Tonight we had our first Refresh Portland event. It’s a monthly meetup and presentation where we bring designers and others interested in design together. We hope to teach them something they didn’t know and give them something to use in the real world. We packed the house with somewhere between 50-60 people. We just barely had enough chairs for the space that Jive graciously lended to us.

First off, Tyler’s presentation was awesome. I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting Tyler before and I was honestly a little nervous about someone I didn’t know doing the first presentation. Humongous props to Tyler for putting all my fears to ease and more. He kept things simple, relevant and to the point. The key message I brought home was to remember to, “Stop designing websites and start designing experiences.”

Of course we’re still working out the kinks. The elevator broke down. We almost didn’t get ustream working. I accidentally stole John’s Refresh introduction. In general I felt like we were running around like chickens with our heads cutoff. It was a great time and I look forward to improving it. Next time I hope to get free access to the elevator and side door for everyone during the Refresh time. I’ll also try and do a better job greeting people and making them feel welcome.

I’m really thankful for the support of everyone who came. I can’t wait to convert more visitors to presenters in the future. Someone in our audience has something really interesting to say that I know we’ll all want to hear.

You can catch the recording here. Ignore the first 4 minutes of my nervous rambling and just jump to Tyler being a badass.

I should also thank the team for helping set this all up. Thanks John, Carlos, Josh, and Bram!