Man, what ever happened to RefreshBCS? Didn’t they use to hold semi-regular events and bring in speakers from all parts of the web spectrum?
Well, to answer all those questions, yeah, I got real busy with all kinds of projects — Rock The Republic, Hashtags, BIL, etc.

All that said, I’d like to invite everyone, yes EVERYONE up to the Creative Space for a community networking event. Who does that entail? Developers, designers, writers, marketing folk… even MySpace Template developers. We’re hoping to pack the place in and get everyone back together and start being more active. I’ve missed seeing everyone week to week. So here’s the low down:

When: Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 @ 7PM
Where: The Creative Space – Above Square One Bistro
Who: You and everyone cool, no pets
Why: Because we’ve got all day Thursday to watch Hulu. Seriously?
What: Intellectual stimulating conversations, booze, wine, music…

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this event is a BYOB. I know it would be a lot cooler if we had a bunch of free alcohol, but that’s life. Grab a sixer or a bottle of wine, or a handle of Seagrams Seven and head on up. Ya know what… even if you have a 1/2 bottle of McCormick’s vodka, go ahead and bring that too, cheapskate.

I guess RSVP on the Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=433057800573

I’m really excited about our September RefreshBCS Speaker!

We’re hosting Gary Hoover, a lifelong learner and entrepreneur, best known for Hoovers.com. This should be a great talk, and I highly suggest sticking around afterward to have a conversation with Gary.

Date: Wednesday, September 9th, 7pm
Location: Village Cafe in Downtown Bryan
Register on Facebook

Here’s a little more about Gary:

Gary Hoover began his entrepreneurial journey at an early age. His question about enterprises was, “What separates the losers from the winners?”  He began subscribing to Fortune Magazine at the age of 12, and has acquired most of the issues back to 1930.

As part of his education, he studied economics at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and two other Nobel Prize winners, served as a securities analyst for Citibank on Wall Street, worked as a buyer for Federated Department Stores, and headed up acquisitions and strategic planning for the giant May Department Stores Company.

At the age of 30, after he finally took the plunge and created pioneering book superstore BOOKSTOP, which helped change the nature of book shopping in America.  This company was sold to Barnes & Noble for $41.5 million cash when it was 7 years old, and became a cornerstone for their industry-dominating superstore chain.

After he and his partners sold BOOKSTOP, Gary returned to his first love of understanding businesses, and began the company that became Hoover’s, the world’s largest Internet-based provider of information about enterprises.  Hoovers.com covers over 40,000 companies around the world.  In July of 1999, Hoover’s went public and in March of 2003, the company was purchased by Dun & Bradstreet for $117 million.  Like BOOKSTOP, Hoover’s has changed the way we do things and today employs over 300 people.

He continues to keep over 100 ideas for new businesses on his list.

Gary lives in Austin, Texas, with his 50,000-book library.  He has consulted, spoken to conferences, and worked to encourage entrepreneurial thinking on every continent and in every industry, for profit and not for profit.  He has also supported the University of Chicago.  In 2009 he launched www.hooversworld.com, a blog which will include reviews of books, ideas, and places from Gary’s iconoclastic angle.

Refreshers!

After a few months of taking some time off to plan other events, it’s about time we get together and explore new ideas. I’ve managed to wrangle in two speakers that will be speaking to the group about venture capital, entrepreneurship, and how to get our ideas out of our heads and into the marketplace.

Kevin Koym (@kkoym) and Jonas Lamis (@jonaslamis) run a multi-site incubator in Austin, TX named TechRanch. They have taken numerous companies under their wing, including Piryx, IPX, OneSpot, begreeted, Zehicle, Notice Technologies, OpenSesa.me, and many others.

More info: http://techranchaustin.com/

Pre-seed and seed stage companies that can change the world.

Tech Ranch Austin is a community of vibrant tech start-ups surrounded by the people, processes and materials needed to drive business success.

General Partners

Kevin Koym is Founder and CEO of Enterprise Teaming LLC, an Austin business incubator. Kevin is also co-founder of Bootstrap Austin, a 600+ member entrepreneur community.

