Refresh Savannah

Brad Taylor from Rails Machine is going to speak at March’s Refresh (3/16 @ 7PM)! This is great news for everyone, because Brad’s about as smart as they come. He’s going to share the talk he gave at last year’s Geekend, which was awesome. If you missed it, you should come check it out. If you didn’t, you should come anyway since I’m sure Brad will have some new stuff to say and the discussion will be interesting as usual. Here’s Brad’s description:

Being a geek is only half the story. Although our passion and intensity drives our work and interests, we can often be uncomfortable in environments that may come more naturally to non-geeks. This talks explores how to push beyond your comfort zone by exploring new skills and hobbies.

I think we’ll have March’s Refresh at the Music Intelligence office, just to spice things up. We’re at 208 E Broughton St right downtown. Be there at 7PM on 3/16 for some good geeky camaraderie!

A big thank you to Jim Goodlett who gave a really interesting presentation this month, and to everyone who showed up! The discussion was amazing and I had a lot of fun.

I know I said I thought I had someone lined up for March, but it turns out… I don’t! So, we need someone to step up to speak at March’s Refresh. You can speak about pretty much anything you want as long as you can somehow connect it to being geeky (and really, if you’re into something enough to volunteer to speak about it, you’re geeky enough). I’m going to reach out to some potential victims in the meantime, but I’d love it if someone volunteered!

If you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail (kevin-at-lawver.net) and let me know the topic, a description and anything else you want to tell me about your proposed topic. Also, be sure you’re available to speak at 7PM on 3/16, because that’s when the next meeting is!

Update: Since we have 3 votes for the SEDA board room, 4 votes for MIS and one vote against MIS, we’re going to stick with the SEDA board room this month. So… I hope to see all of you there on 2/16 @ 7PM! If you’ve never been to the SEDA building before, they have directions on their site. I hope to see you all there!

February is coming up, so it’s time to get the word out about February’s Refresh Savannah!! Since last month’s meeting had to be canceled, we’re trying the same topic again… Jim Goodlett’s going to speak about KPI (key performance indicators) and all their power. This should be a really interesting talk and hopefully inspire some folks to consider striking out on their own.

I’ve been thinking about Refresh and where it should go. I’ve heard from several people that driving across the bridge to the SEDA building could be dampening attendance, so here’s a poll. Please fill it out and I’ll figure out where we’re going to hold February’s Refresh. It’ll either be at the SEDA building as usual, or we’ll have it at the Music Intelligence office. It’s a smaller space, but we’re right downtown and there’s ice cream downstairs. It honestly doesn’t matter to me. I want Refresh to work for the people who want to attend, without being a giant time suck for me. So, let me know your preference. Either way, we’ll be meeting at 7:00PM on February 16th! I’ll update this post with the location later.

Another Update We’re just going to cancel January’s Refresh and Jim is going to speak in February (I’m bringing a backup presentation just in case). So, instead of going to Refresh next Tuesday, why don’t you find something you don’t know but have always wanted to learn, do some research and then tell us about it!

Urgent Update and Call for Help! Our speaker has another engagement that night that he can’t get out of, so we need to find either a new speaker for Tuesday night or cancel.  If you’d like to speak on something web-related (you won’t find a friendlier audience, I promise), please e-mail me (kevin-at-lawver.net) with a brief intro, and what you want to talk about!  If no one volunteers, we’ll cancel this month’s meeting and get back together in February.

It’s a new year and time to get back into the Refresh groove.  To start us off this year, Jim Goodlett’s going to speak about KPI (key performance indicators) and all their power. This should be a really interesting talk and hopefully inspire some folks to consider striking out on their own.

I hope to see you there!  Be sure to tell your friends about it, as this one isn’t quite as nerdy as some of our previous talks.

I’m going to skip the Upcoming stuff, since no one ever RSVP’s.  But, the details are the same other than that:

• What: Refresh Savannah January: Definining a Problem to Build Your Business Around
• When: January 19th, 7PM
• Where: The SEDA Board Room (directions below)

Directions to the SEDA Building, again courtesy of Fitz.

1. After crossing the Talmadge Bridge from the Savannah side, exit at Hutchinson Island/Convention Center.
2. Stay in the right lane but veer left at fork onto Wayne Shackelford Blvd.
3. Make first right turn on Hugh Tracy Blvd.
4. Continue straight and turn left into SEDA Building parking lot.

SCAD just redesigned their website and Janna DeVylder was in the middle of the whole thing. She and her team will give us a view into how they did it, the design choices they had to make and how they went about making them.

I’m really looking forward to this. Everyone has a different process for thinking about this stuff, and it’s rare to get people willing to talk about it in-depth. So, buckle up, this should be a fun one!

