Refresh Austin

We outgrew the back room at Texpresso, and really wanted a central location, and we’ve found it. Located on 6th and Brazos, Buffalo Billiards has a large upstairs room with a stage, a projector, and a screen. The staff have been extraordinarily welcoming — they’re giving us a huge discount and are accommodating a custom WiFi setup for us.

Tuesdays also happen to have happy hour all day, half-priced appetizers, and $1 off select drafts, well drinks, and house wine. Show up early and grab some food and drink, and then head upstairs to the meeting. Afterwards, you can continue the conversation over a game of pool, darts, or shuffleboard.

Street parking downtown is free after 5:30, and there are two $5 parking garages within a one-block walking distance — one on 7th between Brazos and San Jacinto, and one on Brazos just north of 7th.

Tags: meeting, venue

I’m so thrilled to tell everyone about our new space! Please do check in on the blog - we’ll be actively soliciting input on the space as we progress. We sent the following press release out:

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You’ve been asking — Is LaunchPad Coworking real? Where is it located? How can I find it? When can I start coworking in Austin already?

We are more than a little happy to announce that after months of searching and planning, we have inked a lease, and it’s in the perfect location.

(more…)

Tags: Austin, coworking, launchpad coworking

Syncopated Systems, an Austin-based computer engineering firm, this week announced the creation and sponsorship of a new annual award for the best W3C-compliant Web site developers in the greater Austin area.

By offering the Greater Austin Web Developer of the Year (”GAWDY”) award, Syncopated seeks to increase awareness of and compliance with industrial standards while promoting friendly competition among local Web site developers.

This competition will greatly also benefit potential clients by honoring those developers who maximize the reach of Web-based advertising by creating clean markup, which today comprise less than 10% of commercial developers.

The first annual award is tentatively scheduled to be given in late June 2008, pending the nomination of sufficient qualified candidates.

For full rules and to make nominations, see http://www.oddgods.com/webawards.

Tags: Austin, awards, design, development, markup, W3C, web development

Welcome to the New Web site for Refresh Austin!

Along with the visual changes, there are many fresh features to help us move forward as we enter our third year. The site serves as the hub of our activities, unifying the different pieces of Refresh Austin. It’s easier than ever to join in, whether it’s by posting a new entry on this site, jumping into a discussion, adding photos to the Flickr group or setting up an event on Upcoming. Really busy, but want to stay up to date? Subscribe to the feed!

Participation

All members are encouraged to contribute to the site directly, extending our discussions beyond our meetings and mailing lists. Whether you want to post a follow-up to a meeting discussion, spread the word about a useful tool or application, post a job opportunity or encourage folks to meet you for a beer - the site is open to you.

How to Contribute

First, you need to register as a new member of the site. All new members start out as Contributors, which means that you can create a new post and edit any posts you’ve previously written, but the posts have to be approved before they are published. If you have come to a meeting, or have been active on the list you will be promoted to an Author, allowing you to publish without waiting for a review. We’ll try to stay on top of registrations, but feel free to drop us a line if you need to publish something quickly and are waiting on the account change!

This is a new set up for us, but we hope that it will allow everyone in the group to participate while holding the spammers at bay.

A Note About Posting Job Opportunities

Refresh Austin is a group for Web Professionals as such we encourage our members to share job openings. In order to post a job opening, we ask that you have participated in the group, either by attending a meeting or at the very least by introducing yourself on the mailing list.

Recruiters: This is not a venue for you to post jobs - this site and the mailing list are for our members.

Questions, Suggestions or General Feedback

This is a fresh start, as such we want to hear what you think! You can add a comment below, send your thoughts via the contact page or respond on the mailing list - we’ll do our best to add them to the mix!

Tags: News, the site