Viget was pleased to recently be a part of the gallery exhibit, Comp DC: A Comprehensive Look at the Design Process presented by the Communication Design Program at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Virginia. It was a great chance for us to connect with local design students, tell the behind-the-scenes story of what goes into a design, and to see our work in print and presented in style!
Four local design agencies were asked to participate and show off their design process. Viget was there to explain the interactive side of design. We chose the recently relaunched EarthEcho as a good example of the typical design process here at Viget. The exhibit showed every step of the design process that we went through with EarthEcho, from wireframes and moodboards, to final page designs.
As part of the exhibit opening last week, Tom presented to a gallery full of interactive design students about the ins and outs of the EarthEcho redesign, and web design at Viget in general. The students were a great audience and it turned out to be an evening of good discussions, meeting talented folks, and general fun and merriment.
The exhibit itself will be up at the Tyler Teaching Gallery at NOVA's Alexandria campus from September 27 - October 20.
By Viget Labs
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Jun. 20, 2011 | Comments
By Jillian Kuhn, Web Project Manager,
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Jun. 20, 2011 | comments
Here at Viget, we all have an annual conference/training allowance, among our other awesome job perks ... And, we certainly put it to good use two weeks ago, when four Vigets traveled across the country to learn and make new friends!
For my training, I returned to my hometown of Chicago for WebContent 2011. This year's theme was "Going Mobile," and I spent two days soaking up a ton of information on content strategy and the mobile web. From a workshop on Content Strategy 101 to in-depth sessions on the latest mobile trends and their implications for your business, the conference's offerings gave me plenty of food for thought and a whole new list of ideas for tackling my clients' content issues. I also got to know a bunch of new faces in the web industry -- plus, I got to eat wonderful Chicago pizza for a few days!
Brand and strategy consultant Margot Bloomstein of Appropriate, Inc., speaking at WebContent 2011 -- and using Viget's own SpeakerRate to get feedback on her presentation
Meanwhile, while I was in the Midwest, three of our developers (Matt Henry, David Eisinger, and Patrick Reagan) headed for the border to attend Texas JavaScript Conference. It would've been pretty tough to assemble a better line-up of speakers for this year's TXJS. There were talks by JavaScript's creator, the man who made it his mission to save JavaScript from itself, and several other extraordinarily accomplished JavaScripters. There was a lot of great insight and information on offer and a great community to go along with it. Basically, the guys had a blast, and TXJS 2012 can't get here soon enough.
Paul Irish shows off his fancy Unicode selectors at TXJS 2011 (photo by greychr)
Though we incorporated Viget in 1999, it was the spring of 2000 that we spent a week in Boulder deciding what kind of company we wanted to be. Every spring since then we celebrate Viget's birthday with the entire team. Last year was the big 1-0, so we enjoyed our first-ever overnight trip (and bought just-released iPads for the entire staff). It was so much fun, we decided to keep the overnight tradition this year.
Last Friday and Saturday, we visited Montfair, an "eco-friendly resort farm" located roughly halfway between our DC and Durham offices, not far from my beloved Charlottesville. Patrick made the trip in from Boulder, as did Doug from Vancouver. Now that we have three offices, this is one of the rare times that we get everyone together at once, and it was a blast.
Continue reading "Camping Out for Viget’s 11th Birthday"
It's no secret that Viget HQ has its very own Ms. Pac-Man machine. Squidoo gave it to us, once upon a time, as a thank-you for all of Viget's hard work for them. Over the years, Ms. Pac-Man went through ups and downs in the office. Sometimes she was popular; sometimes months went by without so much as one game played. But since the front-end development team adopted her last year, quite a few of us have gotten hooked and lost a fair number of hours to ghost-chomping and fruit-chasing.
But we're Viget! We're not content to merely play a 30-year old arcade game for fun! Or even for intense competition (and, oh, it's intense. The all-time Top 10 Scores list is covered in sweat and tears.) So in order to use our Pac-Man addiction for good, we've come up with Dots For Tots, a gaming marathon to raise funds for Child's Play, a charity that gives games to children's hospitals worldwide.
In the same vein as popular gaming marathons like Mario Marathon and Desert Bus For Hope, we'll play Ms. Pac-Man for donations. The more money raised, the longer we'll play. The initial goal is to play for eight hours and raise $1,200 but the game will extend as long as donations keep coming in!
The event's on March 25, starting at 8am EST. We'll be broadcasting the marathon live over at Dots For Tots. There's a core team of players: Trevor, Jason, Blake, and myself. But throughout the day plenty of other Viget folks will be making cameos and popping in to catch a game or two. During the event, you'll be able to watch the action, tweet or chat with us via UStream, and check how the donations (and subsequently how many hours we'll be glued to the game) are adding up. We're not sure if an entire day of Ms. Pac-Man will turn us bitterly against each other as we battle for spots on the Top 10 board, or if we'll only end up loopy, but either way it promises to be a bit of fun and entertainment that will support a great cause.
So check out dotsfortots.org, donate, and mark March 25 on your calendar!
By Viget Labs
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Jan. 28, 2011 | Comments
By Mindy Wagner, Senior Web Designer,
in Events
Jan. 28, 2011 | comments
No matter how busy life gets, Refresh the Triangle is one event I always try to make time for. I find the talks motivating and love the people that come back month after month. Last night's event was no different. Except that it was, because it featured 3 of Viget's finest -- Peyton Crump, Clinton Nixon and Brian Williams. How cool is that?
Over 60 people filled the space at the American Underground, a great start-up space at the American Tobacco Campus in the middle of downtown Durham. We kicked off the new year with a new format designed to make Refresh events more well rounded. Instead of a single speaker and topic, the new format splits the time between speakers from three disciplines. All three tackled the same topic -- "Regeneration: When old becomes new again".