When: 10/20 @ 7PM
Where: The SEDA Building

More details are on the Upcoming event page, and you can grab directions to the SEDA building from last month’s event post. Please RSVP if you’re coming!

Please help spread the word! We had pretty dismal attendance last month. There have got to be more than six people in Savannah interested in this stuff.

And just so no one’s confused, we won’t be having Refresh in November or December (unless someone else wants to organize them). I’ll most likely be out of town for both dates. We’ll pick back up in January – and Jim Goodlett’s already volunteered to present!

September’s Refresh is quickly approaching! It’s on the Tuesday 9/15 @ 7PM at the SEDA Building again (directions below).

Murray runs AWOL Inc’s computer “repurposing” project and is doing some really interesting stuff with old PC’s, open source and volunteer labor. He’s going to tell us a bit about the program, how we can get involved, and we’ll hopefully have time to brainstorm a bit about cool apps we could contribute as the local tech community. It should be a lot of fun!

As usual, please RSVP and I hope to see you there!

Directions to the SEDA Building, again courtesy of Fitz.

1. After crossing the Talmadge Bridge, exit at Hutchinson Island/Convention Center.
2. Stay in the right lane but veer left at fork onto Wayne Shackelford Blvd.
3. Make first right turn on Hugh Tracy Blvd.
4. Continue straight and turn left into SEDA Building parking lot.

Since Ron asked so nicely, I’m going to do an introduction to Ruby on Rails for August’s Refresh. The presentation tries not to assume anything about the audience, so it should be suitable for just about any level of experience with programming languages or frameworks (meaning – you don’t have to know anything about programming to get something out of it). Most of the presentation is a live coding demo, which is always a lot of fun (it’s like magic).

If you’re planning on coming, please RSVP again.

Details:

• When: August 18 @ 7PM
• Where: SEDA Board Room (directions to the SEDA building below)
• What: An Introduction to Ruby on Rails… redundant, I know

Directions to the SEDA Building, again courtesy of Fitz.

1. After crossing the Talmadge Bridge, exit at Hutchinson Island/Convention Center.
2. Stay in the right lane but veer left at fork onto Wayne Shackelford Blvd.
3. Make first right turn on Hugh Tracy Blvd.
4. Continue straight and turn left into SEDA Building parking lot.

I hope to see you there!

Oh and one more thing – how many refreshers are on twitter? I am, and I know Dale, Leigh and a few others are. Are you? Post a comment with a link to your twitter accout and I’ll start a list in the blogroll.

Phil Peterman was kind enough to volunteer to present and host the next Refresh meeting!! He’s going to present on Search Engine Optimization and he’s assured me that it will all be kosher, web-friendly, white hat stuff (that works and won’t get you banished to the hinterlands by Google – or ‘the goog’ as we like the call them).

We’re moving to the banquet room at Lady & Sons this time, as we just about ran out of chairs in our tiny conference room. Phil says it can hold 150 people, but it would still be nice if you RSVPed on Upcoming or here in the comments.

And here are the details:

• When: 6/16 @ 7PM
• Where: Lady & Sons
• Topic: Search Engine Optimization

Hope you can make it!

We’ve got thirty votes on the poll and The Social Media Food Chain is far enough in the lead that I’m going to go ahead and close the poll (Sodahead isn’t letting me close the poll, so vote all you want, it’s not changing anything) and say that I’ll be doing a presentation titled The Social Media Food Chain on 5/19 at 7PM here at Music Intelligence Solutions (208 E Broughton St). If you’re planning, thinking about, or just pondering the possibility of coming, please please please RSVP on the Upcoming page so we have some idea of how many people will be invading our office.

I know the title is somewhat vague, and I haven’t really written the presentation yet, but the topic was inspired by a presentation I gave in London in January and something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I don’t plan on it being overly technical, just a look at the social web and how things go from idea to product, how people use them and the ecosystems that sprout up around them. That will probably change a bit as I work on it, but that’s the goal.

So, you don’t need to be a geek or developer for this one. All you need is a healthy curiosity about the web, some familiarity with a social network like facebook, twitter or flickr and be willing to show up!

I don’t have a venue yet, but I figured it would be a good idea to gauge potential attendance before I tried to find a place to hold it. If we have around 20, we can use our conference room. If it’s more, well, I’ll see what I can find.

So, write May 19th @ 7:00PM in your calendars and get ready for some fun! If you could also RSVP on the Upcoming page, that would help out a lot.

I’m also not sure what people are interested in, so I’ve created a little poll so you all can pick. Cool, huh?

update: The poll is closed and we have a winner!