Jonas Lamis is Founder and CEO of SciVestor Corporation, an Austin based technology research and advisory firm. He has previously held leadership roles at several VC backed technology companies.

Date/Time/Location:
Wednesday, March 25th @ 6:30PM
Location: Astin Mansion

In a lot of ways, we will be showcasing our local talent to these guys as well as finding out what they have to offer. It’s important that we, as a community, show up and represent well.

It’s been almost two years since that pivotal night when Aaron, Roby, Bill, Ryan and I were huddled around a table in Houston digging through a mound of chicken wings when we decided that we would stop bashing our local area for it’s lack of community. We threw caution to the wind, payed attention to the chip on our shoulders and dug our heels in.

Two months later we had native Houstonian Erica O’Grady come and speak to a surprising group of 35 or so folks at the very first RefreshBCS. Honestly, we figured we may be able to get a dozen folks to show up with half attending just to show support. But that was not the case. They showed up because they were genuinely interested in a creative/web community.

It became vital to promote our fledgling community and stick to it. Every month to be bigger than the previous with new faces. Each member of the community saw that if we all worked together and each did our part we could do something extraordinary.

As time went by, we had more and more folks show up and contribute. Some presented to the group, and other times put their feet to the ground and rallied those not aware.

By January 2008, nearly a year after the first RefreshBCS, we decided to call in all of our support from around the state and host BarCampTexas. Flyers, posters, emails, facebook notifications were sent out by the dozens hyping the event. We had well over two-hundred people attend from around the state and local area. We didn’t just represent BCS, we blew people away with the talent and conduct we showcased at our event. BarCampTexas was Bryan/College Stations big splash onto the Texas stage.

Over the past year, we have grown and sought after more community support. We’ve collectively grown as a community. This past weekend, the Bryan/College Station community hosted DesignCamp – the first Design-centric “BarCamp” in the world.

What was really surprising was that a majority of the attendees were not from out of town, but here locally. Seventy percent of the participants were from here in our local community – a vast difference from a year ago when it was inverted.

Stepping back and looking at what we have done over the past two years makes me, as a member of the greater whole, proud. To see everyone “get it” and take pride in what we do.

I wanted to say thank you to all of my friends for being there and contributing to making our lives better in lil ol’ Bryan/College Station. We have built a very strong and robust community of folks who continually show their support.

-Cody

Are you a designer or someone looking to get introduced to some creative individuals? You should attend Design Camp!

It’s happening next Saturday, January 17th at the Astin Mansion in Downtown Bryan. We’re expecting to have creative types from all over the state in attendance, so we hope we can get some of the locals out to the event as well. To top it off, the event is run in the Barcamp style. What does that mean for you? Its free and you’re guaranteed to find something interesting to take away from the event!

If you want some more information on the event make sure to check out the following:

Facebook Event – Make sure you say you are attending here and send myself or Roby a message with your t-shirt size if you want one. If you don’t let us know you’re coming we can’t guarantee you’ll have a shirt.

Design Camp Website – Here you can find information, maps, sponsor information, and you can also use the contact form on this page to send us info, or t-shirt sizes as mentioned above.

Blogs – Roby and myself both have posted to our sites about the event as well, so help us spread the word by linking people to this post, our website, or our blogs so that we can spread the love.

Hope to see you next weekend,

Michael Cummings

Dirk Fowler has an exhibition running from November 8-22 that is open 8-5pm. His gallery is located in the Wright Gallery on Texas A&M’s campus. You can learn more about Dirk and his work here, or at GigPosters.com. You can also simply do a quick Google search. It is an honor to have such a talented individual in our area so please take time to view his exhibition.  If you have any questions, let us know!

- Roby Fitzhenry

Title: Maker Faire
Location: Travis County Expo Center, Austin, TX
Link out: Click here
Description: Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It\’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things. So much to see, you will need 2 days to see it all!
Start Time: 10:00
Date: 2008-10-18
End Time: 07:00

If you would like to participate in a ride share please post in the comments of this post and self-organize. Yaye!

