Add an eventQueen City Merge schedule
Thursday 10th May 2012
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The New Crew: Secrets of Innovative Product Development Teams
by Rob Keefer
Much like IT, Product Development is, as they say, a changin'. Market pressures have become more intense, while competition moves faster and faster. Traditional product development practices are migrating towards more dynamic iterations to find a winning formula - faster.
In this workshop we'll explore secrets of product teams which accomplish this "formula" for innovation success, again and again, including:
Innovation milestones for a new process to overcome the limitations of traditional methods
Importance of cross-functional teams, their respective roles and deliverables in the process
Examples of best practice for a team of one or many
Metrics for assessing success and continuous improvement in the product development cycle
Participants will leave this workshop better prepared to build, lead, and participate on adaptable, innovative teams and deliver quality products that people want, faster. -
Usability Testing for Everyone
by Joe Fiorini
In this workshop you will learn how to start bringing users into your design process, whether you're greenfielding a software product or improving one already in production. Through practical examples, hands on application and lots of resources for further learning, you will leave armed with the skills to ensure any release of your product sufficiently solves the problem at hand.
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Beautiful Front End Code
by Chris Nelson and Doug Alcorn
Beautiful code is well organized code with a clear separation of concerns, and backbone.js gives us a place for everything, with everything in it's place. In this part of of the course, you'll learn backbone by doing. We'll gradually build a rich client web application (with jasmine specs of course) that gives you a chance to use all the pieces of backbone.js.
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Responsive Web Design
by Bobby Uhlenbrock and Ryan Merrill
So you understand the technical basics of Responsive Web Design, including media queries, fluid grids and images, but are grappling at how to apply it to your workflow. Should we be designing in the browser, or making static comps of different screen widths? We're all struggling at how to best refine our process for a new generation of web design and development in order to accommodate today's array of devices without pointless rework.
In this workshop, we'll give a brief background of what Responsive Web Design is and delve further into how Responsive Web Design is changing the process of designing and developing for today's web. We'll also offer techniques and solutions to expedite time and help pitch this process to the client by walking through an example site from start to finish.
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I am Designer and So Can You
For many developers, design does not come naturally. Lucky for you, you have ME! (Congrats on your recent acquisition of my friendship and knowledge.) Let me be the first to tell you design isn't as complicated as it may seem. It all boils down to three basic strategies that we'll discuss in this session. First, we'll go over the fundamentals of grid structure. This will include how to set the content to maximize space allowance, and create an appropriate hierarchy to convey your content based on importance. Second, we'll take a brief trip down color-theory lane. Theory? Yes, there is theory behind all UI color choices and you'll learn what that means and why. Last, get ready, this is the big finale; we're going to talk type! Type is a huge part of design and is often neglected or simply thought of as the alphabet. Each typeface tells a story and you want to make sure you're picking one that's right for your message.
If all of this sounds over your head, fear not, I'll hold your hand and go slow. This session is for design beginners, people who have an interest in design, or just those of you who'd like to be able to understand your own designers better.
ABOUT JUSTINE
Professionally, I'm a graphic designer for EdgeCase in Columbus, Ohio. I've been designing for 12 years with the last 4 years studying and completing my Bachelor's Degree in Advertising and Graphic Design at the Columbus College of Art and Design. I design for both print and web/mobile platforms. On a personal note I'm a 24 year old foul-mouthed, lady who worships swiss influenced design, enjoys cigarettes, and quality time with my Newfoundland pup, Roscoe. -
Keeping Your App's Email out of the SPAM Folder
by Elmer Thomas
Keeping your email out of the spam folder is tougher than you might think. Over 20% of legitimate email never makes it to the inbox. Customers quickly become frustrated when they don’t receive important messages like password resets, online purchase receipts, shipping notifications and registration confirmations.
Drawing from his experience at SendGrid, which has delivered over 37 billion emails on behalf of over 40,000 customers, Elmer will teach you the factors that determine whether your email will hit the inbox and the practical steps you can take today to avoid the SPAM folder and ensure that your customers receive the communications they expect.
