Refresh Denver

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?

Learning about Adobe AIR by Jonathan Snook

24ways is in full effect again this year and Drew was kind enough to ask me to write an article on AIR. Christmas is in the AIR steps you through building a simple desktop application using the HTML environment within AIR. The article could have easily been three times longer with all the stuff I wanted to cover. If you’re interested in AIR, I invite you to check it out.

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.

Article for beginners on how to write a better JavaScript code and be a better programmer…

Let me say it up front before you read the rest of this. This article is for beginners. This past week I decided to get involved with support requests in development forums for the sake of giving back (and it being close to Christmas time). I particularly cruised the Sitepoint JavaScript forum quite a bit and time and time again, I see the same mistakes plastered over code examples. That’s quite alright, people are learning. I made the same mistakes when I first started. Nevertheless there are inevitably an infinite number of things you shouldn’t be doing in JavaScript, but here are most common.

Found at http://www.dustindiaz.com/javascript-no-no/

We will be back at The Hive for another gathering on Monday, December 17! 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 our featured presenter is Mike Hostetler and he will be giving an "Introduction to jQuery with Drupal, and Qcodo" frameworks. Mike Hostetler currently leads the Web and Design team of the jQuery project and he works with Crowd Favorite as a Software Engineer. Read more about him on his blog at http://amountaintop.com/.

If you are a Designer you’ll want to be here to learn how to give your designs a Web 2.0 feel and Developers you’ll want to be here too to learn how to integrate and build a solid stack of frameworks.

Lastly, feel free to blog about Refresh Denver and invite your friends, contacts, and colleagues and help us build the Refresh community! And as always, don’t forget to join our Google Group, and follow Refresh Denver on Twitter for future updates!

PLEASE RSVP for this event on Upcoming

When:

Monday, December 17, 2007
6:00 p.m. – Meet and Greet
6:30 p.m. – Presentation
8:00 p.m. – Social Hour: Join us for pizza and drinks at Protos Pizza just upstairs from The Hive

Where:

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

What:

A jQuery Introduction, with Drupal and Qcodo

Who:

Mike Hostetler is the jQuery webmaster and currently works with Crowd Favorite as a Software Engineer.

Need a jump start on coding a form? Click on over to the Wufoo Form Gallery. Here you’ll find a resource designed for web developers and designers to help get a head start on data collection.

In a series of running your own startup, Read/WriteWeb says:

The aim of many entrepreneurs is to take a business idea and convert it into a professional and functioning business on a low budget. This is typically called “bootstrapping” and it is fraught with potential pitfalls and dangers. But when done well it can really help get a company going fast, professionally and without the founders having to give up much (if any) equity - or bankrupting themselves.

Over the next 5-6 posts I’ll outline the process which I’ve now followed at several corporates and which I’ve honed to work with my own startup, Aroxo. I’ll discuss what skills you’ll need, how to write your requirements, how to source developers and designers, how much to budget, how to agree a development contract, how to manage your vendors, how to plan your release, all the documentation you’ll need, and much more.

More at readwriteweb.com : part I and readwriteweb.com : part II

Interested in exploring new languages, systems, software methodologies? The idea is to pick a book and work through it as a group. Meet at the Google Group ‘Denver Programmer Study Group’.

About a month ago, some of us got together to work through the book PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice by Matt Zandstra. We are now moving on to Agile Development with Rails by Dave Thomas and DHH.

The Venue is experimental and fluid. We have been meeting at a Starbucks, but we plan to experiment with on-line resources: http://programmer-study-group.campfirenow.com

Came across this yesterday and thought it might be useful to share.

Be sure to check out the original article and read the additional comments of other peoples’ suggestions.

Build Your Own Workplace to Go
Posted November 27th, 2007 (2:08pm) by Anne Zelenka

Today 19Marketplace announced its Workplace2go offering, a hosted set of business applications available on a pay-as-you-go basis. The offering includes WebEx Web Office, WebEx Web Conferencing, Microsoft Exchange Email, Blackberry Mobile Service, and more. As I wrote on GigaOM, this may be just the thing for the small business owner who doesn’t want to put together and troubleshoot his or her own (likely cheaper) alternative from Web 2.0 tools.

But what if you do want to build your own workplace to go? What applications would it include? Here’s what I’d use:

* Google Apps for Your Domain for email, calendar, chat, and a web-based office suite
* Mobile email with the Gmail mobile client
* Mozy for backup
* Yugma for web conferencing
* Skype for conference calls
* FreshBooks for invoicing

What tools would make up your “workplace to go”?

So what tools are you using? Any other thoughts?