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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 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.
P A S T M E E T I N G S March 2008 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 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 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 A series of short presentations about some fun and useful geeky tech things that our members explored over the summer break. June 2007 Purely a social event, we provided burgers, dogs, veggie burgers, sides and beverages. Nearly 100 people showed up! April 2007 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 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 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 |