M E E T I N G  L O C A T I O N

We usually meet every month. On Mondays, although it varies from time to time. We always meet from 6-8 pm.

Membership in the Neon Guild is free. No dues, no fees. No by-laws. No committees. Free pizza and beer and soft drinks at every meeting.

We offer a fantastic resource for the tech community. We have only one rule.

If you want to get the benefits of our community, you have give something. That something is YOU. In person. It's all about connecting with others. To join, you need to physically show up to at least one meeting. That's how you get on our private mailing list where a lot of action happens. We request that you attend in person at least once per quarter to stay on the list.

Just to make things perfectly clear, please don't write the Guildmaster requesting to be added to the list. She will write back to you and invite you to come to a meeting!


Next Neon Guild meeting:   May 19 2008, 6-8pm

Location:
Inova Solutions
110 Avon Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
(map)

Topic:  Hiring and Working On Demand: Getting Work and Workers

Presenter: Jack Smith, Arrow New Media

Elance.com is an online workplace where businesses find and hire people "on demand" to get work done quickly and cost effectively.

Jack will be talking about his experience with Elance regarding hiring technology professionals from all over the world. He will also be talking about what it's like to get work from places like this.

If you're wanting to do some quick freelancing or contract work, OR if you're looking to hire contract workers for specific projects, you'll want to come to this one.

About our presenters:

Jack Smith is the owner of Arrow New Media, a company that specializes in advergaming.

Directions:

From downtown Cville:

Take Market St east to Ninth St.
Turn Right, it turns into Avon St.
Go over the Belmont Bridge, past the Pavillion
Get in the left lane.
Look for Spudnuts.
Left at Spudnuts, then another immediate left onto Monticello.
You'll see a large brick building. That's Inova.
Drive around the building to the front, and park in the lot.

 

 

 


P A S T  M E E T I N G S

March 2008
Topic: Presenting Audio and Video on the Web
Presenters: Cameron Beers, Mike Stevenson, Debra Weiss

Links to resources mentioned during the meeting:

Riva FLV Encoder - Transcode your existing video files to the advanced Flash Video (FLV) format with this free Riva FLV Encoder.

SlideShowPro - A complete photo and video publishing solution.

JW FLV Media Player - Free player for audio, images and video.


January 2008
Topic: Audio/Video Conferencing over TCI/IP
Presenter: Rich Gregory, Computer Systems Engineer, UVA

Everyone seems to be looking for videoconferencing solutions, and there are a lot of options out there. Which one is best for your organization?

Links to resources mentioned:

Access Grid - www.accessgrid.org - Group to Group interactions across the grid - free software - full featured - not a quick install.

Agora - agora.lancs.ac.uk - part of Sakai (www.sakai.org) desktop and audio sharing - free - uses a Java Tomcat server as the "bridge"  Will be installed and available at UVa Real Soon Now.

Polycom - AV conferencing - www.polycom.com - peer to peer and multicast conferencing - Full range of hardware and software products. 

Aethra - AV conferencing - the Engineering School as a Vega X5 which does video and data "dual stream" transmissions.

Elluminate at www.ellumiinate.com - desktop and audio sharing - Very professional and full featured for live remote classroom sessions.  UVA's SCPS has a site license.

Camtasia - Windows application that records a screen or a PPT presentation with audio.  It has very good editing capability and can publish in AVI, WMV, MOV and Flash format.  Publishing takes 2-3 times as long as the run time.  You make a 30 minute movie in 70-90 minutes. 

Skype - video and Voice Over IP - free live communications 

The School of Continuing and Professional Studies is the main resource at UVa for AV topics. http://www.scps.virginia.edu/vdl/videoconferencing.php


October 2007
Jewels of J-MRL
Presenter: Jackie Lichtman, JMRL

If you thought your dusty old library card was good for just taking out books, you would have been delighted know there's A LOT more you can do with it, and much of it can done without ever leaving the hou8se! More info on jmrl.org.


September 2007
What I Learned This Summer

A series of short presentations about some fun and useful geeky tech things that our members explored over the summer break.


June 2007
Semi-Annual Neon Guild Cookout

Purely a social event, we provided burgers, dogs, veggie burgers, sides and beverages. Nearly 100 people showed up!


April 2007
Project Management - SCRUM
Presenter: Jeff Sutherland, SCRUM Co-Founder

Scrum is an iterative, incremental process for developing any product or managing any work. It produces a potentially shippable set of functionality at the end of every iteration.

More info: www.controlchaos.com/


March 2007
Project Management - Avoiding the Nightmare:
Keys to Success/Best Practices

Whether you work in a group, or work by yourself with your clients, we all have our horror stories of projects that have gone terribly awry. Dave presented some his own, and everyone attended was welcome to contribute their stories. The real value here came from our interaction.

Presenter: Dave Portfield


February 2007
Topic: Health Insurance for Small Businesses and 1099 Contractors

Everyone's looking for affordable health insurance solutions for themselves, their families and their employees.

There have been some new developments lately with the advent of hybrid plans -- group rates, but individually underwritten-- as well as health savings accounts (HSA) and health reimbursement accounts (HRA).

If you couldn't make it and/or are interested in getting info or quotes, contact:

Mario Orlando
973-9115 office / 981-6863 cell
orlandm4@nationwide.com