Thought & Theory

Thanks to everyone who came out last night. Sandro did a wonderful job dispelling a lot of mystery around Facebook and the Facebook Platform. Hope everyone learned a lot and see you guys at the next meet-up in town.

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Sandro will be presenting tomorrow at Refresh Jacksonville on the Facebook Platform. Take a second off from your day and enjoy a beer or two with Thought & Theory and the whole Refresh crowd.

We’ve all wondered what’s going on behind the scenes when we’re using a facebook application. There’s no need to wonder any longer. Sandro Turriate has figured out the dark secrets behind facebook platform and he will share them with you! Join us for an overview of the facebook platform architecture, lessons in how to build a facebook application and why you should even care.

He’ll answer the questions you’ve been asking yourself:
• I’ve used web services before, but how will my application actually be deployed on facebook?
• How will developing a facebook application be different than developing any other web application?

Following Sandro’s presentation we’d like to have a few people talk about how they are using social applications beyond collecting friends. Contact us if you’d like to speak for 5 minutes on how you are using LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace (puke!) or any other social application to make a difference in your life.

Scheduled micro session speakers
Jason Sadler – Facebook
Carl Smith – LinkedIn
Joey Marchy – Twitter

Speaker:
Sandro Turriate, Developer @ Thought and Theory

The deets:
November 29th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
1803 Hendricks Avenue (32207) Get directions.

Thanks to Jeff from Brown Dog Creative for presenting an unexpected topic for Refresh. He stood in front of a room full of technies and actually started deep discussions from both designers and programmers. Not a minor feat.

I’m glad to see that the design rants Jeff and I get into have found its way into a formal presentation. Its a good thing he presented on the topic because he’s a better public speaker than me. And he moves like a ninja up there.

So check out the coverage:
Ngen Works Pics
Our Coverage

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This presentation will touch on a variety of subjects concerning the state of design. Leaving most of the how-to methods behind, we will explore the relationship between today’s technology and today’s design.

The deets:
October 25th, 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
1803 Hendricks Avenue (32207) Get directions.

Get the Details

Jacksonville has a certain charm. While its not the bustling hub of culture and commerce like other major cities like NY, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, London, etc, it is on a slow upswing. Excuse me while I get on this soapbox, but I think one of the major reasons this city feels so small and behind the times is that real design is not embraced by the community. Real design in all aspects of life be it how our airport works, how the downtown experience feels, how our central community website hubs work and other common city experiences. All these experiences help shape our perspective on how we both view and enjoy Jacksonville. And at the moment, its a pretty average experience at best.

Targets

While most of these articles will focus on those community website hubs of our city (mainly because that’s our specialty), we will also concentrate on simple user experience cases as we come across them. Here is the first set of things that we want to touch upon in hopes of sparking a change.

• Jacksonville.com
• City of Jacksonville
• University of North Florida
• Jacksonville Transit Authority
• Jacksonville Courthouse
• Art Institute of Jacksonville

Why do this?

I want to write these articles because I think 95% of people out there don’t understand what the word design means. They still think we’re glorified wallpaper artists. They rarely come in contact with real designers, and in their world design really does mean decoration. Its unfortunate, but hopefully these articles shed a little light on what design really means and more importantly what a designer can do. Design is about communication, shaping of experiences and simplifying complex things and these articles will reveal some of the processes we use to reach those goals.

These are not bitch sessions or swipes at the people who originally designed these things (hell, we all make mistakes). Its more of a way for us to suggest things in hopes of sparking a change.

So stay tuned, Jacksonville.com is up first.