Refresh Austin

Ruby on Rails has been a popular topic at past meetings, both as a topic and within post-meeting discussions, and while we have had some great coverage we don’t get to dive too deeply into the subject. Well, if you’re interested in learning about Ruby on Rails, here’s your chance to learn from some rock solid professional developers, who are strong supporters of our local tech scene (Austin on Rails is an awesome group). They have set up Rails Bootup, which looks like an amazing opportunity for someone to jump in and learn from the pros.

They’re planning to cover the basics of Ruby on Rails, which could be very useful for designers who work with Rails developers or who have used other frameworks, but want to gain more experience. In addition to all of the knowledge you gain, they’re giving back to the community by donating at least 25% of the profits to the Austin Children’s Shelter.

The event will be held downtown on August 2nd. If you’re interested or want to know more, visit Rails Bootup.

If you attend, I know a lot of us love to hear a recap!

Tags: Austin, Austin on Rails, event, ruby on rails

Refresh Austin is teaming up with Geek Austin and the Austin WordPress Meetup Group for WordPress Fest at Union Park on May 21^st. This is another great opportunity to meet other Web folks here in Austin and have a great time, so c’mon out if you can! People will begin gathering around 6:00, and if past events are any indication, many people will stay into the night, enjoying the roof top deck or the comfortable lounge areas, catching up with old friends and making new ones.

There are entries for the event on Facebook and Upcoming.

Tags: Austin, event, geek austin, happy hour, informal, party

We’ve been talking about South by Southwest 2008 since the end of SXSW 2007 and the big event is finally rolling around once more. Hopefully you’ll join us for the conference and all of the great events. In addition to the listings to the right, there are two events that Austin Refreshers should take special note of:

Drinks with the Early Arrivals

A group of folks from Refresh Austin will be gathering for Pre-Conference Pints Thursday evening at The Gingerman around 6:30 and would love to invite other locals and early arrivals to SXSW Interactive to join us.

While we aren’t able to buy the drinks, we can provide great conversation. The invite is open to all, so if you can, come join us.

The Refresh Lunch on Friday

Join Refreshers from around the world to kick of South-By right! We’re gathering a great group of folks for lunch on Friday before the conference starts, making it easier to (re)connect with people you may know online or from last year. While we each have to cover our own food and drinks, we will have the back half of the pub reserved, so the conversations should be flowing freely.

The Official Refresh Austin Party

The Refresh Austin party at the PhizzPop Design Challenge is less than a week away! If you’re going to SXSW Interactive, make sure to stop by the Blue Room in Maggie Mae’s, which will be the central spot to meet other Refreshers.

Not attending SXSW, but still want to come to the party?

No problem, just register to get in free! We want everyone in Refresh to join us.

Plus…

SXSW is all about the last minute plans and decisions, so don’t be shy if you bump into your fellow Refreshers throughout the conference: say hi and socialize! There’s no reason that you should go to lunch by yourself, or not have someone to hang with at an after-party.

Tags: Austin, event, party, phizzpop, SXSW, sxswi, sxswi2008

Still thinking about why you should join us for the Refresh Austin party at the PhizzPop Design Challenge? Michelle provides a great explanation as to what it is and why you should come:

Whether or not you decided to shell out this year for a SxSW pass, all Refreshers are welcome to attend the Phizzpop Design Challenge Finale on Monday, March 10 at 7 pm at Maggie Mae’s.

What is the PhizzPop Design Challenge?

Over the course of the last few months, Microsoft gathered the best and brightest design firms to build interactive websites to meet certain challenges. For example, the last challenge was to create a web site for a film festival. Bear in mind, these sites did not just present movie times. They allowed festival goers to rate movies, connect on movie choices, upload profiles, etc.

Each team has several sleepless days to create a site to meet their challenge. The teams then present their sites at the Phizzpop event to the crowd and a panel of expert judges. The judges pick which one best accomplishes its goal. I went to the Austin Phizzpop Design Challenge and saw all the film festival sites and they really were incredible, especially given the time frame. It makes you appreciate why the entrants work at the premiere firms in the country. Austin’s winner was Thirteen23, and we will be able to cheer for them in the final.

This year’s final asks the finalists from the major cities to create a website to improve citizenship. I feel we will see a good variation of sites based on this topic, and I am interested to see what they come up with.

