Refresh Denver

Refresh Denver is proud to announce another great pair of presentations for this week’s meetup on Wednesday, July 16th at 6pm at Forest Room 5.

First up will be Kristopher Baxter from Local Matters covering JavaScript frameworks. Kristopher has experience with jQuery, Dojo, MooTools, and YUI as well homegrown stuff and emerging/future frameworks such as SproutCore and Objective-J.  His presentation will look at the current major players and touch on the future of frameworks.

The second half of our double header will be Joe Hildebrand of Jabber.  Founded in 2000, Jabber, Inc. is a leading provider of commercial real-time presence and messaging solutions.  Joe will be discussing how to add interactivity to your website with JabberWerx AJAX.

Upcoming Event Details: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/760016/

Help us spread the word by telling your friends coworkers and through your blogs and social networks!

Quick note!  We will be back at Forest Room 5 for Refresh Denver on Wednesday, July 16.  We are confirming the topics/speakers right now, but we wanted everyone to be able to get it on their calendars!

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/760016/

Double speaker feature! Two speakers doing short presentations this month.

First off, Josh Pigford of Sabotage Media (http://sabotagemedia.com/) will be talking about the TrackThePack (http://trackthepack.com/) web application.

Alex King of Crowd Favorite (http://crowdfavorite.com) will talk about the new Addictomatic (http://addictomatic.com/) application.

Join us and spread the word!

RSVP at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/760014/.

Denver-based Brightkite (www.brightkite.com) will be the featured presenters at the May meeting of Refresh Denver. The location-based social networking community allows you to see where your friends are and what they are up to, meet people around you, and see who else frequents your favorite places.

Refresh Denver is also changing venues to Forest Room 5 - just across 15th street from REI in the Highlands, this cool little spot has a great back room with a projector and plenty of open space. Plus, access to great appetizers, drinks, and dinner - and free street parking!

RSVP at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/591906/ and tell your friends!

Hello All,

We were unable to locate a venue for this month’s meeting and with great regret we’ll need to cancel tomorrow’s meeting.

Also, it looks like we no longer have a sponsor at the Hive and thus we won’t be able to use this space anytime soon for future meetings. Ultimately, we need a new venue!

Thus we need your recommendations for locations. Locations that can hold 30+ people, allow for our speakers to be heard without difficulty, and have the ability to project the speaker’s presentation onto the wall (if they have one). Feel free to make suggestions in the comments below.

Okay, all suggested locations are booked (minus Julie’s home); so we’ll be back at The Hive for another gathering on Wednesday, January 16! Come join us for an eventful night. Meet and greet starts at 6pm, presentation starts at 6:30pm, and there will be a post-meeting/social gathering at 8pm.

This month will be presenting a "Web Business Round Table Discussion With A Panel of Web Business Owners." Speakers, include Alex King from Crowd Favorite, SuzAnn Brown and Heather Morgan from Launchpad Interactive, and Brian Warren from Method Arts.

Don’t forget to blog about Refresh Denver and invite your friends, contacts, and colleagues and help us build the Refresh community!

When:

Wednesday, January 16, 2007
6:00 p.m. – Meet and Greet
6:30 p.m. – Presentation
8:00 p.m. – Social Hour

Where:

The Hive
Suite 30
2401 15th Street
Denver, Colorado 80202

Hello Refreshers,

We just wanted to let you know that we are having problems finding a location that will hold 30+ people for our next gathering — which is suppose to meet this coming Wednesday night. Unfortunately, if we’re unable to find a location we’ll have to cancel this months meeting and hope some place will present itself for next months meeting as well as future meetings.

Anyway, is there anybody out there willing to step forward and help make this happen? Can you find us a venue?

Changes

We’ve been working hard to improve our Refresh Chapter. We’ve grown faster then we could have ever imagined — who says the web scene isn’t here? Anyway, here is a break down of what’s to come.

