Web414 - Milwaukee's Web Community

Smartphones and laptops and tablets... oh my! These days people are viewing the web on all types of devices. How do you keep up and make your site look best on all of these platforms, screen sizes, and resolutions?

Responsive Design to the rescue! Responsive Design is an approach that says your design and development should respond to the screen size, platform, and orientation of your device.

James Conway of C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions will join us to introduce responsive design and help us understand if it can solve our problems.

Examples of Responsive Design and the kinds of problems it solves
Some problems it introduces - responsive design vs redirect to mobile version of site vs fluid layouts
Mobile First as a design option
Media queries as the heart of responsive design - basic demo showing the simple mechanics
Flexible images - basic overview and demo
Flexible type - basic overview and demo
Flexible grids - basic overview and demo
Combining techniques for real world use - demo
What to do about IE6, IE7 & IE8
We would also like to give some show & tell time at the end of the presentation. So if you have a recent project using Responsive Design, we'd love to have you!

You can whet your appetite for Responsive Design by viewing the great set of examples at MediaQueri.es

Tuesday, February 21, 2012, 7:00 PM

C2 Graphics Productivity Solutions, LLC
222 E. Erie Street, Suite 330, Milwaukee, WI

We will be discussing WordPress security... ways to make your website safe from hackers. There are many useful plugins and a few best practices you should follow to help secure your Wordpress site. We even found some interesting paid services made just for Wordpress that help to scan and secure your website on a continual basis.

We are looking for more presenters/speakers for this topic. Contact me if you are interested in helping out.

Skype: offordscott
Google Talk: scott@orionweb.net
AIM/AOL: offordscottchina
MSN: scott@offord.me
Yahoo: offord_scott

RSVP today to secure your spot at this meetup (space IS limited).

This is Jon Knebel from Milwaukee SEO Company (milwaukeeseocompany.com). I have been establishing an SEO company that will also offer full-service web design. The team currently consists of me and 1 subcontracting graphic designer.

We will be in need of someone who can convert the mockups that the graphic designer creates into code, and then into a Wordpress template, and help to create the website.

Currently, I am the one doing this conversion, but my time will be better spend doing website marketing and sales. My point in saying this, however, is that I will be helpful with the conversion process, and be able to pick up where you leave off if you don't want to maintain long-term involvement with the company.

Please leave a comment or visit the contact form on our website to let me know if you'd like to discuss the opportunities ahead.

This is for a sub-contracting position--not employment--therefore, you are free to designate your own rates and hours and location of work. We are based out of Bucketworks.

-Jon Knebel

C2 seeks an Adobe Flash Builder developer that could convert a Flex 3.5 application to one that would run on the iPad. (There is no live data involved.)

http://www.c2gps.com/talent/opportunities.html

Please respond ASAP if you're capable, available and interested, rate is competitive.

What a better way to kick off the new year than discussing the newest of developments in web design and development. The January Web414 meeting will bring you a primer on HTML5 and CSS3, some of the great things you can do with these awesome technologies, and how you can get started using them today.

The meeting will start with a primer on HTML5 and CSS3, introducing you to what is new, what is old, resources to help you get up to speed, and what awesomeness will ensue when you start using this new web tandem. We will then show off some great HTML5 and CSS3 examples. Finally, we will finish by demonstrating how to use the HTML5 Boilerplate to get yourself started using HTML5.

This month's meetup is being sponsored by C2 Graphics. They will be providing Pizza, Soda, and Beer for the event. We thank them for their support. Be sure to check out their website, they are also offering classes in HTML5 and CSS3

We hope to see you at the January Edition of Web414 and if you have a project using HTML5 and CSS3, please let us know, and you can show it off during this month's meetup. Stay tuned for more information.

Please RSVP on our new Web414 Meet-Up page

RSVP Thursday, December 8 at Bucketworks

With the December 2011 edition of Web414 our focus will turn to the world of Freelancing.

