Given at MJG International in Savage, MN

Thank you to everyone who came out to see Marc and I last Thursday night. I met a lot of really great people and learned so much. I’ve included my slide decks from my presentations below. Please, give me your honest feedback in the comments. I’m already scheduled to give these talks again multiple times, so I need your advice to improve them.

Embrace Your Inner Designer (slides) – Whether you want to admit it or not, the decisions that you make as a developer greatly influence the final design of your application’s user interface. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with a designer, or you’re a one-man A-Team, there are some very easy and powerful things that you can do to ensure that the final product is intuitive, usable and (gasp!) beautiful. Come embrace that designer inside of you that wants to get out (and wear hipster glasses).

Rocking Responsive Web Development (slides) – Up until the last few years, it was completely acceptable to design/develop a new website for one size of monitor. But with the release of the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices, we’ve witnessed the beginning of a mobile revolution. By the end of this year, over 50% of Americans will use their phone or tablet as their primary web browsing device. The question is, are the sites that you are creating ready? In this talk, I discuss reasons why responsive is the best way to develop new websites, as well as the best techniques I’ve discovered after a year of full time development of responsive websites.

And this is my responsive site demo I use in the presentation.