Michael W Parks » Website Design

WordPress 3.0 at the Atlanta WordPress User Group

mwparks — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:38:13 +0000

Had a great time and learned some good stuff at the Atlanta WordPress Meetup held as usual at Urban Oasis B&B on Krog street near Inman Park in Atlanta. The meetup was packed with standing room only. Mike Schinkel gave a good overview of some of the new features in WordPress 3.0. After Mike’s presentation everyone split into groups based on their WordPress interests and experience level. Some of the attendees are just getting started with WordPress while others are seasoned developers or designers with specific questions and interests. Judi Knight, the meetup host and facilitator did a great job of organizing everyone into small breakout groups. All in all a fun evening spent with other WordPress enthusiasts while enjoying beer, wine, and deli sandwiches. Already looking forward to next month’s meetup on WordPress MU and Buddypress…can’t wait!

HTML 5 and CSS 3 Workshop at AWDG

mwparks — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:52:33 +0000

Attended a sold out (estimated 150 in attendence) meetup of the Atlanta Web Design Group held at the Portfolio Center on Bennett Street in Atlanta. Obviously html 5 generates tremendous interest in the web designer community. Good information was provided by both presenters however a few more practical examples might have left us with more tangible take aways from the evening. My overall impression is that html 5 has more work to do down in the details before being ready for widespread adoption. And that html 5 is currently riding the normal technology hype cycle curve and maybe nearing it’s peak. I tend to agree with Michael Mahemoff’s blog post that HTML 5 is a brand which in general means “the technology that makes rich web applications”.

HTML 5 is an exciting technology and a game changer in the web multi-media space. Time will tell how it all plays out.

User Experience Utopia at Atlanta Web Design Group

mwparks — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:39:36 +0000

Thursday evening I attended the Atlanta Web Designers Group meetup held at the Portfolio Center on Bennett Street. The topic was User Experience presented by Nick Finck. Nick effectively covered topics of usability, find-ability, credibility, accessibility, desirability, and value by contrasting websites that met and failed on each of these areas. wellsfargo.com=useable versus wmu.com, bestbuy.com=findable versus fry.com, and safeway.com=findable versus costco.com are a few of the sites Nick compared. I always enjoy meetups of the Atlanta Web Designers especially when held at the Portfolio Center a very uniquely interesting venue.

The Beautiful Web

mwparks — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:08:19 +0000

Thursday evening I attended the Atlanta Web Design Group meetup which was held at it’s usual location, the Portfolio Center on Bennett Street. It was a full house with 112 people signed up for the $10 per person meetup.

The presentation was “The Beautiful Web” by Jason Beaird. Jason is the author of the book The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. His talk was centered on design theory around color, typography, texture, imagery, and layout with critique of websites that exemplify these principles. I’m usually too focused on the technical aspects of a website and so Jason’s talk was a welcome and useful introduction to the non-technical aspects of web design. I immediately ordered his book from Amazon and am looking forward to reading it.

Web Master Jam Session 2008

mwparks — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:45:00 +0000

Had a great time at Web Master Jam Session - a two day conference held this year in Atlanta on Oct 3-4. This was my first time attending this conference and I would definitely repeat.

Speakers all seemed to be professional web developers and designers who were good at providing insights into issues and techniques for building world class professional web sites.

Some of the sessions I attended were

The Bigness of Smallness – John Moore

Universal by Design – James Craig

Going Social – Chris Perry

The Web Planning Process – Jason Ford

Design Lessons in Chess - Rob Weychert

Web Application Interface Design - Garrett Dimon

Striking a Balance – Nathan Smith

There was a general session “Web site smackdown” where a panel of experts criquited submitted websites. Another general session was really interesting as Mike Culver, web services evangelist at Amazon Web Services, spoke about Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The venue for the conference was pretty cool…a place I haven’t been in Atlanta called the Loudermilk Center located on Courtland near the Georgia State campus.

One of the best outcomes of the conference for me was starting to follow many of the speakers now on twitter so every day I’m picking up new tips and tricks from this group…kind of like the gift that keeps on giving.

Since the main sponsor, Coffee Cup Software, has moved their headquarters from Dallas to Atlanta the conference will probably be held in Atlanta next year I’m guessing. Hope I get to attend.