ABOUT ELMER
Elmer Thomas is a Developer Evangelist at SendGrid. He works with developers at hackdays and conferences to further simplify the process of integrating with SendGrid’s APIs and to discover what new email challenges need to be conquered. When not on the road, he works on making life for developers using SendGrid frictionless. -
Oh !@#$, I Need Some Code: A Survivor's Guide
by Bill Barnett and st23am
Unless you've been on another planet for the past few years (and if you have we're really jealous) you've heard how difficult it is for entrepreneurs lacking a technical background to not only locate but work effectively with a technical co-founder. We see it frequently in our consulting work with entrepreneurs from around the country. This is not a local problem but we aim to turn this into a local advantage. We'll cover how to identify technical talent without needing to know a thing about idempotency, prototypal inheritance, or the Law of Demeter. And once you've found your perfect match what then? We'll provide guidelines to ensure you both stay on the same page and focus on delivering valuable code.
ABOUT JAMES & BILL
Bill and James are developers at Gaslight Software. James is a passionate software craftsman, known for his disciplined practices of testing and delivering the best quality software possible. He enjoys the creative, collaborative environment at Gaslight and plays an integral part in producing quality solutions for clients. Bill worked professionally as an aircraft mechanic for nearly two decades before earning a computer science degree at the University of Cincinnati. He is a community builder, having either founded, co-founded, or helped organize the local Agile Roundtable, Lean Startup Circle, PHP, and Ruby groups.
Friday 11th May 2012
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If you just build it, they won't come
by Sara Morgan
ABOUT SARA
A wedding industry veteran, and lover of all things fashion, Sara founded Tailored with a mission to change the way brides shop for their weddings. Sara is an entrepreneur at heart, believes strongly in loving what you do, and is truly passionate about her work. She handles PR, Marketing, and Brand Strategy for Tailored and her background in media and broadcast journalism have helped her become a formidable source on writing and delivering a message that will have an impact.Sara’s entrepreneurial spirit was ignited when she served as the Director of Marketing for Weddzilla.com, where she handled business development and brand strategy. It was there that she met her co-founder, Aaron Hall, and the two have been working side by side to bring new technologies to the industry ever since. A Broadcast News Major from the University of Georgia, Sara has been featured in such renowned publications as The Huffington Post, InStyle Magazine, Glamour Magazine, MSN, Forbes, and more.
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Innovation Is Something You Feel
by marty_b
Innovating within an organization is a mystery, especially those within service industries. Why? Because innovation is something that you feel and not necessarily just something that you do. Making individuals feel something is a hard assignment. For service organizations there are limitations to our business model putting business practicality and unpaid innovation at odds. Yet, without investing in innovation, clients won’t pay for skills that you have not demonstrated—the ultimate chicken or egg question. In addition to the business challenges, there are a lot more practical questions as well, like where to start innovating? As we reflect on our year, we always realize how many hours went unbilled, unused every year. Many organizations just do not know where to start or how to create a plan for innovation. This talk will put actionable steps to innovating at any organization, focusing on the service industry, and discuss how to harness the power of the unbilled hour to innovate. Harnessing the energy of your organization has the ability to win new business, empower your teams and finally help people feel innovation.
ABOUT MARTY
Marty Boyer is the Chief Product Officer of Possible Worldwide, Cincinnati. He leads Technology, Program Management and Resource Management functions. He helps steer the technology and processes that deliver their creative product.He thrives on brand building and solving business problems utilizing technology. During his tenure at Possible Worldwide, he's worked with a number Fortune 100 businesses building applications and executions ranging from social to mobile applications.
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Data Driven Decision Making
by Ben Curren
ABOUT BEN
Ben has spent the last 12 years developing web and desktop applications for both small and large corporations, including several years in Intuit's QuickBooks Group. He specializes in using technology to solve real world problems by creating easy-to-use solutions. -
Community
by LB Denker
Etsy is an online bazaar for handmade goods, and one for the key aspects for the site itself is the Etsy communities and sub-communities that have and continue to form and grow. The Etsy development community is the group of smart engineers that grow and maintain the site that helps to facilitate these amazing Etsy communities. While these engineers are very smart, you should recall the old adage, "A stupid person is someone who never learns from his mistakes, a smart person is someone who learns from his mistakes, and a wise person is someone who learns from other mistakes." At Etsy we embrace learning from mistakes and sharing with others so that they may learn from these mistakes as well because we also know that no one is perfect. Here, I will share several of the bumps along the way that took us from being small yet bureaucratic to large and still growing with more community and emphasis on culture, all while maintaing that small startup feeling.
