Refresh Denver

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?

Refresh Denver is considering moving it’s meetings to a Wednesday or Thursday night. Which to you prefer?

If you didn’t receive an e-mail vote-invite from vosnap please mark your choice at votemonkey.

Update: As of Wednesday, Nov. 28th @ 20:45 MST, we have 10 votes for Wednesday and 9 for Thursday — looks like it will be a close one. Also, the Vosnap poll will close in a couple hours but the VoteMonkey will remain open for a week.

Update: As of Thursday, Nov. 29th @ 9:15 MST, Vosnap has been closed with votes totaling at Wednesday = 8 and Thursday = 5. As for VoteMonkey votes are currently at Wednesday = 2 and Thursday = 4. Thus far the grand total is at Wednesday = 10 and Thursday = 9. If you haven’t voted yet please do so at VoteMoneky — this will be avaliable for only a few more days.

Update: As of Monday, Dec. 5th @ 13:15 MST, Vosnap has been closed with votes totaling at Wednesday = 8 and Thursday = 5. As for VoteMonkey votes are currently at Wednesday = 8 and Thursday = 5. Thus far the grand total is at Wednesday = 14 and Thursday = 10. If you haven’t voted yet please do so at VoteMoneky — this will be avaliable for only a few more days.

Save the Date!

Our next meeting/gathering has been scheduled.

When:
Monday, December 17th, 2007 @ 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM.

Where:
The Hive
2401 15th Street
Denver, Colorado 80202

Who/What:
Mike Hostetler from Crowd Favorite, and team member of jQuery, will be introducing and explaining the how’s and what’s of the fastest growing JavaScript Library jQuery.

Introduction

RJ Owen brought up an interesting point concerning my meeting notes from the Adobe AIR Presentation. It deals with the fact that I wasn’t paying attention to the Google Group site.

The Problem

The potential problem that I see is that there is no single point of origin for this group. I believe that it is important to not introduce confusion when a group like this is just starting to grow. Having multiple web sites all representing some aspect of “Refresh Denver” might initially be a bad thing.

A Possible Solution

My suggestion is to keep all information related to the group centralized (if possible). WordPress, which is what powers this site, allows for categorization and tagging of information. If there is too much information on this site then people can easily tune in to particular tags or categories that they are most interested in and tune out the rest.

Comments/Suggestions

These are my initial thoughts. I’d rather not have multiple links but rather one site that I can be easily searched and customized. What does everyone else feel about this?

I’ve uploaded November’s presentation to SlideShare.

It’s been discussed a few times in the past that the group should work on something as a team.

So far there is a few already working on a collaborative talent / job board project which someday will live at http://work.refreshdenver.org/.

But here are some other ideas:

• A map mash-up with members’ locations (e.g., work and home) relative to each other and even maybe local coffee shops — allowing members to get together on a more frequent and regular basis
• A gallery section to showcase recent projects done by members
• Facebook, MySpace, etc. profiles

What’s your suggestion?

I’ve updated the site with a new member’s page which displays the information entered on the member’s profile page. If you haven’t already, add your information by first registering and then follow the instructions in the confirmation e-mail.

I’ve also created a new account on SlideShare to upload presentations from our meetings. Feel free to contribute slides of your own or slides from other presentations you’ve seen. I’ve added some slides from other people to get us started.

Lastly, I’m looking for other great online resources the group could benefit from using or that would help get the word out. Have any suggestions?

We are continuing to grow! Even with the Bronco’s hosting Monday Night Football, we were able to fill the Hive’s conference room with 20 people - our best turnout to date. Great to see people from Colorado Springs, Boulder, and Ft. Collins making the trip!

Big thanks to Greg Owen from Effective UI for leading our topic on the Adobe® Integrated Runtime (AIR™) and their eBay desktop application. Definitely check out the eBay app - great work from a local Denver group.

Several other AIR apps were shown or mentioned in the presentation as well:

• Buzzword: slick word processing application
• MapMyPix: GPS + digital photos = a cool photo and map record of your trip
• Kuler: desktop color palette tool for inspiration
• Snitter: great Twitter client from @snookca for your desktop
  (Thanks to @danrubin for the live plug during the presentation!)

Stay tuned for our December meet-up details with Mike Hostetler will feature jquery!

We will be back at the Hive Coop (directions) for the meetup on Monday, November 19! Meet and greet starts at 6pm, presentation starts at 6:30pm.

Invite your friends, contacts, and colleagues and help us build the Refresh community!

Greg Owen will be the featured presenter talking on the Adobe® AIR™ framework.

As always, join our Google Group, and follow Refresh Denver on Twitter for future updates!

RSVP November Refresh Meeting on Upcoming.org

I’ve posted a new job in our Google Group for a Web Content Developer (Englewood, CO)