A panel of experienced freelancers will join us to share their experiences, answer questions, and speak on the world of freelance work. Bring your questions, as we plan on allowing for a lot of audience participation and question time.

Please RSVP at on our Meetup.com page.

This weekend the Random Hacks of Kindness global hackathon will be taking place at Bucketworks (as well as in 34 other cities around the globe!).

This event aims to bring together experts on real world social problems with hackers, designers, programmers, scientists and world-saving enthusiasts to build technology which solves these problems. The main focus will be on water and disaster management issues, but anything that helps make the world a better place is fair game!

The festivities kickoff with a pre-party at Open MiKE (in the Grand Ave Mall) on Friday at 5:30pm, which will feature beer from Big Bay Brewing Company and a tasting from the Great Lakes Distillery.

Lunch, team building and the problem presentations will begin on Saturday at 12:30pm. Hacking will commence at 2pm on Saturday and finish at 2pm on Sunday, 24 hours later. You are free to come and go as you please, there is no requirement to hack for 24 hours straight, but the space will be available to you if you choose to use it.

Meals will be provided through out! Prizes will be awarded to teams for best water solution, best disaster solution, best design and a sponsored challenge from WaterTech USA.

For more information and to register, please visit this URL:

http://www.rhok.org/event/milwaukee-wi-usa

And before the hackathon begins on Saturday, there will be a mobile application building workshop held at Open MiKE from 9:30am to 12:00pm:

http://www.spreenklertalentlabs.org/made-at-mike/

Hope to see you there!

Join us at 7:00pm, Thursday, November 10 for an exciting night at Bucketworks. We will have two great guests from the local web community on hand to talk with us.

Intro to Joomla for Developers - Gabriel Wahhab, Savvy Panda

Learning a CMS can be a daunting task. If you have ever wanted to learn more about Joomla without a big time investment this is the right opportunity for you. In this presentation Gabe will show you the ins and outs of Joomla everything from basic CMS usage and the Joomla road map to code resources and the new command line interface.

Bio:

Gabe is the President of Elm Grove, WI based Savvy Panda a Joomla development firm he founded in 2001. An early adopter of Joomla, Savvy Panda has been using Joomla since shortly after it forked from Mambo in 2005. Gabe and his team develop Joomla based websites for small businesses, national clients and Fortune 500’s. His specialties include ecommerce, new media, usability and internet marketing. Gabe remains quite active in the Joomla and Wisconsin web community, uniting the Milwaukee community at monthly Joomla User Group Meetups which he co-hosts.

Bucketworks Updates - James Carlson, The School Factory

Exciting things are always happening at Bucketworks. James will update us on the latest things going on with Bucketworks as well as their recent SAFE party. James also recently attended the Chaos Communication Camp in Finowfurt, Germany, described as "an international, five-day open-air event for hackers and associated life-forms. It provides a relaxed atmosphere for free exchange of technical, social, and political ideas." He will give us a short run-down of his time at this exciting event.

Bio:

James is Director and founder of the School Factory, a non-profit organization that supports hackerspaces, makerspaces, artist, and other co-working spaces where learning communities develop and grow, Co-founder of Bucketworks, described as a health club for the brain providing meeting and coworking space among other things, and Co-founder of the Bucket Brigade, a company that teaches organizations how to collaborate internally using social media, for greater transparency, accountability, speed, and democracy.

Safe from Bucketworks on Vimeo.

In the middle of Bucketworks is a safe. What's inside? We have no idea, but we're about to find out.

November 4th at 7pm, DC414 will crack the case when Bucketworks presents: SAFE

Watch the video above for the lowdown.

Thusday October 13, 2011 - 7:00pm-9:00pm

Enjoy the great warm indoors at the October meeting of Web414. This month’s main session will feature an informative social media debate in the style of Shelby Sapusek and Jim Raffel of She Said He Said.

