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!

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.

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.

Remember, this Tuesday (7/21) at 7PM, in the SEDA Board Room, we’re having our July meeting! I just got an e-mail from Janna and the title of this month’s presentation is: You don’t have to be called DESIGNER to think & act like one!!

See the previous post for all the gory details, and I hope to see you there!

Update: And here are the slides from July’s meeting. Thanks to Susan and Janna for presenting!!

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!

Hi there.  My name is Kevin Lawver and I’m fairly new to Savannah.  I’ve lived on the web for almost fifteen years now and been building web sites and applications for over a decade.  I love the web.

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)!