I went to the Providence Geeks Geek Dinner tonight. There were 2 presentations (normally, there’s just 1). The first, and in my opinion the better (if only because it interested me more), was by Geeks co-founder, Jack Templin, regarding RI Nexus. It’s a new organization/website put together in collaboration with the RI Economic Development Corporation to help bring people, organizations, and companies involved with information technology and digital media (ITDM) together to build the ITDM sector in RI. I just registered on the site tonight when I got home and created my profile. It looks very promising, especially to recent college graduates who might want to either move to Providence or elsewhere in RI or stay here after graduation and work in the technology sector. I plan on informing all my student employees about it and urging them to check out the site and register as well, especially the ones who are majoring in engineering or computer science.
The second presentation (not to give too much attention to RI Nexus) was by Traction Software about their wiki/blog combo system. They went into a whole introduction to the company, but the interesting part of their presentation was the demonstration. The software is basically a content management system that brings blogging software together with a wiki to allow for quick and easy editing, linking, posting, etc. Having created this blog (though I did not do a whole lot, or any, PHP customization) and my other site in Drupal (again without any major customization short of installing plugins and themes), it was pretty interesting to me. I do plan on looking into it as it looks like it could be a pretty nifty web editing system.
I just want to thank the Providence Geeks for another great Geek Dinner and great presentations (and RI Nexus for the free pint glass). Check out both RI Nexus and Traction Software.
Jim, thanks much for coming last night and the great coverage. Please do get the word out to the info-tech & digital media folks at Providence College – we’d love to have them.
One small clarification is that RI Nexus is a wholly-owned/operated initiative of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, to which I consult. I, for one, feel very lucky to live in a state that “gets” the potential of our burgeoning community/sector.
Jack