I think the sponsorship stuff worked out really well (y’all really like your beer), so if someone wants to sponsor June’s Refresh, just let me know.

To help spur your imagination, I’ve created a poll with some ideas. Vote, volunteer and then show up!

And if that’s not enough, here are a bunch of links to keep you busy:

• Microformats
  • Big Presentation I Gave on Microformats
  • Another one on microformats from way back in 2005
  • The hCard Creator
• Google’s Webmaster Tools
• Building Findable Web Sites – This is the book Dale mentioned.
• The blog post Jim mentioned – Fred Wilson on Social Search – I can say that Ficly gets more traffic from twitter than from Google.

Thanks for coming, everybody. The turnout was great, and I’m really looking forward to next month’s meeting!

And even though I said it last night, here’s the general schedule for the next couple of months:

• July 21st – Janna DeVylder and Susan Isaacs will be doing something design-related
• August 18th – I’ll be presenting my Intro to Ruby on Rails

If anyone wants to go ahead and volunteer for September, that would be swell, but we don’t really need to figure that out until August. Thanks again to Phil for presenting! He did a great job, and I had a great time.

So, what’s this Refresh thing all about?  Refresh is about sharing knowledge – about all aspects of working on the web.  I’m a developer, so I’m most interested in web development, but Refresh can be about anything.

The basic premise is: people get together once a month, someone volunteers (preferably before we all get together) to present on something they’re passionate about for anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and then everyone goes out and gets food and/or beverages.  It’s more than just a networking event.  The goal is to grow the skills and knowledge of everyone in the community so we can all build better stuff, get to know each other and make Savannah a cooler place to work on the web.

There are Refresh groups all over the world, and I’d love it if we could get one going in Savannah.  Since I’m fairly new here, I’m not sure what the good venues are or how to get the word out.  I’m thinking we should have our first meeting at the end of May, and I’ll gladly volunteer to give the presentation… probably on The Social Networking Food Chain (I still need to write it, but I can raid some of my other presentations).

I’ll be creating an event on Upcoming in the very near future.  If you have ideas on a venue (preferably downtown near food and/or beverage facilities and with a projector and internet access), please post a comment or e-mail me (kevin at lawver.net)!