What’s Cool About this Event?

1. There is an upstairs lounge dedicated to all things Refresh Austin. In the chaos that is SxSW Interactive, you can meet up with your local and not-so local Refreshers and have a beer.
2. The challenge asks how interactive design can improve citizenship. Rather than complaining about how corporate America and lobbyists are destroying this nation, we can use these cues to improve our lives. Design isn’t just pretty–design can mobilize and motivate people to call for change. It’s nice to be at the forefront of a movement.
3. You don’t have to have a SxSW pass to go. Even if you have one, this is a cool event where you can actually invite your friends who do not have one. Why should all the great ideas be restricted to those who have time
   and resources for SxSW?
4. It will allow you to network and gain ideas from other designers from around the nation. Promote Refresh. Talk about your new ideas or complain about IE 8. Phizzpop is all about design.

Useful Links

• Register for the event if you aren’t attending SXSW
• RSVP on Upcoming (not required, but it we’d like to know you’re coming)
• The competitor list
• The list of judges and the specifics of the challenge

Tags: Austin, event, party, phizzpop, SXSW, sxswi

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:

*****

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

• Michelle Greer asks, Why Do Tech Geeks Want to Punch Zuckerberg in the Face? “With Beacon still in need of a major overhaul and all eyes on him for an IPO date, it looks like Zuckerberg has his hands full with Facebook.” you can see him at SXSW giving this year’s keynote.
• Ryan Joy likes to find his daily paper on the doorstep in the morning. However, that paradigm fails when it’s the electronic version. Check out this PHP/cron job combo that may just bring back the nostalgia of newspaper delivery.
• Andrew DuPont reports great news. Prototype 1.6 officially supports Opera. With it’s lightning fast javascript engine and DOM level 3 support, Opera is finally getting the full support it deserves… from Prototype, at least.
• Whurley posed the question, Who is the best candidate for the open source community?” to the blogosphere, Twittersphere, and Interwebs. Michelle weighs in here as does Four Kitchens. I think we all cringe at the thought that our leaders may understand the Internet as a series of tubes.
• Kevin Koym, with Bootstrap Austin, talks about building business ecosystems in Austin despite a possible recession. He argues that “Austin’s wired technology community has been organizing into … ‘Enterprise Tribes’ helping entrepreneurs build their businesses, recession or not.”
• Boone Putney is excited by the beta release of Microsoft’s HealthVault. Privacy issues aside, Boone sees it as way to “automate a lot of the processes that are notorious originators of error in the medical industry.”
• …and, of course, probably the biggest thing to come out is this week’s Refresh Austin’s SXSWi Party announcement.

That’s it for this week! If I’ve missed anything, post it in the comments.

Tags: Austin, business, Facebook, javascript, Microsoft, party, PHP, SXSW

We’ve hinted about this for a few months, but now it’s official. Refresh Austin will be co-hosting one of the largest parties at South by Southwest Interactive this year.

The great folks behind the PhizzPop Design Challenge have asked us to join them to welcome our fellow web professionals to Austin and cheer on the regional winners of the competition as they present their solutions to the problem entitled “Citizenship in the 21st Century”. These teams work hard, producing some truly impressive results, and we’ll have a chance to see the best compete for the big prize.

Join us at Maggie Mae’s on Monday, March 10th at 7:00 PM to party with your fellow geeks, knock back some free drinks, munch on some snacks and geek out. This is a chance for Refresh Austin to give back to the tech community by throwing a kickass party.

Oh, and it’s not just free drinks, cool technology and socializing. Thousands of dollars in prizes will be raffled off, and of course there will be an opportunity or two to add a t-shirt to your wardrobe!

We’ll post more information to this site the list very soon, but now would be a great time to add the event to your Upcoming calendar and learn more about Microsoft’s PhizzPop Design Challenge.

We want this to be party people talk about for years to come, but to do that, we need people to talk about it before it happens. If you know folks coming to SXSW, please pass them the Upcoming invite and help spread the word!

Got a blog? Of course you do! A quick post about the event between now and South-by would be much appreciated!

Many thanks to Lynn from GeekAustin for making the connections that have lead to this great opportunity!

Tags: Austin, event, party, SXSW, sxswi

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

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

Tags: Austin, dining, SXSW, sxswi