Event Recap: Refresh the Nerd Alert
Last night at Refresh the Triangle, my co-worker and friend David Eisinger gave a revised version of a talk he gave at DevNation in Chicago a while back. He wrote an overview of the talk on our developer blog recently; it's a great topic. David spent one hour each day for 30 days learning a new technology. He kept a blog about it and did some hard thinking, not just about programming languages, but also motivation, determination, and success. He shared his thoughts last night and was kind enough to add a "NERD ALERT" badge to his slides when he transitioned from general wisdom to programming details.
David is hilarious and insightful, and even though I may have been the least technical person in the room, I loved the presentation. He left developers talking about the specific technologies he experimented with; he left designers talking about what they might tackle -- like 30 days of new fonts; and he left me talking about the general challenges of changing habits and trying out new things.
If you're in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and do anything related to the web, I encourage you to come out to the Refresh meetings. We meet on the fourth Thursday of each month. It doesn't matter what your particular expertise is. We do our best to find speakers and topics that raise new questions, reveal new ideas, inspire better work, and build stronger relationships. Last night was Refresh at its finest -- complete with beers and hilarity after the meeting.
(P.S. - We had the privilege of having our meeting in Rigsbee Hall last night. It's a beautiful, historic, accessible space in downtown Durham with awesome AV equipment. Whether you're planning a wedding or a professional conference, it's a sweet place to gather.)
