Refresh Houston Meeting Recap

March 29th, 2006

The Refresh Houston meeting went very well last night. We had 20 people show up (not bad for our first official meeting). Thanks everyone who managed to fight through the Houston traffic to make it. I am very excited about the energy and enthusiasm that everyone has for the Web and the Refresh idea. Here is a recap of the meeting…

Meet and greet - It was great to meet so many great web professionals and enthusiasts from the Houston area.
SXSW Review – Those of us who spoke at or attended SXSW did a recap of the events, talked about how the festival could be improved next year. Looks like the Microformats and DOM panels were extremely popular. Turns out a lot of people also liked our panel on Design and Social Responsibility.
BarCamp Houston – Erica and Marc talked about Barcamp Houston (May 20th, tentatively at the Houston Technology Center) and somehow got me to agree to be a co-host.
AIR Houston – We talked about the upcoming AIR Houston web development competition and how to get involved.

New ideas and thoughts:

Ruby on Rails User Group – Turns out there is a new Ruby on Rails User Group in Houston. Thanks for the info Keith.
Refresh Peer Reviews – We had an idea of doing a monthly peer review/training session to review work from the past month, make suggestion or teach each other techniques to improve our results.
Group Reboot Meeting (before May 1st) – Seems there were a lot of people there planning on participating in the Spring 2006 CSS Reboot. Guess that means I REALLY need to get started on my redesign. Maybe I can get Bryan to critique some of my ideas when I am in San Francisco next week.
Weekly Lunch and Learn – Want to get together to talk Rails, AJAX, ASP.NET 2.0 or whatever on a weekly basis?

Comments for “Refresh Houston Meeting Recap”

Colin

March 29th, 2006

Hey it was nice meeting you last night. Let me know if you guys decide to do the weekly lunch and learn, sounds interesting.

Colin

Justin Perkins

March 29th, 2006

The peer reviews idea is a good one, thanks.

Since we have some many different people involved with refresh, each review session could focus on a certain topic, like usability, accessibility, standards, semantic markup, design, etc… That would be a great learning experience.

Glad your first official meeting went well, where did you end up meeting? City library?

Kelsey Ruger

March 29th, 2006

No we met a a suishi bar named 713. Worked out pretty well. Everyone got to eat, get to know each other and chat about SXSW. The next meeting will probably be at the Houston Technology Center or the library. Houston is so spread out we have to find a place that is relatively central to everyone.

Erica

March 31st, 2006

Hey I am definitely up for the weekly Lunch & Learn! We should pick a consistent day each week and rotate locations. I would prefer Mondays or Wednesdays. Might I suggest Cafe Artiste for the first meeting? I’ll set up a group on Upcoming.org (Refresh Houston Lunch & Learn), and if there is any interest we can schedule things that way ;)

Katie

April 4th, 2006

Bummed I had to miss the meeting (stuck in lab at university, fun) - sounded like it was a great success. Will definitely catch you guys next time! The Lunch and Learn idea sounds really cool.