Peyton Crump, Design Director at Viget, kicked off the night with an introduction to Responsive Web Design. It's a topic I'm always excited to hear more about. He reminded us of the liquid layouts that were all the rage (among some, mostly non-designers) a decade ago. Then he shared how things have come full circle, and how responsive design can be a more successful solution for solving the big/small space problem. I loved how he connected fluid layouts, something we all cringe to remember working with, to a newer technique with tons of potential. Relevant links can be found on his delicious account: http://www.delicious.com/pcrump/refresh-responsiveness
Next up was Clinton Nixon, our Development Director. Clinton's talks are always hilarious and accessible. Even though I'm a designer, I always enjoy seeing him talk about things he is passionate about. He pulled together a great introduction to old programming languages like Lisp and Smalltalk, and then showed how modern languages like Ruby and JavaScript were rooted in these early ancestors. For visual thinkers like me, it was great to see the interactive map that he pulled together clearly showing how each language is related. If you're interested, his talk -- Antique Programming Road Show -- is available online: slides | talk text
Brian Williams, Viget's CEO and co-founder, rounded out the night with a talk that everyone could appreciate. He made the case for loyalty, explaining why both businesses and employees benefit from making a long-term commitment to one another. He outlined the financial and the mental payoffs for both sides, and gave concrete ideas for building that culture - like encouraging learning at every level, keeping your team on payroll even during down times, and willingly turning down money for work that isn't going to make your employees happy. Having a familial culture is rare in today's job market, but I for one can certainly vouch for its effectiveness. This is one of the many things that makes Viget such a fantastic place to work and grow.
I found the new format to be a nice change of pace. There really was something for everyone, and it moved very quickly. It's fun to see how Refresh the Triangle keeps evolving as the community grows. If you haven't made it out to a Refresh event yet, it's time to give it a try!
Next month's meeting will be a social hour (no speakers, lots of conversation) on Thursday, February 25, 6:30PM at City Beverage in Durham. See you there?
By Viget Labs
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Jan. 11, 2011 | Comments
By Emily Bloom, Regional Director,
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Jan. 11, 2011 | comments
Ben and I just got back from attending the first half of the LaunchBox Demo Day event at the American Tobacco campus in Durham. Viget has had a long-term relationship with LaunchBox Digital and has worked with several of their start-up companies directly. Today all seven of the 2010 LaunchBox teams pitched their businesses to potential investors and a general audience. Despite inclement weather, the turnout was strong and the energy in the room was warm and positive.
All of the businesses are impressive and have received a decent amount of press already. We're excited to see where they go from here and have our fingers crossed in particular for FiscalPie, CityPockets, SpringMetrics, and HealtheME, with whom we collaborated this fall. We're looking forward to continuing our relationship with these exciting start-ups and welcoming LaunchBox's 2011 class later in the year. Applications open in April!
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Nov. 05, 2010 | Comments
By Emily Bloom, Regional Director,
in Events
Nov. 05, 2010 | comments
Matt Henry, a Senior Front-End Developer here at Viget, drew a crowd of 50 people yesterday at the 31st meeting of Refresh the Triangle. His talk, "The Agony and Ecstasy of the Mobile Web," struck a nice balance of being general and broad, but still technically detailed. Matt covered the basics of mobile development strategy and supporting a wide range of mobile devices; he also answered questions about mobile web apps vs. native apps, mobile Javascript, and how to test on mobile devices. His clever commentary and witty slides went a long way to keep the packed room chuckling all the way to the end of the presentation (which concluded with "xoxo, matt") and into a peppy Q & A session. Everyone seemed to get a lot out of the talk. We owe thanks to the Durham Chamber of Commerce for hosting us last night and providing food and drinks. Thanks!
After three years of helping to organize Refresh the Triangle, it is exciting that every month we still meet new people who've come out to a meeting for the first time. It's also great to see a core group of regulars each month. We've got a stellar web community is in this area and I love how Refresh gives us a reason to get together.
After the meeting, at the bar, I heard a few people say, "See you next month!" as they headed home. We've got a good thing going on here -- I hope you'll join us soon.
(Next meeting: Thurs. December 2, 6:30PM at City Beverage -- social only; no speaker)
By Viget Labs
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Jun. 25, 2010 | Comments
By Emily Bloom, Regional Director,
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Jun. 25, 2010 | comments
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.)
By Viget Labs
in Events
Apr. 12, 2010 | Comments
By Tom Osborne, Design Director,
in Events
Apr. 12, 2010 | comments
On occasion we get the opportunity to connect directly with college students studying design in its various forms. This is always fun for us because it's a chance, not only to see what the cool kids are learning these days, but also to walk down memory lane.
Continue reading "Studio Tour with George Mason University"
By Viget Labs
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Mar. 18, 2010 | Comments
By Ben Scofield, Former Staffer,
in Events
Mar. 18, 2010 | comments
If you've been following Developer Day, the series of local conferences we've been putting on with our friends from Relevance, you may already know this. If not, then you heard it hear first: Developer Day is no more!
OK, that's a little misleading. The truth of the matter is that we've rebranded it. Where once there was Developer Day, now there sits DevNation – it's got the same vision (of building cross-technology bonds in local communities) and fantastic content, but it's also got a brand spankin' new website and attitude to match*.
The inaugural DevNation event is in Atlanta on Saturday, April 3rd (register today!), and we've got six more events scheduled in 2010, so chances are we'll be showing up somewhere near you in the coming months. Follow @dev_nation for details, or email us (my address is ben.scofield@viget.com).
* You can thank Mindy, Rob, and Jess Martin (from Relevance) for the site, if you're so inclined.
