Thunder Nerds

In this episode we have the honor to speak with Eric A. Meyer: Author, Speaker, and Co-founder of An Event Apart. We discuss a surprise new location coming up for An Event Apart, some of Eric’s memorable moments, and how it all started in 2005.

We also jump into some of the takeaways from Eric’s book DESIGN FOR REAL LIFE. We chat about how and when companies should take responsibility for their products and how they affect people’s lives in the real world.

And of course we dive into all things CSS, its past, future, and what we should be thinking about today.

https://pantheon.io/
Everything your business needs for digital speed and agility.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/meyerweb
• Website: https://meyerweb.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meyerweb/
• Dribbble: https://dribbble.com/meyerweb
• Medium: https://medium.com/@meyerweb
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meyerweb
• An Event Apart: https://aneventapart.com/
• Turner Field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Field
• Books: https://meyerweb.com/eric/books/
• Eric Meyer & Sara Wachter-Boettcher – DESIGN FOR REAL LIFE: https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-real-life
• “Design for Real Life” by Eric Meyer—An Event Apart Denver 2017: https://aneventapart.com/news/post/design-for-real-life-by-eric-meyer-aea-video
• WebP: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/
• Webring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring
• Mosaic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)
• Aural style sheets: https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/aural.html
• CSS Houdini: https://css-tricks.com/interactive-introduction-to-css-houdini/
• Ice wine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine
• CSS Tools: Reset CSS: https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/
• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086856/

Guest host: Sarrah Vesselov http://sarrahvesselov.com/

In this episode we get to talk with Jared Porcenaluk: Software Developer and Orlando IoT Organizer. We discuss how Jared got his start in the industry via the need for one line of javascript. We chat all about IoT security, and what you need to know to keep safe.

We also dive into the world of Azure: what it is for, how to use it, and how it compares to other technologies in this area.

https://pantheon.io/
Everything your business needs for digital speed and agility.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jporcenaluk
• Website: https://jaredporcenaluk.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-porcenaluk-63927043/
• IoT & Monsters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgbQ1APxbU0
• Smart Bronco Project: https://jaredporcenaluk.com/category/smart-bronco/
• Nebbia Technology: https://www.nebbiatech.com/
• Orlando IoT: http://orlandoiot.com/
• Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/
• Interview at DevFest Florida 2019: https://www.thundernerds.io/2019/01/jared-porcenaluk-devfest-florida-2019/
• DevFest Florida 2019: https://devfestflorida.org/

In this episode we get to talk with Nicole Dominguez, Designer and Front-end Developer. We discuss her career journey as a digital nomad and the challenges of freelancing around the world. We dive into the value of travel, and how it can provide a unique perspective outside of our everyday bubble. We also explore the stigma of mental health and how we address it in corporate America.

https://pantheon.io/
Everything your business needs for digital speed and agility.

• Website: https://nicoledominguez.com/
• Twitter: @sodevious https://twitter.com/sodevious
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/domingueznicole/
• Medium: https://medium.com/@sodevious
• THE SHORTYS: https://shortyawards.com/
• Django: https://www.djangoproject.com/
• DjangoCon Europe 2019: https://2019.djangocon.eu/
• Django Girls: https://djangogirls.org/
• Pythonista: http://omz-software.com/pythonista/
• Blender: http://blender.org/
• Digital nomads article: https://www.godaddy.com/garage/5-women-digital-nomads/
• Health Insurance Plans: https://www.cignaglobal.com/
• Mr. Feels Podcast: https://mrfeelspodcast.com/podcast-episodes

We are LIVE at FEDC 2019… A Conference for Web Professionals Who Love their Community, the Web, and Learning.
http://frontenddesignconference.com

Our talk is all about starting a podcast:

• Our story

View our slides https://thundernerds.s3.amazonaws.com/start-a-podcast/start-a-podcast.pdf

https://twitter.com/jponch
https://www.lullabot.com/
http://frontenddesignconference.com/speakers.php

Jared is the Creative Director at Lullabot where he helps lead a talented, fully distributed team of strategists, designers and developers. Over the years they’ve designed and built sites for well-known brands and institutions like NBC, IBM, This Old House, Syfy, Intel, Harvard, MIT and more. Lullabot’s focus on projects with large editorial teams managing complex content models has helped Jared and his team build unique expertise when it comes to creating design systems that work at scale. Jared loves helping organizations use design thinking to simplify complexity, find focus, build alignment and make great experiences for the audiences they serve.

Jared is known as jponch on Drupal.org and on Twitter and Dribbble.

https://www.threefivetwo.com/
https://twitter.com/mbrownstein
http://frontenddesignconference.com/speakers.php

I’m the Associate Director of User Experience at 352 Inc., an innovation and growth firm. Though I’ve worked in the web industry since 2008, I have applied usability principles to everything in my life long before I learned the phrase “user experience.” I’ve worn many digital hats over the years, from interactive design and coding to UX research, strategy and usability. Backed by a M.S. in psychology, I have helped clients like Wells Fargo, Cummins, 3M, Fifth Third Bank, and Cox Automotive create lasting connections with their customers.

User-centered design is good in theory, but ensuring it’s good in practice takes additional effort. We’ll explore some companies who do this well so we can learn from their success.

https://teamtreehouse.com/
https://twitter.com/guilh
http://frontenddesignconference.com/speakers.php

Guil is a senior software development instructor at Treehouse, an online school that aims to bring affordable technology education to everyone. His focus is on Full Stack JavaScript and Front End Web Development.

