• Read more about Supporting a Bright Future in Design at FOWD

In just a few weeks, our design team, led by Jurgen Altziebler, our Managing Director of UX, will descend upon Manhattan for three days of intelligent discourse on the future of web (and mobile) design at this year's highly anticipated Future of Web Design (FOWD) event.

We are sponsoring this remarkable event which brings over 500 talented designers together for intimate sessions on the most current topics in web design. Top industry experts will be flown in to lead two days of informative sessions in which attendees will learn about the future of everything from HTML5, CSS3, Compass, Sass, Mobile UX, iOS design, Haml, responsive web design, content management systems, branding, animations, and JavaScript, which will be followed by a day of in-depth workshops.

We're looking forward to connecting with other designers who are interested in the future of this industry and to supporting a future of good design. Be sure to say hello to our team who will be available all three days to share their knowledge and insight gained from designing web and mobile applications for lean startups, enterprise giants, and everyone in between. Follow us on Twitter for updates and announcements leading up to the event. We'll see you in the Future!

• Read more about MobileUXCamp Debriefing

Earlier this month we brought our expertise in mobile development and design to MobileUXCamp in DC. This BarCamp event gave us the opportunity to interact with other motivated and creative mobile enthusiasts. We facilitated discussions around several topics including one on how mobile design standards have influenced web design; we also talked about our UX process, and even delved into consulting strategies.

We enjoyed listening to Matt Forr, of MindGrub, speak on the differences between the mobile and desktop experiences and how to display content to the user in his Responsive vs Redirect talk. He raised interesting questions such as, "should all content be available to the user"; this is something we're all thinking about right now as more companies are deciding between creating mobile versions of their websites or optimizing their existing sites for mobile.

Mobile development is new enough that best practices for design and development are constantly in flux and the future is being created now. MobileUXCamp provided an open forum to join mobile experts in dialogue on the topics that are relevant and pressing in the mobile space today.

You can view the slides from our presentation on Slideshare and pictures from the event on our Flickr page.

We're always interested in talking shop about mobile design and development practices so feel free to start a conversation with us in the comments below or hit us up on Twitter.

• Read more about Betascape Debriefing - Art Meets Tech

Several of our designers and developers spent this past weekend attending sessions on art and technology and talking to people about Intridea's methods at Betascape. The event pulled together artists and technologists from various industries and demonstrated what is happening on the bleeding edge of that intersection - from robotics to personal fabrication to data visualization.

The most popular session among the Intridea contingent was Kyle Fritz's talk, "Computers Suck, The Internet Rules: How to make networked stuff that interacts with the real world." Kyle touched on ways to virtually control your home stereo, locks, lights, and other household objects that can be remotely manipulated with just a simple working knowledge of electronics and a bit of hacking. It was a great example to our designers of how advanced technology can be accessible and useful to them.

Kyle's talk inspired Charles and Ted to help out on the screenhead project. So they partnered with Jonathan Julian of 410Labs, forked Kyle's project, integrated the Google Street View API and the Tropo API. These additions allowed users to send a text with instructions like "name + map" (to open the recipient's browser and bring up a Google street view of the person's geographical location) or "name + image" (to open the recipient's browser and display a Google image search of the given name).

Overall, the presentations focused on the interactivity of art and science and the advantages gained from fluid, collaborative relationships between artists and technologists. We enthusiastically supported this event because we understand the intrinsic value of the relationship between art and technology. This is why we employ agile methods in both design and development, ensuring that our UX and Development teams work together closely throughout the entire cycle of design and development. Our goal is to create applications that are both visually stunning, usable, and technologically sound. We achieve this goal project after project by joining our designers with our developers in every step of the process. Design and development don't happen asynchronously on our teams - they happen congruently, and the results are always incredible.

When the two teams work closely together to create working systems an interesting thing happens: the designer begins to understand the mind of the developer and can intuit their feedback. This helps the designer work more effectively. Additionally, the developer begins to understand the mind of the designer and begins to think of their code with visual form and clarity.

A French composer understood what could come of the innovator and the creator working together:

I dream of a collaboration that would finally be total, in which the librettist would often think as a composer and the composer as a librettist.

Jacques Ibert

We've learned a lot from working with each other and through cultivating a mutual appreciation for the idiosyncratic talents we all bring to the table. That is why we enthusiastically support events like Betascape and it's why we're always happy to talk about our process and strategy with others. We're interested in hearing how others are working collaboratively with art and technology, so please add your thoughts to the comments below!

