Refresh Austin

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

• Lots of folks, including many Austin Refreshers, came out for the SXSW Mixer at Mohawk. Short recap here.
• On Tuesday, Grant Hutchins led a presentation titled “Grids in Depth” and David Humphreys led an Introduction to Rails and shared his 10 favorite things about the framework at our February Refresh Austin Meeting. Excellent presentations from both, as well as a great turnout!
• Julie Gomoll finally answered the questions, “When can we start coworking in Austin already?” Turns out we can start coworking in downtown Austin on July 1st. Launchpad Coworking’s space will be located at 800 Brazos Street. Be sure to head over to the Launchpad site to learn more!
• Justin Perkins has announced that he has a new site coming in a week. Or two. His site always takes a creative approach to blogging/bookmarking/lifestreaming/whatever, so it’s exciting to see what’s next.
• On a serious note, Alex Jones takes Pixish to task for fomenting an environment where “clients will view the talent pool as relatively equal, opting for a crap shoot instead of finding the right match for their needs”. As Alex notes in his blog post, this constitutes spec-work and should be guarded against. Derek Powazek did take the time to respond to some of the issues brought up, but only time will tell on this one. Many creatives in in the industry remain unconvinced.
• Christian Watson takes us on a whimisical Journey Through Web Design & Usability Domain Names. Sadly, it appears that the majority of semantically named web/dev/design domains are just parked.
• Do you googlebate? Ryan Joy sure does.
• GeekAustin announced that their May happy hour would be a special Wordpress edition. RSVP here if you enjoy socializing with geeks in a libacious environments.

That’s it for this week, folks!

Tags: coworking, design, geek austin, happy hour, meeting, ruby on rails, SXSW, sxswi

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

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

• With SXSWi just around the corner, Sheila Scarborough discusses the lure of conference-hopping as well as the paradoxical desire to live-blog, tweet, et al. during the speaking sessions. Interestingly, it seems that we spend so much time cultivating our online connections that we fail to take a break even when around those connections in person! Be sure to say ‘hi!’ and put on a good face when you run into Sheila during the 2008 conference circuit.
• Alex Jones, Marla Erwin, Glenda Sims, and other Refreshers attended the 2008 AIR Interactive kickoff and enjoyed pints at Sholz Garten.
• Alex also “shed some light as to why some of your favorite products and services” are designed the way they are.
• Paul Menard is going to WordCamp 2008 Dallas (March 29-30). Word on the street is that he might be willing to vanpool to the event.
• Glenda Sims wrote about the wonderful Pachyderm project, useful to curators and educators looking to publish rich media learning objects. She describes it as “as a tool to help turn visitors into part of the creative process, giving them the keys to unlock a new interpretation that has the potential to transform the work as well as themselves.”

That’s all I’ve got for this week, folks! Of course there could be a lot more posted, but you’ll have to read our group archives and twitter stream to get it all.

Don’t forget about next week’s SXSW Mixer @ Mohawk on February, 11th. and our power-packed February meeting with presentations on Grids and RoR.

Tags: AIR, Pachyderm, SXSW, sxswi, wordcamp

For those unable to attend South by Southwest Interactive, here’s a chance to hear what was good. For those who were there, here’s a chance to hear about panels you may have missed.

Anyone who went to SXSW is encouraged to jump into this one! The format is straightforward, each person will answer:

1. What were your three favorite panels and why?
2. What is one thing that you took from SXSW and implemented?

Tags: event, meeting, sxswi