Last night was the inaugural session of Refresh Bellingham, which is something like a cross between a single-presentation micro-conference (for FREE!) and a bar/grill social event for web geeks. Taking place at Extremes Sports Grill (yes, their website terrifies), it turned out to be a blast!

The speaker was Jeff Croft, who is some sort of hybrid between a super-designer and a karaoke megastar. His presentation was on grids in web design, and was a speedy trek through the history of grids in typography and the ways to apply them to your websites in this day in age. He’ll have slides at some point, so I’ll put them up as soon as I get the link. It was great to watch, and now I’m closer to understanding what the point is for line-height.

It’s for conga lines, right?

After the presentation, the crowd (I saw at least 45 people there, we had people standing during the presentation) walked across the way into what I’ll call the “party room” and proceeded to eat, drink, or do a combination of both while chatting away with people from Bellingham to Mt. Vernon to Seattle.

If you live in or near Bellingham, and want to have a great opportunity to learn more about web standards, talk shop with people who care about such things, or just have an excuse for a night out, I suggest you take the opportunity to come to the next Refresh (we’re on the third Wednesday night of every month. Check out the website for more.)