Here’s a list of events I have spoken at or will be speaking at in the future

A Startup’s Guide to Branding - Video and Slides

Big thanks to Clark over at Mustache Power for shooting video of the LaunchUp 7 talks and getting me the file of my presentation. I synced it up with my slides using Zentation which has a pretty slick interface for side-by-side video and Powerpoint. Enjoy:


Using a graphics tablet in Photoshop

jesse1Tonight I will be presenting at the Salt Lake City Adobe User Group on using a graphics tablet to create illustrations and paintings in Photoshop.  This is something I’ve just started to experiment with but I’m having a lot of fun with it and will be sharing some of the tips I’ve picked up.

There are a few files I have available for download that go along with my presentation:

Photoshop Brush Set (35MB) - This is a combination of the BittBox High-Res Watercolor Brush set and some modifications/additions I made.

Shortcuts for Photoshop Illustration - This is a PDF file with some of the keyboard shortcuts that I have found useful while using a graphics tablet.

Also - I’ll be mentioning these two About.com links on graphics tablets:

Before You Buy a Graphics Tablet

Top 10 Pressure-Sensitive Graphics Tablets

Chuck Keeler will also be presenting on using Photoshop and a graphics tablet to paint Google Sketchup models.

If you are interested in attending, there are details here:
http://groups.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=post.display&postid=25978

Making Your Company Memorable: A Startup’s Guide to Branding

launchupLast night I spoke about branding at LaunchUp #7. Jeremy Hanks and crew put on an awesome event as always. The three companies that spoke, FanFare, Bazari, and Inzolo, were very cool. I particularly loved the talk given by Brian Henderson of FanFare. I’m an avid music and live music fan and FanFare, which is basically taking a Groupon approach to concert promotion, sounded like a game changer. If they can pull off their concept I think they are poised to take an untapped market by storm. Dave Brascom of SEO.com also gave an interesting talk about how his successful search engine optimization company got started and the effect that purchasing the domain name “seo.com” had on their success.

I’m hoping to be able to post the video recording of my talk soon but for now you can download the slides here:

Making Your Company Memorable: A Startup’s Guide to Branding

I’ll be speaking at the SLC Adobe User Group next week on Photoshop Wizardry

wizI’ll be speaking at the Salt Lake City Adobe User Group on Wednesday, September 16th. The meeting starts at 6:30 pm. Here is a map to the location.

My presentation is titled Photoshop Wizardry: Tips & tricks for efficient photo editing. I’ll be going over:

  • masks
  • batch editing
  • auto-blend
  • and some other cool Photoshop tricks

This is the same presentation I gave at Photocamp UT earlier this year. Hope to see you there!

HOW Conference Presentation Slides

wwicI’ve (finally) uploaded the PPT deck (in pps format) from my HOW Conference session on “Working with Indecisive Clients”. The slides are pretty simple without much text. I apologize that there aren’t supporting notes for the actual presentation. It was largely improvised based on mental notes from each slide.

These slides use the Powerpoint Push transition as mentioned in my previous blog post. Since each slide is a jpg the pps file size is rather large (~17MB).

Download the PPS file

Enjoy!

Working with Indecisive Clients

austintexasI’m currently in Austin, Texas at the HOW Design Conference. It’s been a great time so far and I’m totally looking forward to some more inspirational presentations tomorrow.

I presented on “Working with Indecisive Clients” today and passed out this handout/paper toy. The F’N Lemon thing has to do with a story I told about a friend trying to cut a lemon with the blunt end of a knife.

I got some good comments on my Powerpoint layout/flow. A lot of people wanted to know how I did it, so I thought I’d document it here. I used a PPT technique that I first saw in the book slide:ology called the Push Transition. You can download an example here. By overlapping design elements between the jpgs for your slides, and hooking them together with Push transitions you can create the illusion of a single larger image that is being pushed around on the screen.

I got the idea to do a whole presentation this way from the online presentation app called Prezi. Unfortunately Prezi is an online-only app with no offline mode. Until that changes, the Push transition will have to do for conference talks.

A word of warning; doing a whole presentation (70+ slides) using Push is very time-intensive and also limits your ability to switch slide order at the last minute (which I usually do a lot of). I probably ended up spending over 12 hours gathering artwork and creating the slides (not including writing the presentation itself). Since it’s HOW Conference, which I have wanted to speak at for years, I figured it was time well spent.

If you were at HOW and caught my presentation, I hope you enjoyed it. If you had any further questions, feel free to drop me a line on twitter.

Ignite Salt Lake - videos now posted

Ignite Salt Lake last Thursday was awesome. The turn out was amazing and the talks were inspiring. If you missed it or attended and have been wanting to watch your favorite talk again, the videos have now been posted on YouTube. You can get to them all from here:

http://www.ignitesaltlake.com/ignite/index.cfm/watch-the-presentations/

Ignite Salt Lake 2 - Agenda Announced

The Ignite Salt Lake 2 agenda is online. We’ve got another excellent line up for you this time around with topics in design, entrepreneurship, science, technology and … Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (seriously!). 

http://www.ignitesaltlake.com/ignite/index.cfm/speakersagenda/

There are only 9 days until the event! Make sure to be there!

PhotoCamp UT - Photoshop Wizardry - Tips and Tricks for Efficient Photo Editing

Here is my Powerpoint presentation from my PhotoCamp UT presentation on Photoshop tricks:

You can download the presentation here

University of Utah - Web Design Class

Tonight I spoke at the University of Utah on the topic of “Web Design Career Options”.

