the long shadow

the mission that created the evening:
Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

The Refresh Manifesto:
Let’s Gather Great Minds
Let’s Share All Of Our Knowledge
Let’s All Grow And Learn
Let’s Promote Local Talent
Let’s Be More Than We Think Can Be
Let’s Make Our Cities Better

to start the night off was a dev from comcast going over a new tv based community called chirp. im not too interested in tv so ill just leave it as cool connections through a shared interest that hasnt really been done before.

second was a dev from local show p’unk ave going over symfony a php framework. great introduction, but a bit over the head of many in the room who were designers for the most part it seemed. ill be poking at it some but my main question is how to add it to my workflow/tools to aid in the adoption.

third was a couple of guys from brownstone a local firm i had never heard of that is focusing on IA/UX, which as an aside i think will become more and more popular as companies start looking for more traction in the market rather than just burning bright and then fading. rather than focus on the specifics of what they/their company do they wanted to bring their skillsets and apply them to the mission statement of refresh. the floor was opened to suggestions for using the group as a platform as a way to create greater change in philadelphia. initially the flood of comments were all reactions to negative things, which i thought somewhat off-putting. my take on refresh was to bring the minds together to make the place they love better and take the positives and make them shine.

focusing on the negative with philly is way too easy so im going to flip some of the suggestions:

bike commuting issues: highlight trouble areas - why not highlight the easier routes. the city has a maze of bike lanes. create maped routes that highlight specific routes to/from neighborhoods with stopping points for good shoppes/bars.

highlight road closures resulting from events to make commuting easier: why not take those events and highlight those and make the road closures a secondary warning. the events themselves are what make our city great. not the stupid road closures. there are so many events in the nooks and crannies of the smaller neighborhoods that go un-noticed.

a personal goal of mine is to make cultural events more accessible. we have so many institutions/museums/galleries that host great events/exhibits/etc that many times just get washed over by larger events with better PR and i find that to be a tragedy. with the economy and the country in such turmoil it is the arts and the culture should be given the time and attention it deserves because in many ways it is these that made this country what it is,

if you want to focus on the bad: how about making the services the government manages more accessible by cutting through the infinite amount of layers it takes to find the proper forms, phone numbers, guidelines. joe sickpack isnt going to wade through all of the annoyances to get help if its buried 8-10 layers deep in link mazes and lawyer speak.

lets keep the refresh positive and not focus on the negative because thats what everyone else is doing. we can step it up and make things better.