Events

This week in Nerdery

Tuesday and Thursday: Banner ad webinars. Next in our monthly series of agency primer webinars, we’ll talk about how we help partners develop banner ads designed for brand awareness, or, to provoke those inclined to click them to click them. RSVP at http://www.nerdery.com/banners.

Game dev club: Some stay after work to play with game development, Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m.

Thursday: MN PHP user group meetup, 6-8 p.m., with a tech talk on HMVC (Hierarchical Model View Controller) by Daniel J. Post. RSVP at http://www.mnphp.org/.

Nerdery webinar on banner ads, Aug 31 and Sept 2

Some people find banner ads maddening, sometimes with probable cause. Some are conditioned to never ever click a banner ad, but with the right design you can get them to have a look. And we can help. RSVP at http://www.nerdery.com/banners to check out one of our two free webinars on banner ads – Tuesday August 31 at 10:15 a.m. Central and Thursday September 2 at 3:15 p.m. Central.

We’ll address two primary kinds of banner ads: those designed as a call to action (the ones that beg to be clicked, made to drive traffic) and those that just sit pretty for the sake of brand awareness. We’ll cover development best practices favored by media service providers and the standards of rich media service providers regarding tech specs, sizes, bells and whistles.

If you want your banner ad to really make a scene, we can make that happen – but buyer beware that placement costs rise, as do risks of being more distraction than attraction to some online consumers voting with dollars of their own. Maybe a game is the right play for your banner, but maybe not. Nerdery developers are good at weighing in on what will work, and really good at working directly with media and rich media service providers to implement the ideas of our agency partners.

Good seats (of your choosing) are still available, please RSVP.

QA – The Agency Primer Webinar

Did you know The Nerdery puts every project through rigorous QA testing before launch? Did you know we’ll also do QA for sites we didn’t even code? Well it’s true. If you missed our QA webinar and are at all concerned about bugs, check out the deck and video below to learn how we find ‘em and fix ‘em.

QA agency primer Nerdery webinar from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

SocialDevCamp Chicago

It’s fun watching the ever-changing digital landscape. If there’s one thing the web is doing, it’s going more and more social. Facebook crested 500 million users. Google just launched SCVNGR, and there’s a lot of talk of them creating a social service to compete directly with Facebook.

If you’re a developer in Chicago August 14-15, there’s no better place to be than SocialDevCamp at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where a few hundred likeminded nerds will be figuring out how they can leverage the social web to create great new applications. With two tracks going each day, plus an unconference and a Hackathon*, there’s something for everyone — social application and platform developers, mobile social developers, evangelists, and enthusiasts.

If you’ve got time on Sunday, swing by the panel discussion “Using Hackathons & Code Sprints for Innovation and Social Change.“ I’ll be sharing my own experience/flashbacks from our own Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge – a 24-hour nonprofit nerdathon we’ll be bringing to Chicago.

*For the Hackathon, I’m bringing a palette of Red Bull, ramen noodles, and my vuvuzela to cheer on our team – who as of August 2^nd will be the founders of our new Chicago office.

Agency Primer: How a little QA kills bugs dead

As part of our ongoing agency primers geared at helping our partners pitch, win, execute and deliver bug-free interactive projects, we’ll cover how to talk to your clients about bugs, and how our QA process vastly minimizes their risk. Learn how the QA team at The Nerdery handles its sacred mission as our last line of defense against bugs.

RSVP to join us Today, July 27 at 10:15 am Central or Thursday, July 29 at 3:15 pm Central.

Two thumbs up from The Nerdery’s QA department will only come after their careful scrutiny of web interface performance and usability, tested in numerous browsers. QA enters bugs into a tracking system, where they are assigned to developers for repair. Once a bug has been fixed, it is reassigned to QA for confirmation.

Nerdery developers give QA an overview of all functionality requirements and specific test cases; these help QA understand what aspects of a project are to be tested and how. QA gives the developers an opportunity to see their project from the perspective of a user or tester –The Nerdery’s QA process fosters an environment of successful self-testing by the developers and is key to the delivery of a quality final product.

In our one-hour webinar we’ll cover:

• What QA does and why they’re our/your friend
• Our QA process, functionality and work-flow
• Best bets for best-laid agency plans to improve quality of web projects
• How to avoid common missteps (and how we’ll catch them, anyway)
• QA gotchas: examples of bacon-saving/house-rocking functionality fixes, backend UX/UI, and security-savior stories
• Mosquitoes, dead. Cockroaches, dead. Bugs hiding in code that could upend the launch of a website, dead.

RSVP to join us Today, July 27 at 10:15 am Central or Thursday, July 29 at 3:15 pm Central.

This week in Nerdery

It’s Pentathanerd week. The Summer Games will play out over the noon hour all week long with Friday BottleCap Talk replaced this week (4:30) by the grand finale and closing ceremonies. Reasonably good seats remain available. (Much) more on this later…

MSP WordPress user group meeting, Thursday, 6:30-9 p.m. at The Nerdery (free)

Topics:

• BuddyPress for Dummies (Toby Cryns, presenter)
• Moving WordPress to a new domain/server (Ray Champagne, presenter)

Please RSVP here so we can order enough food.