Laura Beth "LB" Denker graduated from RIT with a BS/MS in Computational Mathematics/Computer Science. She then moved on to a small job in a small city in central New York before being courted by Google, bringing her to the Big Apple, where she worked in both test and development for over 4 years. Now she has taken a turn for handmade, helping Etsy grow its spectacular development culture and continuous deployment process as the self-proclaimed Anthropologist of Developer Culture.
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Cheap and Easy Customer Support
by Sarah Hatter
Learn how to offer your customers amazing support over email and Twitter, create a fanatical user base, and how to avoid the quagmire of 1-star reviews.
Sarah Hatter is founder of CoSupport, a company that's teaching small app teams worldwide how to offer amazing customer support. Sarah started CoSupport after building up the support team at 37signals and has since trained the support teams of the top-rated web and mobile apps. She likes wine.
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Top Ten Mistakes That Kill Companies
by Rob McDonald
It is tough to an entrepreneur. You are expected to understand every aspect of your business; everything from filing your business taxes to changing the toilet paper in your international headquarters. On top of all of the stuff you are expected to understand, you will have to synthesize the clutter of advice and information you will receive. The Lean Start-up model instructs entrepreneurs on how to eliminate some of the unnecessary distractions and focus on rapid iteration of a product. Unfortunately, your lawyer is likely anything but a lean start-up disciple. You'll be receiving reams of paper for signature that will read like they were written by Robin Hood with a quill pen. While being smarter than your lawyer would be great, lets focus on the top ten mistakes that could kill your company so that you can avoid any armageddon situations. This discussion will focus on helping you avoid the company killing mistakes and coaching you to your minimal viable legal solution. No one wants to waste money on lawyers when there are more important business expenses (like upgrading the ramen noodles you bought in bulk).
ROBERT W. MCDONALD is an attorney in the Business & Finance Practice Group at Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP. Rob is a Co-Founder and Director at The Brandery, a seed stage business accelerator in Cincinnati. Rob’s practice at Taft is focused on venture capital, corporate, securities, and sports law work. Rob assists start-up and emerging companies through business formation, early-stage investments, and other issues that face entrepreneurial businesses.
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Design for Developers
by Jen Myers
Designers are designers and developers are developers and never the twain shall meet, right? Except – not really. There are some imaginary lines drawn around the two disciplines of design and development, but the truth is they are closely intertwined, and it can be very useful for a developer to have design knowledge and skills in his or her toolbox. This presentation will correct some commonly-held misconceptions about design, cover the basics of design from a developer’s perspective and explore how a developer can employ these principles to build clearer, cleaner and more usable applications.
Jen Myers is a web/interface designer at the software company Relevance. She works from Columbus, Ohio, where she also teaches HTML/CSS and organizes the coding education program Girl Develop It Columbus. Her particular areas of interest are user experience, teaching innovation and using design as a tool for communication. She also likes good movies, comic books and frequently changing her hair color.
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TBD
by Alex Hillman
My name is Alex, I’m from Philadelphia, PA.
I start things: businesses, conversations, parties, and sometimes a little trouble. I’m probably best known for starting Philadelphia’s Indy Hall coworking community in 2006, years before coworking became a darling of the mainstream press and workers everywhere. Since, Indy Hall and my work have been featured in national and international publications. I’ve started and contributed to conversations around the progress and methodologies behind my projects, making “open source” a reality for more than just software and helping countless aspiring catalysts around the world. Many credit me with their starts, citing my non-nonsense credo “JFDI” (just effing do it) as a source of inspiration to stop with the excuses and, well, JFDI.