15 p.m. CST). Still can’t make it? Well, we have the second best thing the slides from the primer as well as a video you can watch to go along with them. Sure you won’t be able to ask your own questions, but you know that you can always contact us if you want a live-action private session for your agency, right? Well you can.

The slide deck:

And the video:

The Nerdery’s Mobile Friendly Web Design Agency Primer from The Nerdery on Vimeo.