Justin Harter founded Justify Studios and is also the founder of RefreshIndy, a fast-growing group of web designers, developers and media artists from around Indianapolis and Central Indiana. Generally, Refresh brings these creative professionals together to share stories, news and ideas.
In January, Refresh takes part in Refresh Weekend, a 48-hour non-stop website design event for charity. Volunteers work on teams of five, sometimes alongside people they may not even know, to work for an organization they may have never heard of. By the end of the weekend, hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of code have been developed and deserving charities from across Marion County get a great new website to boost their efforts in the work that they do.
In 2010, the first year for the event, Refresh had three teams working around the clock. In 2011, we’re shooting for five teams for a total of 25 volunteers.
Each charity is chosen based on their need, the impact they have on the community and the potential impact having a great website would give them. In addition to getting a website, each charity also gets a professionally-produced video that showcases the work they do. The video gets published to their website, as well as YouTube and Vimeo.
IUPUI is a supporting sponsor of Refresh Weekend as part of their Week of Service for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The School of Informatics at IUPUI allows us to use their facility to house the event and many Informatics students get to work alongside experienced professionals during the whole weekend.
Justin coordinates the event, organizers the volunteers and food, personally interviews the charities before selection and works with other organizations in the community to help support our efforts. He also makes a lot of coffee during that weekend. A lot.