You can download the Powerpoint presentation here.

CouchCast Interview

Last week I was interviewed by Matthew Reinbold of CouchCast. The interview is about the Ignite Salt Lake event that I organize. The next event is coming up on March 26th.

If you are not familiar with Ignite, the tagline of the event is “Enlighten us… but make it quick.” 16 speakers get 20 PowerPoint slides to talk on something they are passionate about. The slides rotate automatically every 15 seconds, making each presentation a grand total of 5 minutes long. We held our first event in November and had a great time. November’s presentations are available to watch at www.ignitesaltlake.com

To check out the CouchCast audio interview visit: http://voxpopdesign.com/bloomburst/?p=669

(the volume on my end is a little wonky so you may have to turn it up a bit)

PhotoCamp UT - Saturday, March 14th

pcuI’ll be speaking at PhotoCamp UT on Saturday March 14th. My session begins at 11:15 am and is titled Photoshop Wizardry: Tips & tricks for efficient photo editing. I’ll be going over masks, batch editing and some other cool Photoshop tricks.

If you are into photography, whether professionally or as a hobby, I’d highly recommend coming to this fun event. The pricing is extremely reasonable ($10!) and there are lots of different sessions to choose from that will interest photographers of all skill levels.

What is PhotoCamp?

PhotoCamp Utah is a one day photographic learning extravaganza! The local photographer community in Utah has been growing, sharing in the fun and business of photography. We will be coming together for a one day event, full of great presentations and workshops to help you get more out of your hobby or business. More at www.photocamputah.com

Salt Lake City Adobe User Group Meeting

I’ll be speaking Wednesday night at the local Adobe User Group about Search Engine Optimization. You can get more details on groups.adobe.com

Download the presentation here


How Design Conference - June 24th thru 27th

I’m very very (very) pleased to announce that I’ve been asked to speak at the How Design Conference this June in Austin, Texas.

My topic will be “Working with Indecisive Clients”. I’ve been putting together the outline of the talk for a few months now and it’s going to be a very fun presentation.

I first attended How Conference in San Diego in May of 2004. It was an absolutely amazing conference and I came away totally inspired, invigorated and excited about design work. I also came away with the goal to speak there one day, and am super happy about meeting that goal (took 4 years but hey… it’s a big conference!)

For any designers out there looking for a conference to attend I would highly recommend this one. The quality of the keynote speakers and of the speakers in general (ahem) is bar none. It is conference money very well spent.

Ignite Salt Lake Videos

The presentations from Ignite Salt Lake are now available here:

http://www.ignitesaltlake.com/ignite/index.cfm/watch-presentations/

You can check out my intro presentation on “What is Ignite?” or one of the many other (probably more entertaining) presentations as well.

Salt Lake City Adobe User Group Meeting

I’ll be speaking tomorrow night at the local Adobe User Group about how to create a Flash video web site using Adobe Encore. You can get more details here:

http://www.slcadobeug.com/

Creating a Flash Video Website with Encore

Here is my TODCon presentation on how to use Encore to create a Flash video web site.

AIR for Designers

Here is my TODCON presentation titled AIR for Designers.

TODCon 2008, Orlando Florida

I’m excited to be able to speak at TODCon again this year. It’s a fun group of people and a great conference. TODCon runs from June 6 through the 8th and will take place at the Wyndham in Orlando, FL.

This year my topics are Adobe AIR for designers and Creating a Flash video web site using Adobe Encore.

If you are looking for a design conference to attend, TODCon is great. It’s big enough to get some familiar names in the biz to speak and small enough to give you one on one time with those speakers. I highly recommend it.

http://www.todcon.org

Salt Lake Adobe User Group

I’ll be speaking at the Salt Lake City Adobe User Group on Thursday February 21st on creating an XML driven Flash Video player with AS3.

My presentation is based on a tutorial by Dan Smith.

You can download the presentation here.

University of Utah

Judy Kiel’s Web Design Class

Monday, October 29th 2007

Topic: Putting it Together for Amazing User Experiences (adapted and updated from TODCON)
Download the presentation

Flash/Flex User Group

Tuesday, September 4th 2007

Topic: XML Driven Flash Video Sites
View the presentation

About: The Flex/Flash User Group is a non-profit organization that provides an user forum of support and education for the Adobe Flash Platform, including Flex Builder and Flex Data Services. The Flex/Flash UG provides opportunities to learn, mentor, teach, increase skills, job exchange and network. Anyone is welcome to become a member. We meet in Salt Lake City and online on the first Tuesday of each month, unless otherwise announced.
www.flexusergroup.org

TODCON 2007

June 11-13, 2007

Topics: SEO That is Simple and Works
Download the presentation

Putting it all Together for Amazing User Experiences
Download the presentation

About: TODCON is a 3 day conference focusing on web design and standards. Though it started as “The Other DreamWeaver Conference” it has become a much larger scale event focusing on all things Adobe and design in general.
www.todcon.org

NAB 2007

Monday, April 16th 2007

Topic: Designing Web Sites in Photoshop CS3
Download the presentation

About: The NAB Show™ has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead this ever-changing industry. And while the solutions at your fingertips have changed to keep pace with consumer lifestyles, habits and technologies, your aspirations to produce and deliver memorable content have remained consistent. From conception through distribution, the NAB Show has proudly served as the incubator for excellence – helping to breathe life into content everywhere.
www.nabshow.com