Moving Meetings

On the request of many attendees we’ll be moving our meetings to Wednesday nights but still meeting on every third week so as not to interfere with other area gatherings (e.g., The Denver Web Design & Program Meetup Group, The Colorado AIGA Group, the Boulder Creative Commons Meetup Group, Denver Drupal User Group, and the Colorado Linux Users and Enthusiasts Group to name a few).

New CMS

Also as a result of many requests we’ll be changing the web site’s platform. We’ll be moving away from WordPress and on to Expression Engine with the addition of the Forum Module. Because our group has many needs we felt that it was appropriate to move to a Content Management Systems (CMS) with a separate members area. This also allows us to "re-group" and bring more of the elements we’ve been using (e.g., Google Groups, Upcoming, etc.) under one roof to simplify things a bit.

New Format

We are also working hard to bring you speakers on many relevant topics — all of which will fall under three persistent themes, Web Design, Web Development, and Web Business. We hope to get to a point where we can even have a track running for each theme each month.

In January

Starting in January, we’ll have a Web Business Round Table with guest speakers where each person, as a requirement, currently runs and operates a successful web business. So far the panel will include Alex King from Crowd Favorite, SuzAnn Brown and Heather Morgan from Launchpad Interactive, and Brian Warren from Method Arts.

Contests

We also want to hold a few design contests. One for our logo, one for our web site, one for a few web badges (you know the little banners at the bottom of web pages) and one for a few web banners, so members can proudly display and promote Refresh Denver.

Project

We will need a way to allow all our members to submit their designs for the contests above as well as vote for each category. Have an idea on how to accomplish this?

Feedback

And as always, please provide your feedback (here in the comments or via the contact form) and participate wherever you can online and off.

Help

Lastly, we would like some help in the following positions, if you are interested in filling one of these position or just assist please get in touch with us:

• Meeting Coordinator
  • Post/Send meeting announcements.
  • Communicate/Share meeting information online through blogs, social networks, etc.
  • Locate and secure suitable locations for our meetings.
  • Arrive early and stay late for setup/tear-down (e.g., have projector, chairs, sign-in sheet, name tags, food, drinks, etc. setup before and torn-down after each meeting).
  • Conduct meetings (e.g., meet and greet, start meetings with introduction announcements, end meetings with closing announcements, etc.)
  • Work with Speaker Coordinator and/or Sponsor Coordinator
• Speaker Coordinator
  • Schedule meeting speakers.
  • Act as the primary point of contact for the speaker.
  • Introduce speakers.
  • Take notes of presentation and post these as well as speaker’s slides on website.
• Special Events Coordinator
  • Make arrangements for events other than meetings, such as Startup Weekend, BarCamp, Jelly, and other simple social gatherings such as meeting for pizza, beer, web discussion, or whatever.
• Sponsor Coordinator
  • Locate and schedule meeting sponsors (e.g., for food, drink, door-prizes, etc.).
  • Work with Meeting Coordinator for meeting locations.
  • Work with Webmaster and Newsletter Manager to display sponsors’ logos and links.
• Newsletter/Blog Manager (a.k.a., a copy writer)
  • Write and post content on a regular basis to the blog.
  • Create and send out monthly newsletter.
  • Manage newsletter membership.
  • Work with other roles to communicate information for and about the group.

Feedback

And as always, please provide your feedback (here in the comments or via the contact form) and participate wherever you can online and off.

We have confirmed our topic and speaker for the November 19, 2007 Refresh Denver Meeting. Greg Owen will present on the Adobe® AIR™ framework on November 19. Greg is a developer for the Denver-based firm EffectiveUI, which won multiple awards last month at Adobe MAX, including the People’s Choice Award, for their eBay Desktop application.

Greg will be discussing AIR and the development of the eBay Desktop application. We also plan to showcase some other AIR applications in use today.

UPDATED LOCATION:We will be back at the Hive Coop (directions) for the November meeting! Stay tuned to this site, our Google Group, and follow Refresh Denver on Twitter for updates!

November Refresh Meeting on Upcoming.org