Local Technology Events

January 15th, 2008

So in an effort to get out the office (and house) a bit more and do real life networking instead of that phenomena known as “social networking” in the digital world I have been attending more local events.

It started with an informal twitter meetup lunch at the Sonoran Brew House. It was a great intimate meeting with about 15 tweeters. I got to meet lots of new people and have good dialog with old friends. Arizona’s Premier Business Photography company was on hand to capture the event.

I missed the Phoenix Refresh meeting, because I was celebrating my wife’s birthday (and Elivs’ too). Erica Lucci has a recap.

The next day I got a word that the AZ Groups tech lunches were opening an south east location. So several of us stopped by and checked out the action at a packed Chipotle’s It was nice to meet several people from the .NET world and hear about what is new and exciting on the other side. Lots of curious questions about ruby and rails.

That Thursday was Social Media Club. This was a bit of a drive for me and I had very limited time because had kids to drop off and pickup. This was a whole new crowd of people with a very different feel. The event was held in the offices of Jobing.com and featured Jody Gnant. I learned a lot about U stream and lifecasting in general. I started a Club Integrum stream to host our Thursday Dance Parties.

I rounded out the week with an unscheduled visit to TweetupAZ. I didn’t plan on attending because of my schedule but it worked out perfect to stop by for an hour on the way back to theqc. This event was huge (over 50 people) and had tons of great conversation. It was very non technical but very social. Good times.

I missed the Ruby AZ meeting yesterday, but will be attending the Phoenix Rails meeting today. Then tomorrow it’s off to Chicago, IL for the SEED Conference.

Add to this 3 or 4 great technical lunches that have been fundamental in bouncing a new idea and you have a recipe for a great month already, but of course Arizona is technologically dead and there is no community here. ; )