The Pentathanerd Summer Games

• Darts: Monday, July 19
• Chess: Tuesday, July 20 (preliminary rounds occurred Monday, July 12)
• Scrabble: Wednesday, July 21
• Pinewood LEGO Monkey Ball: Thursday, July 22
• “Air Quotes” Quiz Show: Friday, July 23 (Quiz Show will also have a championship round at 4:30)

Sticklers on rules (from Pentathanerd founder Mark Seemann):

“Air Quotes” Quiz Show

Setting the scene: You’re in a game show. You’ve been given the answers. Well, some of the answers. Can you remember them? End scene. Freeze frame. Star wipe. The preliminary round of “Air Quotes” Quiz Show involves taking an online quiz about a database of questions, some provided before the competition. Some questions will also be about the Pentathanerd itself, such as “Who won the Darts Event?” The competitors with the top three scores will advance to the Championship Round (Friday). The top three will truly test their skills at memory, competing against each other in three final rounds:

• Icon Recall – an image of 15 icons is shown at the start of the event for a period of time. After the second round, the finalists will take turns calling out an icon from the master image. If it’s there, 10 points. If not, the finalist is done with this round. Getting five correct earns a maximum 50 points.
• Nerdy Numerics – finalist must recite as many digits in order as possible from one of three numbers: pi, e (euler’s constant), and the square root of 2. One point for each digit past the decimal point, to a maximum of 50 points. Hint: the numbers start with 3, 2, and 1, respectively. Now remember, after this recitation comes the recall portion of Icon Recall!
• Showdown – three categories, one question each. Finalist in third chooses their category first, then second place. Get the question right, get 50 points.

Pinewood LEGO Monkey Ball:

Competitors design crafts that convey a LEGO person (or a reasonable substitute thereof) down a short ramp onto a field of point-valued areas. Where the LEGO person ends up determines the score for that run. Crafts may be constructed of anything (within reason: non-lethal, non-oozing, legal, etc) with the following three stipulations:

1. Must fit within a specific size (to be determined, for now say roughly a shoebox)
2. Must not have any external controls (no remote-controls)
3. Must be activated/initiated by the deadfall mechanism common to Pinewood Derby ramps

Scrabble

Competitors will be ordered randomly. Each competitor in turn will take seven new tiles and then have one minute to place a word on a standard Scrabble board, scoring points as per the game. Unused tiles are not retained. After seven competitors have placed valid words on the board, the board will be reset, allowing the next competitor to place the first word. The words will be tested against the SOWPODS [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOWPODS ] word list. Invalid words will be removed, and the player attempting an invalid word will score zero points. After every competitor has had a chance to place a word, the order of competitors will again be randomized, and play will continue with any existing words in play on the board. There will be a third round, after which the total scores will determine overall placement for the event.

Chess

• Clocks will be set to five minutes per side with a three second delay.
• Players will be randomly seeded into pools of four (or as close as possible).
• Everyone in a pool plays everyone (there’s only time for one match each, random color selection).
• Top 50% of each pool advance to the next round – ties advance together.

Darts

Competitors will have two sets of three throws each to get the best combined scores. Top 50% advance to the next round (ties advance together) until the field reduces to the top four competitors. Final round of four will determine top four placement. Ties in the final round will be broken by single sets of throws.

More rules may be added as needed (not that we’re just making this up as we go). Some rules may be made to be broken…

More here: http://pentathanerd.com/

Still more here: http://blog.nerdery.com/tag/pentathanerd/

Open House musical (instrumental mix)

Nerdery Open House from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

If you missed our open house geared at recruiting you, here’s what it looked and sounded like. We had more than 60 interested parties at ours – which is about the same number of jobseekers we had at last November’s shindig. Look, we’ll keep doing this if we have to, or, you could at long last succumb to your inner nerd and join us so we can finally focus on throwing the toga party we’ve always dreamed of. Toga! Toga! Am I chanting alone? Again? Find your calling at http://www.nerdery.com/jobs.

Agency Primer Notes: HTML5, CSS3 & You

If you missed out on our Agency Primer about the future, there’s no need to fear, Agency Primer Notes are here!

Nerdery Agency Primers: HTML5 and CSS3 from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

Don’t forget, tomorrow is The Nerdery’s Open House

According to Matt, our @the_nerdery twitterer, there are three things you can do at tomorrow’s Open House (3-6 p.m. make sure to RSVP).

1. Play Tron
2. Play Chess
3. Get a cool job

If that’s not enough, you can read about The Nerdery’s Culture to find out how awesome it is to work here.

Summer open house says The Nerdery’s hiring – heavily

On Friday, July 9, curious web pros still not working at The Nerdery are invited to explore our natural habitat and get a feel for the company recently ranked #6 on Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Top Workplaces list, as judged by Nerdery staff. Please RSVP.

What: Open House for Nerdery Recruits – open positions include: PHP developers; C#/.NET developers; IA/UX developers; Objective C developers…

When & Where: July 9, 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. at 9555 James Avenue S, suite 245, Bloomington, MN 55409

Why: The interwebs have us busy creating cool stuff, and some of our local talent leaves soon to colonize Chicago. Until we have all the nerds we’ll ever need, expect more Krazy Tomfoolery like this.

Didn’t want to have to play the Krazy Tom card, but he’s still Krazy and looking to make a deal with any number of aspiring nerds next Friday – or sooner if you apply now at http://www.nerdery.com/jobs.