• Read more about Betascape - Where Art and Technology Meet

This weekend we'll be supporting the innovation that happens when artists and technologists collide, through our sponsorship of Betascape 2011.

Last weekend, we sponsored and presented at MobileUXCamp in DC to discuss the ways in which mobile devices are reshaping our interactions with the web. This weekend we'll be in Baltimore, supporting the incredible work that happens when artists and technologists focus their combined talents.

Betascape is an annual event in Baltimore, aimed at involving designers and developers in ground-breaking work though informative sessions and interactive workshops. Participants come together in groups on the final day to explore the new ideas that emerged over the course of the weekend and create small projects that will be judged and awarded based on their level of innovation.

Betascape's theme and purpose is analogous with our method of design and development at Intridea. Our design process isn't detached from our development process; our designers don't work independently from our programmers. Rather, they work together closely from initial discovery to prototype to the finished product (and beyond).

Designers and developers at Intridea explore our client's needs together, and when the final design is approved and sent to our development team, the designers stay involved throughout the process to ensure that the UI/UX adapts to any architectural changes that are made during the development process. This ensures that when a product is complete the application is both aesthetically and structurally optimal.

We understand the value of the relationship between artist and technologist and we're looking forward to talking about our process at this weekend's neoteric event. Join us in the Interactive Lounge to talk shop or even just to say hello and grab some fancy die cut stickers! If you won't be at the event, be sure to follow us on Twitter for live coverage of the happenings over the weekend.

• Read more about Democratized Data and the Missing Interface

Inspired by their recent trip to the Wolfram Data Summit, Marc Garrett and Jurgen Altziebler share their thoughts on big data and the missing component.

The Wolfram Data Summit is an invitation-only gathering in Washington, DC which brings together the leaders of the world's largest data repositories. Professors, Chief Privacy Officers, Research Scientists, Chief Technology Officers, Data Architects, and Directors from leading organizations like UCSD, the U.S. Census Bureau, Thomson Reuters, Cornell, and Orbitz (among many others) come to present on the challenges and opportunities they face in the data community and to discuss their work.

The Summit reaches a broad range of innovators from virtually every discipline. The format of the summit promotes collaboration among participants across multiple domains, including medical, scientific, financial, academic and government. Presenters integrate topics with discussion on open government data, data in the media, and linguistics.

Our Motivation

We frequently work with clients that own or manage large data repositories; through our work with them we build applications that allow their users to easily access and learn from the data. Through continued exposure to the world of big data, we've realized that although a few large firms utilize tools like data mining and data analyses to make better business decisions, the information is generally under-used and often not used at all by smaller firms.

Data is Gold

One the most strikingly apparent details that Marc and Jurgen gleaned from the Summit was that data and content owners truly care about the accuracy of their data. All of the presenters conveyed a sanctity toward cultivating quality data.

What results from the work of these scrupulous and discerning leaders is a vast collection of (high-quality and accurate) data that can be used by anyone to make more strategic decisions involving their health, finances, or education, by business owners to learn more about their niche markets and identify trends and potential solutions to common problems. Data repositories are used by groups to predict and release information about everything from natural disasters and disease outbreaks to commute patterns and high-crime neighborhoods. This begs the question, "If data can be so useful to us, why are large organizations cutting funding to data projects such as Census.gov and Data.gov?" (Read this article from WhiteHouse.gov for a look at some of the ways Data.gov has been used in the last three years.)

The Experience Layer of Big Data

Jurgen and Marc identified that one of the solutions to the diminishing use of these repositories lies in the user experience layer of the data. In most cases data repositories offer large data sets in Excel or CSV files and while this format is appropriate for their expert audience, average users don't know how to get valuable information and stories out of plain data sets. On the bright side, this is a problem that's easy enough to fix.

Tell the story, guide the user to discover insights with a user friendly web layer.

Jurgen Altziebler

Data must be easily and intuitively accessible; otherwise, it goes unutilized. There is no question that aggregation and maintenance of data is beneficial for everyone from the CEO of a mutual funds company to the admissions office of a University, to the entrepreneur of a tech startup, to the person choosing between treatment options for an ill loved one.

In the age of Web 2.0 there is no reason for big or little data to be silo'd behind unusable interfaces. Owners of data repositories can work alongside UX/UI experts to launch a new wave of data accessibility. At Intridea, we are obsessed with the user experience, but we also see the whole picture - we build applications to allow users to seamlessly access information they need. Jurgen notes, "A good user experience begins and ends with usable data."