Shelby and Jim have developed an ever-growing list of topics that apply directly or indirectly to social media, marketing and communication. These are topics that occupy a large percentage of their working days. Normally, they publish about three topics that will be addressed, then one of one of them selects a topic from the list and throws it out to the other for an opinion. Next, the originator of the topic responds and they go back and forth a bit. Anyone participating in the #shehechat is, of course, encouraged to jump into the conversation. The conversation is normally spirited and often sparks ideas for future #shehechat topics. Learn more about She Said, He Said by visiting http://jimraffel.com/shehechat/.

Also on the October agenda, James Carlson, director of BucketWorks, recently attended the 2011 Chaos Communication Camp in Finowfurt, Germany. James has volunteered to take a few minutes out of his busy schedule to share his exciting experience with us. Chaos Communication Camp is an international, five-day open-air event for hackers and associated life-forms. It provides a relaxed atmosphere for free exchange of technical, social, and political ideas. You can learn more about Chaos Communications Camp by visiting http://events.ccc.de/camp/2011/.

Last, but not least, Clint Laskowski will give an informative presentation on developing a web project using various prototyping tools (Balsamiq, JustinMind, etc.).

BucketWorks is located on S. 5th Street, just north of National Avenue. As always, admission is free, and there's plenty of free street parking after 6pm. Come down and join us, we look forward to seeing you there!

Join us, as always, at Bucketworks for the September edition of Web414. This month's meeting will be at 6pm on the second Thursday of the month. That means September, 8. We have an exciting show for you this month.

Segment 1 - Rackspace Cloud

Adam Hansen from Rackspace will be joining us to talk Cloud! He will give us an overview of Cloud uses in Small and Medium sized business and web and app development. He will discuss cloud in general as well as talk about his company, Rackspace. If you have any other topics that you would like discussed, be sure to let us know before the meeting. Be sure to bring your questions and Rackspace may even be giving us some swag to our group.

Segment 2 - BarCampMilwaukee6

Jeremy Jannene will be discussing the planning of the upcoming BarCampMilwaukee6. He will update us on what has been happening in planning, how you can help out, and what to expect at this year's BarCampMilwaukee.

RSVP on Facebook

August's meeting seems to still be fresh in the books, but September is coming up. For September, we will continue on the topic of Virtual Cloud Hosting with a special guest.

I am happy to announce that for September's meeting, Rackspace has offered to send an engineer to speak to the group.

They said he can speak on any part of Rackspace we would like and cloud hosting in general. So, I would like to put out the question to the loyal Web414 members. What would you like in the presentation from Rackspace? It's up to the community. Let us know in the comments, via Twitter (@web414), or on Facebook.

Stay tuned for more information on September's Web414!

BarCampMilwaukee6 will take place Saturday October 1st, 2011 and Sunday October 2nd, 2011 at Bucketworks. The event will run non-stop from Saturday morning at 9AM until Sunday afternoon at 4PM.

Plans are in development for a Friday night social event to kick things off at Brocach.

A BarCamp is a participatory “un-conference” event, where the attendees are in charge of what happens. We provide all the basic needs, and hope that people interested in teaching and learning in an open environment come together to share their knowledge and experience. What will the sessions be about at BarCampMilwaukee6? Whatever people are interested in. In past years, we’ve learned about robots, Drupal, Elevator Hacking, Ruby on Rails, video editing, technology solutions for non-profits, gone on PhotoWalks, discussed Microformats, talked about gadgets, played Nintendo Wii, Guitar Hero, werewolf, seen immersive 3D environments, talked about software development, open source, closed source, web development, geeks and sex… and plenty of other things. (Whew!)

Why is it (sometimes) called an “un-conference”? Because you aren’t coming to see one person speak, or a “panel of experts” on stage. You’re coming to meet and connect with people just like you. We are all experts at our own experiences, and BarCamp is about sharing those experiences with others. If you know something, you shouldn’t be afraid to speak up and say it. If you aren’t sure about something, ask some questions. We like to say that your participation is your entrance fee. BarCampMilwaukee4 will be free (thanks to our sponsors) but you can’t just sit there and absorb… you have to get involved, and take part in the event.

