Refresh Belfast is a regular meetup of designers, programmers and pretty much anyone involved in the web in the Greater Belfast area. It is designed to help educate and grow the community at large, encouraging debate, best practise and standards, and is part of the Refreshing Cities movement.
As ever our usual fairy god-organiser in the Belfast area Andy was on hand to make sure things ran smoothly. Kudos for another succesful event.
Having made the conscious effort this year to get out and shake more hands and do a few meetups, Refresh provided yet another opportunity to meet a few other folks in the (vibrant) Northern Ireland web scene.
I’ve had the pleasure of attending my first event this month, and having not been before – was suitably impressed with the great talks and free beers!
Front took the stage this month,with both Paul McKeever (Managing director) and Jamie Neely (Creative director) presenting talks on how they approach projects. Front are one of the larger web agencies in Belfast, delivering experiences for high profile brands such as Coca Cola, the BBC, O2 and Carte Blanc Greetings amongst others. and have achieved recognition for their work from the likes of Taschen.
Be where people are
Paul’s talk, was entitled “Be where people are” which highlighted a number of interesting themes – including the need to think in terms of experiences and speaking to an audience in a friendly tone.
Its sometimes easy to forget that any audience you address online are human beings, and not just numbers on some Analytics package. I found real value in this; particularly from a bloggers perspective, as throwing the occasional casual quip into posts can make it seem more REAL and can give you a personal feel.
There was also a good introduction to the “social object” and how people organise around social objects – such as photos with sites such as Flickr and Video’s on sites such as Youtube. This is a conceptually similar to something I’ve read about recently in Groundswell – that social websites are cropping up now to organise information into niche’s – and that you are potentially onto a winner if you are able to group information together into larger masses.
The book used the analogy of the web being a beach, and with the arrival of Web 2.0 – websites are now being developed to organise pebbles into piles which from a distance look like boulders, that can move other larger stones on the beach – i.e. corporations.
Designing with Visual Language
Jamie’s talk covered Front’s approach to design. Good design as many of you already know – isn’t about looking good. Instead the information architecture and users needs take precedence, with lots of brainstorming, sketching and wireframing performed before a site is taken to photoshop mockups.
Thinking in terms of site goals, and prioritising these goals is a great way to frame a site in both designers and developers heads – and influences both design and development decisions. Front use a combination of techniques to reach logical conclusion – and created added value to the client as a result.
Also covered were the difficulties faced with corporate clients with strict brand guidelines, and how to persuade a client that a design decision – initially perceived to be daring, is often for the benefit of the end user,and will aid in the sites goals. This is something that anyone working in the creative industries will face on a daily basis.
Other bits and bobs
Further details on the talk including exclusive videos and slides are available over on the Front blog. If you attended they are also offering one £100 quid amazon voucher for a lucky blogger who decides to link back to the post.
Hopefully Refresh will continue to grow in size and stature, there have been so many events recently its hard to keep up with them, but is further evidence of the passion within the web community in Northern Ireland.
John has written up a post on the event, as had Adam , Chris and Dave.
Looking forward to next month’s event, and thanks to all who spoke, organised or indeed attended. Events like these really help to get people who hadn’t previously met to network, and grow the community at large. Don’t forget to check the refresh website for details on the next talk, and dates and times.
linky
posted:May 25, 2009 10:14 am
Hey Paul,
Good summary. Am also reading Groundswell but I’d credit Jyri Engestrom (Jaiku, now Google) with my inspiration on social objects. I can’t find his slides from Web2, but there’s another pretty similar set on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/rashmi/jyri-engestrom-social-objects
Hopefully see you next month :)
Paul McKeever
linky
posted:May 25, 2009 10:23 am
Thanks Paul – I found myself asking the question through that slideshare –
Is information / content itself not the social object? The dialogue and information share between people within the social network?
And for that reason can we really blame the decline in popularity for services such as Myspace on the lack thereof? I’m not convinced. Personally, I think its alot to do with people getting older, and the network audience shifting towards a more mature feature set and professional (looking) platform. i.e. Facebook. The trend may also be just a perception of “whats hot and whats not” and the sheep effect coming into play.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Paul.
Paul Anthony