My name is Dan Cary. I co-manage the .net users group here in B/CS. I also have limited participation in some of the other local IT groups.  In managing this group, I have constantly run into location scheduling problems. In addition, I have had friends(limited computer users) ask me to teach a course on various topics. When I first heard about The Creative Space, I thought yes, this is the place. But, that ended up being a little different than I had expected it to be. Not to diminish the efforts of Cody, Roby, et al, they did bring co-working to B/CS, but I feel like we need to expand this concept.

So, I was talking with Robert Stackhouse about my plans to build a warehouse type facility where people could schedule usage for free or nominal fee. Robert  mentioned to me that there are other people in the community who are interested in low cost communal IT socializing facility. So, I am going to try to help organize efforts to see if we can bring these people and their ideas together with this goal in mind.

My Ideal location Requirements:

• Central to B/CS
• Free / Cheap
• wi-fi
• Food Preparation Area (small kitchen/fridge/coffee maker)
• Alcohol is OK (for socials)
• Has couches and tables

Usage:

• Co-working during normal business hours.
• Local IT professionals could hold classes.  I have seen interest on even ones most basic computer usage.
• Professionals teaching professionals. If cost were low enough, people could just put together a sessions(e.g. ROR, Unit Testing, CSS, Class Design, Reporting services)
• User group usage(this is where food prep area comes in, Even just the use of a stove for cooking pizza or something to bring food cost down. I know this is not realistic but I thought I would include it.)

Ideas for securing a space:

• Tax Dollar Funded Community Center (perfect)
• Donated Commercial location (We could convince a landlord that is having trouble renting space to donate the usage of that location. It could possibly be a tax right off if any non-profits use the facility.) I have some friends who own property. I could ask them if there would be any incentive other than cash that would be acceptable.
• Interested participants put some money together and by a location for this use. I know of a 4-plex for sale @ 60k. (sorry, just brain storming.)
• Create a non-profit IT org that might be able to raise tax deductable donations and grants for such a location.
• Get a list of restaurants that are have facilities for use and convince them that this is good for business and ask them to wire the room for wireless.

This is just a start. I would encourage others to add to the list so that its comprehensive even if you don’t thing you desires will match with others.  Maybe someone could post some of this information on a refresh related blog so that other could contribute in the form of comments.  I am honestly not very good with blogs and social sites.

Thanks for your time, Dan Cary

Where: Murphy’s Law (upstairs) map
When: October 1st 7PM (Happy Hour starting at 5)
Speaker: Michelle Greer

We’ve been quiet for a while but it’s time to get this show back on the road. We’ve got several months worth of great speakers lined up and we’re starting this thing off with a bang. Michelle Greer has been kicking ass and taking names in the Austin area for quite some time and she has no plans to stop anytime soon. Come listen to her speak about how she uses social media to institute real-life change in the world around us.

Making Social Media Matter:
How Social Media Turns Everyday Citizens into Superheroes

In an age where anyone can publish anything for the cost of hosting a WordPress blog, the means for spreading ideas has never been easier or cheaper.  Learn how people have used social media to mobilize people at rates never seen before in history, and how these tools make it easy for you to bring about positive change for your community.

Speaker Info:

Michelle Greer
Web Marketing Strategist
http://www.michellesblog.net
512.294.3909

Have you put your iPhone in a blender lately?
(Social Media Marketing – What it is, how it impacts us, and why it’s important.)
Time: 7:00PM
Date: Wednesday, April 23
Location: Rola’s Revolution in Bryan, TX
All of us are well aware of the impact that social media networks such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter (among many others) have had on our online behavior and the way we communicate with each other. As people spend more time on these networks, marketers are trying to create new and innovative ways to reach and influence people online.

This presentation will provide an overview of the fast moving world of social media marketing and will include examples of successful (and unsuccessful) attempts made by various brands in the social media space. It will also cover best practices for launching a social media marketing campaign.

Nikhil Nilakantan is Founder & CEO of Social Span Media LLC (www.socialspan.com), a social media marketing, strategy and product company. His company helps clients leverage social media as part of the product and brand marketing campaigns. Aside from strategic consulting, Social Span Media also develops social applications for platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and many others.

Nikhil Nilakantan
President & CEO
Social Span Media LLC
+1.214.929.9159
nikhil@socialspan.com
follow my social media blog:
www.strategicast.com