Archive for the ‘Site News’ Category

December refresh

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

Hey folks, we won’t be having a December refresh event this month, but we are trying to organize a karaoke night before the new year.  Make sure to subscribe to the RSS or google group mailing list to get updates on where and when.

Additionally, we’re going to be refreshing (pardon the pun) the site here to add more functionality and improve the community features of the site. If you’d like to participate in the revamp, let me know brianbreslin [at] gmail.com and you will receive credit/linkback on the site.

happy holidays!
Brian

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Miami Geek Dinner for FOWA

Monday, October 29th, 2007


Miami Geek Dinner for FOWA
Originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho.


We had a fun dinner tonight to welcome Mel Kirk from Carsonified, who is in town planning the next FOWA conference in Miami. Thank you, Carlos Garcia and Scrapblog, for drinks and dinner. I’ve posted photos from the dinner on Flickr.

Full disclosure: I work at Scrapblog.

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RefreshMiami May 2007 meetup

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

Flickr photoset here.

We had a great meetup last night with over 30 participants at the University of Miami’s School of Communication. Notably, the folks from Agency.net AgencyNet.com in Ft. Lauderdale attended for the first time, thanks to Dan Rubin. Hopefully we’ll see more folks from Broward and perhaps we can hold some meetups there as well.

Michael Montgomery spoke to us about “Web Standards for Skeptics” and the advantages of separating content, style and behavior when creating web sites. Rather than summarizing his speech, here’s a link to Michael’s presentation, which he placed online using … web standards!

While responding to a question, Michael referred to an article he’d written on “Copyright Primer for Designers“.

Upcoming stuff:

Posted in Meetings, Site News, event | 3 Comments »

Community Building and Citizen Journalism Course at UM

Friday, May 4th, 2007

I have been asked to prepare a course on Social Media for the University of Miami and have developed the following outline. Enrollment is now open, please let me know if you have any questions or topics you would like to see covered. I may be reached at alex [at] decarvalho [dot] net. If you know someone who would be interested in this class, please let them know about it or contact me.

School of Communication, University of Miami
Course CVJ 596 – Fall Semester 2007
The Web, Take 2: online expression, community building and citizen journalism

Course Description and Purpose

This course covers the implications of new media technologies on communities and on the media. Through the practice of online publishing, the course will explore the social and cultural dimensions of the new media landscape including online expression, social networking, identity management, citizen journalism and community-building.

Communities thrive through the passion and shared interest of their members, and we will learn from case studies and invited speakers, new effective strategies and applications that help foster these interests. Students will critically engage contemporary writings in social, cultural and online studies. Required readings expose students to current readings in cyberspace scholarship, and provide a base from which to explore their own interests. Lectures by the instructor resituate these readings in terms of broader sociological concerns and specific examples and case-studies of emerging technologies and media.

Course Prerequisites

The class is open to students from all schools at UM and there are no prerequisites for this class. Preference will be given to students with an interest in media development.

Materials Fees

Students will not be required to purchase any materials or books and all required reading will either be handed out or available online for free. We want to keep readings as current as possible and will regularly assign materials that are not listed on the syllabus. Students will be responsible for keeping up to date with the course’s blogroll. Handouts will be provided in the class and students are responsible for reading assigned materials and the blogroll prior to each class.

Course Topics Outline (to be revised)

1. Course introduction and overview. Blogging basics, RSS feeds and feedreaders.
2. Wikipedia overview and discussion. Wikipedia editing basics.
3. Social Bookmarking overview and discussions. Social Bookmarking basics.
4. Lifestreams overview and discussion. Lifestream basics.
5. Media sharing overview and discussion. YouTube; Flickr.
6. Social Networking overview and discussion. LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Flickr.
7. Other forms of online collaboration, including IM, SMS, VoIP, shared documents.
8. Online Identity, pseudonimity and privacy discussion. OpenID, ClaimID, Ziki.
9. