March 2008

GeekAustin: Well, the big news is that Refresh is moving to Buffalo Billiards. I think a lot of folks would prefer a beer or whiskey to an espresso in the evening. I was happy to hear of the change.

Alex Jones: Definitely, we've made it a habit to go out for a beer or coffee after each meeting, so this makes it that much easier. A special thanks goes to Leesa who did all of the legwork to find us the new venue

GA: What new things will you be looking to do in this new location? What will moving to Buffalo enable you to do?

Jones: The most important thing will be the ability to fit everyone into the space comfortably. Texpresso, our old venue was a great place to start, but the last few meetings required folks to pack in a little closer than was comfortable. We also hope that it will lead to more post-meeting conversations as we won't be forced to go to a new venue after 9:00.

GA: Do you know if Buffalo has food as well? pub grub?

Jones: Not only do they have food, but as our meetings are on Tuesday's we'll be able to take advantage of half price appetizers and drink specials.

GA: I first heard about Refresh Austin at one of the BarCampAustin parties GeekAustin hosted in 2006. Now days, it seems hardly a day goes by without Refresh coming up in a conversation. I had lunch with someone from Valentine Associates on Tuesday, and Refresh even came up in that conversation. How has the growth of the group been over the last year?

Jones: Tremendous. A lot of good folks have put in a lot of effort to transform Refresh Austin from a loosely-organized collection of events into a smooth running group for Web professionals. We made some decisions early on that have made it easier for people to join and participate, and in that time we've more than doubled the amount of people on our mailing list and attendance at our meetings.

GA: There appears to be a core team who manages Refresh Austin. You mentioned Leesa. I’ve met a few of them. Who are the others?

Jones: Leesa, Justin Perkins (who founded the group), Grant Hutchins, Ryan Joy, Paul Menard, Pat Ramsey, Andrew Dupont and Alex Bilstein. These great folks spend a lot of their time moderating the lists, spreading the word, welcoming new members. and ensuring everyone has interesting ideas to talk about.

GA: Most people don’t know that Alex Bilstein ran the Goodwill Computer Museum. I’ve been wanting to interview him.
You mentioned the online list. It seems that the online conversations in the Refresh Austin Google Group cover the gamut: everything from css/javascript to ajax, hosting providers, specking jobs, and how to choose clients. Are you ever concerned that the conversation gets too broad, too general?

Jones: We encourage the broad discussions, as long as they fall somewhere in the realm of Web professionals. Our goal is to foster conversations and ideas across the various areas of interest. Designers benefit when they know more about development, developers gain knowledge when speaking to business folks and business folks will be better at their job if they understand the designers, and of course there are many variants. Ultimately we all participate because we like to share and want to improve. That said, every so often we have to curb conversations that go off topic, which everyone understands and seems to appreciate. Luckily that's rare.

GA: Many folks don't know that Refresh is an national...should I say movement? or organization? What kind of interaction does Austin have with other chapters?

Jones: Organization, affiliation or group...they all apply. Every city runs their own group and decides how to go forward. There is a international discussion list, but it tends to be quiet, used to share organizational ideas and questions. Every so often as people move from one city to another, they're able to migrate between refresh groups, which I think is pretty cool - they're new to the city, but they already have a foundation of like-minded, friendly colleagues.
For SXSW Interactive 08, Refresh Austin organized a lunch to make it easy for Refreshers from around the world to meet up. It was a great opportunity to meet folks in person and share ideas. Most groups seem to have formed in the same way and discovered the same solutions to the common pitfalls.

Jones: Those interested in learning more about Refreshing Cities, the international glue so to speak, should check out http://refreshingcities.org/

GA: speaking of SXSW, you co-hosted the PhizzPop party with microsoft. How did that work for you? What did you think of the idea of such a design competition? Are you considering similar events for the next SXSW?

Jones: It was a great event for us. We didn't have anywhere near the resources to throw a bash for SXSW Interactive, much less rent out a place the size of Maggie Mae's, but we really wanted to get the word out so people could join us if they were interested. Microsoft wanted some local help spreading the word, and were very welcoming. A good time all around. We are definitely planning to do an event next year. We haven't set any plans yet, but we will.

Jones: I love the idea of a design competition and would love to see more of them pop-up, not just with Silverlight, but other platforms and concepts would be amazing.

GA: Did you catch much flack for co-hosting with Microsoft?

Jones: All of our members were quite happy with the opportunity that Microsoft provided us, and while I caught a bit of flack for teaming up with them, it was from people who aren't local, who felt we somehow 'sold out'. Our members are varied in their platforms and programs of choice, so we stay balanced. Consequently, we'd be very happy to have Apple and Adobe invite us to co-host parties as well..

GA: Well, I'll send you the contact info for the Adobe guys. I saw them at PhizzPop. However, they seemed mostly focused on locating the MS guys and talking to them about employment opportunities

GA: Tell me more about SXSW. Compared to previous years, how was SXSW for you this year? Anything you would like to see changed for next year?

Jones: Great question! In fact, that'll be part of our next meeting, half of which will be a group discussion of this year's South By. People should come join that conversation instead of reading my thoughts here

GA: Speaking of the April meeting, I see that you have Annette Priest speaking on usability. Is that correct? Can you tell a bit about Annette and what her presentation will cover?

Jones: Indeed we do! Annette brings a great amount of experience workign and managing user experience teams responsible for large Web sites (Dell, IBM Tivoli, SBC and the like) in addition her consulting background. She'll be sharing practical methods to use analytics and metrics to gain insight into the usability of a Web site.

GA: That sounds really useful. I particularly enjoyed hearing Gordon Montgomery of Neudesic speak about metrics last month, and left his presentation wanting more.

GA: Speaking of usability and related topics, in the last year, we're seeing UX crop up everywhere. UX UX UX -- sort of like U2 but with a little X as well. Can you tell me something about the growth of UX

Jones: UX (User eXperience) isn't a new concept by any means, but it has certainly been gaining in popularity in our industry. Different people attach slightly different meanings to it, but it comes down to focusing on how the person using your work interacts with it, how he or she can find what they are looking for, and the impression they have of the system. Often times it is attached to designers, but a good experience must be thought about throughout the entire creation process from the business folks through the developers and designers

GA: Usability has certainly been in our minds since the early Apple days. I remember stocking many of the Apple user/interface guidelines in my store in the early 90s. It just seems recently that usability and experience has almost become a cult much in the same way the the concept of social media is becoming a cult.

Jones: Like many parts of the Web, interesting ideas gain notice really quickly. The good practices become ingrained (Web Standards for example) and become a part of our muscle memory.

GA: I hope you don't mind me going down this path...Have you noticed many new ideas with respect to user experience, or simply a greater interest in the subject matter?

Jones: Both. There are a lot of paths being explored and many experiments. One example is how to best solve the problem of presenting long lists of information. Traditionally on the Web these lists are split over a number of pages, but now people are playing with the concept of appending the next batch of results as the user scrolls to the end of the first batch. So instead of waiting for another page to load, or waiting for a really big page to load initially, you see the results quickly and the keep scrolling to see more.

GA: Thanks for taking the time, Alex. Beyond the April meeting, what’s on the Refresh dance card for this year?

Jones: Big plans for the next year. We look forward to working with other local groups like Geek Austin, the Adobe Users Group, the WordPress group and others.
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GA: Looking forward to it. I'll be seeing you at the next Refresh meeting.