re:build 2011

Speakers

Ethan Marcotte

The Responsive Web Designer's Workflow

There’s been a lot of great discussion about responsive web design: merging media queries and flexible, grid-based layouts to create more adaptive, universal designs. But how does a responsive approach affect our design workflow? And when is responsive design right for your project? We’ll look at sites and strategies to try and answer these questions, and learn to become more responsive designers.

Ethan Marcotte is an independent designer/developer who is passionate about beautiful design, elegant code, and the intersection of the two. Formerly an interactive design director at Happy Cog, his clientele has included New York Magazine, Stanford University, and the World Wide Web Consortium.

Ethan coined the term "responsive web design" to describe a new way of designing for the ever-changing Web and, if given the chance, will natter on excitedly about it—he even went so far as to write a book on the topic. He's a popular and experienced speaker, having been featured at An Event Apart, Future of Web Design, AIGA's In Control, and South by Southwest, and co-hosts the Handcrafted CSS seminar series with Dan Cederholm.

Ethan lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and would like to be an unstoppable robot ninja when he grows up. Beep.

Yehuda Katz

SproutCore: What's It All About?

SproutCore’s been around for about 5 years, and is the core technology used in Mobile Me and NPR’s new app for the Chrome Web Store. But what’s it really all about? In this talk, Yehuda will walk you through the core concepts of SproutCore. You should walk away from the talk with an understanding of what SproutCore does for you, and an idea of where to go next to start using it in a real project. He will also talk about how you can use SproutCore without having to use the full framework for smaller projects.

Yehuda Katz is a member of the SproutCore, Ruby on Rails and jQuery Core Teams; during the daytime, he works as Chief Technologist at Strobe. Yehuda is the co-author of the best-selling jQuery in Action, the upcoming Rails 3 in Action, and is a contributor to Ruby in Practice. He spends most of his time hacking on open source—his main projects, along with others, like Thor, Handlebars and Janus—or traveling the world doing evangelism work.

Neven Mrgan

Bit Depth

At my dayjob, I design Mac software UI/UX, websites, T-shirts, and office signage. In my spare time, I’ve designed 8-bit games. I think every creative professional would benefit from fully executing projects of different complexity, history, and purpose.

Neven Mrgan is a designer at Panic, where he works on anything from software UI to door signage. In his spare time he is one half of Big Bucket Software, whose hit game The Incident you may have played last year. He's a fan of nice people, pixel graphics, and interesting food. Neven lives in Portland and likes it very much there.

Jan Cavan

Design Roadmap

How do you make sure that in every project you are moving in the right direction? How can project success be achieved? This talk will explore the designer's work process and recommend tools that will help make you create a proper design roadmap to ensure you are taking the best route.

Jan Cavan is a designer, front end developer and illustrator whose work has been featured in various online publications, books and magazines worldwide. She is the UI Designer at SendGrid and occasionally freelances as Dawghouse Design Studio, which doubles as a design blog dedicated to offering tutorials, articles and providing inspiration to the design community.

She has always been drawing since she was little but thinking that this wasn't a practical route to take upon entering college, she took up and graduated from a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, but soon after realized that her love for art and design was her real true calling.

Faruk Ateş

Designing to Where The Web Will Be

How has the Web evolved through its infancy, and where is it going as it matures? Faruk Ateş explores the Web’s origins as a document-sharing network, its present-day function as a communications medium, and its future as a software platform and more, diving into the techniques and principles we can and should employ in our work today. From a new form of progressive enhancement to responsive web design, learn how the combination of best practices and a mind freed from the shackles of browser realities can deliver the most awe-inspiring results.

Faruk Ateş does creative things on the Web, like Modernizr: an open source library that helps you take advantage of cutting-edge features in HTML5 and CSS3 today. Now the Product Designer at Apture, Faruk previously did a three year stint as a UI Engineer at Apple where he helped to bring cutting-edge web development techniques to the Online Store and MobileMe.

Faruk has written for many publications both online and in print, and speaks all around the world about web standards, best practices and designing for the Web of tomorrow.

Leah Culver

Passion to Startup

In the summer of 2009, I built a web-based IRC client as a hobby project. It was a surprising success and over the past two years my passion for chat has become Convore, a small startup funded by Y Combinator. This talk will cover the joys of creating your own company and how to avoid the pitfalls.

Leah Culver is the co-founder and CEO of Convore, a real-time group communication application. Leah was formerly a co-founder and the lead developer of the social network and micro-blogging website Pownce, which was acquired by Six Apart in November 2008. She has co-authored both the OAuth and OEmbed open API specifications. Leah promotes open source, APIs, and the Django web framework on her blog at leahculver.com. In her free time she likes to play around with new technology and try new restaurants near her home in San Francisco.

Brad Colbow

It's the Little Things

Small interface changes can have a big impact in your design. A poorly labeled button here or a feature missing there may seem insignificant but can add add up to big problems for your users. Brad shares his experience designing for mobile platforms and how small differences between iOS, Android and other platforms can really change your interface.

Brad Colbow is the Art Director at Sideways, a company creating an HTML based publishing platform that re-imagines what the next generation of books and magazines will look like on mobile devices. Brad is an award-winning web designer, best known for his comics that are published monthly in .Net magazine (Practical Web Design here in the US) and "The Brads" a weekly strip found on his personal website. His work has appeared on the New York Time's website, CNET, Smashing Magazine and elsewhere.

Location

The Harrison Center for the Arts

Located downtown at 16th and Delaware Street, The Harrison Center is a former church turned public art gallery with plenty of space, a great atmosphere and a lot of visual inspiration. We'll be mingling among some great artwork from local artists, and sessions will be held in galleries that are as intimate as they are relaxed.

Staying Near the Harrison Center

Check out airbnb for some unique places nearby. If that's not your style, we have a group discount at the Marriott Fairfield Inn. There are also Hyatt, Hilton and Omni Severin properties nearby.

Schedule

Schedule subject to change
Times	Courtyard	Gym	Gallery 2	The Underground
9am	Registration 9:00am - 10:00am		Harvest Hack Lounge 9:00am - 9:00pm
10am	nothing scheduled	Faruk Ateş 10:10am - 11:00am
11am	nothing scheduled	Yehuda Katz 11:10am - 12:00pm
12pm	nothing scheduled	Jan Cavan 12:10pm - 1:00pm
1pm	Lunch 1:00pm - 2:10pm
2pm	nothing scheduled	Neven Mrgan 2:10pm - 3:00pm	Harvest Hack Lounge 9:00am - 9:00pm
3pm	nothing scheduled	Leah Culver 3:10pm - 4:00pm
4pm	nothing scheduled	Brad Colbow 4:30pm - 5:20pm Ethan Marcotte 5:30pm - 6:20pm
5pm
6pm
7pm
8pm
9pm	nothing scheduled	nothing scheduled	nothing scheduled	TypeKit After Party 9:00pm - ?
10pm				TypeKit After Party 9:00pm - ?