When he’s not recording courses or writing about code, you’ll find him exploring South Florida with his wife, baby boy, and hyperactive Australian Shepherd.

CSS can be immensely repetitive, and maintaining it can be cumbersome. If you’re using a CSS preprocessor like Sass, you’re already used to declaring variables to store and keep track of values in your stylesheets. Now you can use variables directly in your CSS — no special processing tools necessary!

CSS variables (custom properties) are a game changer in web development, and there are plenty of differences and advantages to using them over preprocessor variables. In fact, CSS variables offer more flexibility and power than preprocessor variables:

• They have dynamic capabilities — you can update values at runtime
• They inherit, cascade and can be scoped to any CSS selector or DOM element
• They make theming components easier than ever
• You can even read/write CSS variable values from your JavaScript!

https://konghq.com/
https://twitter.com/cobra_winfrey
http://frontenddesignconference.com/speakers.php

Front end developer and creative coder hellbent on pushing the boundaries of CSS to the breaking point. Formerly of digital marketing powerhouse Big Sea, I now spend my days handling front end web duties at San Francisco startup Kong Inc and my nights at CodePen building out absurd and (seemingly) useless UI concepts. Organizer of CodePen St. Pete and passionate advocate for web animation. Check him out on Codepen at codepen.io/cobra_winfrey

I spend a lot of time writing creative CSS & JS- probably too much (ask my wife). While the value of building out endless variations on animated toggle switches and experimental art with SVG filters appears elusive, it turned out to be a massive boost in landing me a position I never saw coming, receiving an offer without a proper portfolio to speak of. Turns out building banal concepts at CodePen offers much more value than simply a playground to expand concepts and express oneself through coded- potential employers actually spend time carefully considering these creative endeavors. I’d like to share a few demos of said projects and correllate them with the feedback from the recruiting team at Kong to demonstrate the tangible career impact of creative coding.

Product Designer for https://gooee.com/
https://twitter.com/acannist
http://frontenddesignconference.com/speakers.php

Andrea is a Product Designer for Gooee, located in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was born in Chicago, Illinois and moved to Florida right before high school. She taught herself to code in her early teens and graduated from Ringling College of Art & Design with a degree in Graphic & Interactive Communications. After, she received her Masters degree from Savannah College of Art & Design with a degree in Motion Media Design. She spent 10 years as a designer and front end developer at several digital agencies in Sarasota, Florida before taking on her current role at Gooee. In 2014, she co-founded the Girl Develop It Tampa Bay Chapter where she was a chapter leader and instructor for 4 years teaching women in the community how to code.

The transition from designing for multiple clients to a more focused and user-centric product designer can be a challenge.

Agency life offers project diversity that is unmatched in the startup world, but with it comes the stress of client meetings, wild time constraints, and the struggle of billable hours. Product Design offers more of work/life balance and the opportunity to spend more time becoming an expert on a specific user for one perfect product.

In this lightning talk, we will hit the high notes on what to know before making the jump from agency life to product designer.

Get your copy of Building Design Systems from @tauried @SVesselo http://www.buildingdesignsystems.design/

https://twitter.com/andyvitale
http://www.andyvitale.com/
http://frontenddesignconference.com/speakers.php

Andy Vitale is the UX Director, Wholesale Banking at SunTrust Bank, one of the nation’s largest financial services companies, where he is focused on translating human insights into actionable experiences to improve the product and service ecosystem within the finance industry. Andy is responsible for leading all user experience efforts for SunTrust’s wholesale banking solutions, advancing design strategies and driving design awareness as a critical function for competitive advantage and market differentiation.

Andy holds a Master’s Degree in User Experience Design and has previously held multiple roles as a designer, entrepreneur, education department chair, and design leader. With a proven ability to lead change and process improvements, Andy has developed strategies and design solutions for multiple industries within diverse organizations ranging from startups to Fortune ranked companies. He is a relentless user experience evangelist, with a passion for cognitive thinking and humanizing technology, driven by a user-centered passion that takes cross-functional teams, and their products, from good to great.

Aside from his primary role at SunTrust, Andy serves as Director of Design Impact for AIGA Minnesota and is an adjunct professor for Kent State University’s User Experience Design graduate program. He is also a member of the UXPA Cleveland Senior Advisory Board and the Program Advisory Committee for the Graphic Design & Interactive Media Program at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Andy often writes about design and speaks at industry conferences and events.

When not untangling complexities or building design teams, Andy is an enthusiast of seasonal victuals, as evident by his social media poses. An avid sneaker collector, fan of lucha libre, and aficionado and curator of all things peculiar, you can get in touch with him to talk design, or other interesting things at www.andyvitale.com

Description:

As organizations become more customer-centric, it’s time for designers to grow. Those who have demonstrated value are ready to become leaders and drive change within their organizations. But does leadership mean you have to stop designing? Absolutely not. As a leader, you’ll apply your skills and processes towards solving a new variety of problems, with amplified complexity. These challenges require insight into the organization and how it operates, so you can bring everyone together and solve user needs while also meeting business objectives.

In this presentation, Andy examines the varying landscapes and challenges of being a design leader. You’ll learn how to lead no matter where you are in your career as well as explore practical takeaways for maturing the design function within your organization and understanding your role in making it happen.