Wikipedia has a great page explaining what a BarCamp is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

Registration will open soon at barcampmilwaukee.org

MadisonRuby

From August 18th to 20th, Madison, Wisconsin will host the Madison Ruby Conference at the Overture Center of the Arts. Madison Ruby (MadisonRuby.org) a two-track conference committed to bringing together two great communities: it will showcase the assets of the Ruby community to locals, and provide visitors with a chance to experience one of the best, brainiest, and least expensive places in the US to live and work.
The venues and layout of Madison Ruby’s events are such that we’re able to take advantage of the walkable downtown area awash in food, drink, and entertainment options.

The Workshops
August 18th will be filled with workshops for brushing up on Ruby and related skills. Scott Chacon will run “Working Effectively With Git”. Madison Ruby is also partnering with DevChix to organize and promote a free RailsBridge Workshop to reach out to under-represented demographics. In this workshop, you will build a complete web application using Ruby on Rails. This application will be fully functional by connecting to a database, reading and writing information.

The Talks
August 19th and 20th will feature dozens of speakers, including:
• Matt Yoho, “Have Fun the Rong Way” • Chad Pytel, “jQuery Mobile on Rails” • Gerred Dillon, “Re-imagining Rails Messaging” • Rick Bradley, “Free Whiskey ... Disk” • Jessie Shternshus, “How to Give an Awesome Lightning Talk” • David Copeland, “Making Awesome Command Line Apps in Ruby” • Jeff Casimir, “Blow Up Your Views” • Matt Margolis, “Scripting Vim with Ruby” • Dan Melnick & Scott Parker, “Building the Great Wall: API Driven Applications” • Brian Hogan, “Creating RubyGems from Scratch” • Jina Bolton, “CSS Workflow with Sass” • Chris Matthieu, SaaS Panel Member • Jon Larkowski, “Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How to Test” • Stephen Caudill, “Tip of the Skinny Iceberg” • Lori Olson, “Consultants & Rockstars, Who needs 'em?” • Collin Schaafsma, “Kick Your Project in the Mouth” • Renée De Voursney, “Whose Wife Are You?” • Tim Connor, “Your Mongo Haz Seeds” • Bryan Liles, MINSWAN • Jacqui Cox, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" - Strategies for
Coping in Chaos • Jason McCay, SaaS Panel Member • Steve Klabnik, Literate Programming • Giles Bowkett, “Life On My Home Planet.” • Meghann Millard • Charlie Nutter • Barry Hess, SaaS Panel Member • Steven Bristol, SaaS Panel Moderator • Gail Ambrosius, Master Chocolatier discussing her craft • A few other non-technical craftsmen are also in the line-up. We are planning to include a brew master and cheese maker but either are subject to change.

The After-Party
While talks, and workshops are great, the best part of any conference is the after-party. You can count on a killer after-party for the inaugural Madison Ruby with live entertainment, great music, good booze, and awesome conversations.

A Little About Madison, Wisconsin
While being one of the least expensive places in the US to live and work, Madison has a lot to offer. It is home to a number of great, award-winning breweries, a few within walking distance of the conference. It's also home to the largest producer-only farmers’ market in the country, just steps away from the conference on the Capitol Square.

What Attendees Should Expect
We encourage attendees to explore the beautiful downtown area. There is no better way to experience a new city than to go where the locals go. For that reason we have decided not to provide a crummy conference box lunch and instead encourage attendees to seek out lunch at one of the more than 100 restaurants within walking distance. Including Afghani, Ethiopian, Chinese, Japanese, American, Russian and restaurants of other types and themes. A highlight is L’Etoille, or it’s lunchtime persona Graze, which is rated as one of the top 50 restaurants in the country. And wherever you choose to explore EngineYard is helping to pick up the tab ... more details soon.
Along with the scheduled presentation tracks there is plenty of opportunities to inspire or continue conversations via lightning talks and ample spaces between talks.