As designers, our job is as much about the aesthetics as it is about the functionality and accessibility to the product or data in question. WolframAlpha.com is a good case study of what's possible when centralized data is made available to the average user through the power of a knowledge engine and intuitive interface. A simple query for "speed of light" or "heart disease risk" returns computational details on a macro and micro level.

What We've Learned

Data truly is gold. But it will waste away in mines if we do not create the appropriate tools for people to harvest and utilize it. If data owners can be encouraged to work with design experts, and if designers can be inspired to assist on these valuable data projects we can bridge the gap between the data and the user and unleash the inherent value in democratized data.

• Read more about Intrideans Gather on the Chesapeake

If you follow us on Twitter you probably know by now that a significant group of Intrideans gathered together in Maryland over the weekend for an Intridea Retreat on the Chesapeake Bay. Despite being a distributed team of Rails developers and designers, most of us do see each other throughout the year as we travel to conferences, give trainings, and work onsite with clients. Even so, the retreat was the first time almost all of us were together in one place for a long weekend.

The retreat was held in a charming (yet modern) cabin on the Chesapeake, and while there was no shortage of outdoor activities (like kayaking, ziplines, swimming and rock climbing just to name a few), we also spent an extraordinary amount of time huddled inside the cabin. We organized a multitude of sessions to share tactics, talk about best practices, collaborate on development and design strategy, and share our agile project management methods including Forge and Scrum.

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Vince Lombardi

Many important things resulted from this weekend's sessions, but most notably:

• Engineers learned more about the design team's process.
• Designers and engineers formulated better strategies for communicating with our QA team.
• Everyone gained a better understanding of how our technical leaders and project managers interact with clients to keep them informed and satisfied.
• We learned some quick and easy tips on how to play a larger role in the Ruby community.

Most importantly, we came away enlightened and inspired to return to our offices and do more great work. Of course, we made time to kick back too; late-night karaoke with impressive David Bowie renditions, high-energy rounds of Werewolf, competitive Xbox gaming, and mid-day laps in the pool all made it on the schedule. There were homemade cupcakes courtesy of Amelia and exotic varieties of beer thanks to Patti and Jon's custom BeerConnect session.

Though we return to separate offices across the country (and the world), we bring with us a resonant solidarity and a humble feeling of gratitude for the talents of our fellow Intrideans, for the vision and dedication of our leadership, and for the freedom to work and live in all the different places we each call home. We're all looking forward to more good design, development, and of course, the next Intridea Retreat!

You can see additional photos of the weekend retreat on our Flickr page!

• Read more about Intridea Supports Startups at Annual Social Matchbox Event

Thursday night you'll find Intridea at the annual Social Matchbox Startup Launch Event. We're joining an impressive lineup of companies to support this grand event put on by DC-area Startup Founders, Investors and Leaders that helps startups gain exposure by providing access to prominent journalists and investors while providing a competitive launch platform.

Thursday evening at 6pm we'll be at the US Navy Memorial Heritage Center to observe the startup presentations and offer our expertise to fledgling entrepreneurs. Intridea's Senior Partner and Co-Founder, David Naffis, will be available to answer questions, give advice and talk about Intridea's own successful launch strategy. If you plan to attend the event, be sure to stop by our table to say hello! We look forward to talking with you about web development, design, entrepreneurship, startups, and Ruby on Rails.

• Read more about One Time, At RailsCamp

Last month Intridea sponsored RailsCamp New England - a Rails retreat in the western mountains of Maine. Adam and I attended the event for the second time (this was the fourth U.S. Rails Camp, and the second one in Maine) along with 38 other Ruby and Rails developers. On a rainy Friday evening we all settled in the cozy Maine house for a long weekend of geekery.

Ben Askins started the RailsCamp movement in Australia in 2007 and with the help of Pat Allan's enthusiasm, RailsCamp took off! In 2009 Pat and Brian Cardarella worked together to bring the tradition to the New England area. In the last five years RailsCamps have been organized throughout much of Europe, the UK, Australia and the eastern side of the U.S.

The spirit of RailsCamp is simple - bring Rails devs to the backcountry, isolate them in a house for a long weekend, and watch what happens. There is a local network for sharing resources, and a local server with a mirror of RubyGems. If the idea of limited access to the internet and modern amenities causes you alarm, do not fear - it's not a Luddite conversion retreat. Though the setup seems primitive it is actually quite intimate and inspiring. The isolation removes most non-programming-related distractions, and the relaxed environment is conducive to epically long hack sessions. So what does happen when you throw 40 programmers in a house together without internet?

We hack. We collaborate on projects. We share information and tools. We get feedback on our code. The veterans share the experience they've gained from decades of programming. The shy ones hack in quiet corners and observe and absorb the information that's being shared. We share meals, enjoy evening beverages together, fight for our lives in fireside games of Werewolf, swim under a sea of stars in a cool lake, and flex our gamer cred in fast-paced rounds of Urban Terror.

This year we even produced something other than code! Pascal Rettig brought along a Thing-O-Matic, a personal fabrication machine, which we used to make 3D plastic RailsCamp logos. As we all geeked out over this I marveled at how the reaction to creating a tangible item was as thrilling for us as creating applications. I thought more deeply about the similarities between manufacturing and programming, so look for that post in the near future!

As the Rails community continues to expand and evolve rapidly, its conferences have become increasingly monolithic. While the larger conferences still have a tremendous amount of value, it's nice to have events like RailsCamp, where there still exists a profound intimacy among coders. For a passionate Rubyist it doesn't get much better than a laptop, a local gem repository, good food, games, and a cabin in the woods with a group of other passionate Rubyists. It's the stuff geek summers are made of. You can view additional photos on our Flickr page!

• Read more about Intridea Supports Mobile Development Education At Mobile UX Camp

This year we're proud to be a Platinum Sponsor of Mobile UX Camp DC, a mobile technology themed BarCamp. The event is supported by other leading technology companies and will be attended by mobile application developers, content writers and marketers, and others that want to gain an understanding of entrepreneurship and innovation in the mobile space.

Intridea has been developing elegant mobile solutions for high-profile companies like Mashable, Oracle and Mitsubishi for the last several years. We work closely with clients to create meaningful, intuitive, and seamless experiences for their mobile users. We have gained insight and experience into the cutthroat world of mobile development. That's why our UX/UI and Mobile Engineering teams will be at Mobile UX Camp this year to participate in the event and share their experience.

Mobile UX Camp is sold out, but you can still sponsor the event (or get added to the waitlist). If you're already attending the event, be sure to swing by the Intridea Room to say hello throughout the day. You won't want to miss our 45 minute presentation starting at 3:00pm:

You got Mobile in My Desktop: How Mobile Devices are Changing our Interactions With the Web

Modern mobile devices (smartphones and tablets of course) have been teaching users new ways of interacting with data. For the first time since the introduction of the point and click interface 30 years ago, users are interacting with a computer in a brand new way. The mouse is becoming an artifact, and so its usage patterns are going the way of the dodo and the light pen. Hear about how the computer in your pocket is informing the computer on your desk, and why the days of designing for one or the other are rapidly coming to a close.

From our open source development, speaking at conferences, teaching classes, and sponsoring local and national user groups and tech conferences, we are always looking for ways to support the community that we live, work and play in. We're excited to be at Mobile UX Camp this year to interact with the mobile community as they explore new ways to push the mobile space forward.

• Read more about .NET Meets Geospatial Rails at MADExpo

Last week, I packed my bags and headed for Norfolk, VA to speak at the Mid-Atlantic Developers Expo. I've spent the better part of the past year traveling the country, speaking about Geospatial Programming using Ruby and Rails. As a long-time lover of maps, the topic has been a joy to introduce to the community of Ruby developers, at both small regional conferences like MagicRuby or MountainRuby, and at major national conferences like RubyConf 2010 and RailsConf 2011.

MADExpo, however, was a different kind of conference. MADExpo is primarily a conference attended by Microsoft .NET developers. I was nervous about how my talk, primarily aimed at Rails developers, would be received by "the other side." What could I possibly tell a bunch of .NET guys about doing Geospatial apps if my expertise is Rails?

As it turns out, quite a bit. I was genuinely surprised by the interest, attention, and questions I received during and after my session. Most folks were genuinely interested to learn how Rails developers are doing GIS apps, and had insights to offer about how certain problems are solved using .NET.

One of the main points of my speeches on Geospatial Rails is that "we should draw inspiration from outside our bubble of knowledge." Old-school desktop GIS has a lot to teach web developers about what is possible, what is useful, and what is realistic. MADExpo made me realize that there's another piece of this argument that I had been missing. Not only should we be looking at what desktop GIS can teach us: we should be looking at what users of other web stacks can teach us as well.

The slides from my presentation are available on Scribd. I welcome feedback and ongoing conversation about the future of Geospatial programming, and I'm looking forward to bringing a modified version of this presentation to the fifth annual Lonestar Ruby Conference in August this year! Hope to see many of you there. In the meantime, feel free to leave your comments below or ping me with questions on Twitter!