Refresh Austin

Refresh Austin has a wealth of tools available for its members, some of which you may not know about:

Upcoming

Our event calendar is published on Upcoming, which makes it easy for us to get the word out and makes it easy for you to learn about our meetings and other interesting events in the Austin Web community.

Add to the Calendar

It’s easy for you to add to the calendar if you know of a great party or networking opportunity in the Austin area. To do that, simply click the “Join this Group” button on our Group page (assuming you have an account and are logged in), then any time you see a great Web or geek related event that you want to add to our calendar, click the “Send to Group” link at the bottom of the right column, choosing Refresh Austin from the drop-down menu that appears.

Staying up to Date

Upcoming provides some great capabilities for keeping up with all of our happenings around town in the form of a RSS feeds, iCal and gCal subscriptions and the ability to map the events

LinkedIn

As a group of Web professionals, we’re focused on making it easy to connect with each other, so we have a group set up on LinkedIn, making it easier for you to connect with people you’ve met via Refresh.

Follow this link to join. LinkedIn requires that all members of groups are approved, so we’ll do our best to keep on top of approvals. We compare the requests to our membership list (the Google Group), so if you aren’t signed up via Google Groups, or you have a different e-mail address for LinkedIn, let us know.

Flickr

Have you snapped some shots of a Refresh gathering, or perhaps of some of your fellow Refreshers around town? If so, please add them to our gallery. We would love to add more photos into the rotation at the top of the site design, so if you have one that you think would be a good match, upload it and drop us a line.

Twitter

If you use Twitter, make sure that you follow RefreshAustin for notifications of interesting events (this is great for last minutes informal meet ups) as well as other information that may not make the site or the mailing list.

Google Groups

At the center of it all is our group on Google, which powers the mailing list. If you haven’t joined, please do, as that provides the timeliest information around informal events in addition to providing a great place to ask questions and network.

What Else Should We Do?

We’re always interested in finding new and better ways to network amongst ourselves, spread the word to others and congregate for caffeine and/or alcohol, so if you have some ideas as to other services we could use, capabilities that we could add to the site or general practices we should follow, add a comment to this entry.

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Nobody knows Austin better than the locals. Here are some tips from Refresh Austin to help you enjoy our fair city to the fullest.


WiFi

To the delight of geeks hailing from accross the world, Austin is pretty much saturated with free wireless Internet. The convention center offers free wifi so you’ll be able to live-blog and check out what’s going on outside of the conference walls. Just know that the network can become bogged down at points during the conference.

Check out the Austin Wireless City Project’s website or visit any of the following local establishments:

  • Little City coffee house - 916 Congress Ave
  • The Hideout Coffee bar & Theatre - 617 Congress Ave
  • Jo’s Coffee - 242 W. 2nd St. and 1300 S. Congress Ave

Getting Around Town

Luckily, Austin has a relatively easy, grid-based downtown (the same cannot be said for the rest of the city though) and you’ll be visiting places which are all nearby for the most part. You should be able to walk, catch a ‘Dillo, or taxicab easily. The ‘Dillos are free and serve downtown, UT, and South Congress, among other destinations. There’s also a Downtown Austin website.

  • Capital Metro - 512.474.1200
  • Google Transit - Google maps plus public transit!!!
  • Yellow Cab - 512.452.9999
  • Lonestar Cab - 512.836.4900

Dining

  • Casino El Camino - Best burgers in town? Almost definitely. - 517 E. 6th (2 blocks from the convention center)
  • Torchy’s Damn Good Tacos - Fan Site - Locations on South First, West 6th, and East 6th (next to Casino el Camino)

Nightlife & Libations

  • The Gingerman -  With around 150 beers on tap, you should be able to find a few you like

What would you recommend to out-of-towners visiting Austin for SXSW? Add your suggestions for dining, activities, and night-life in the comments below.

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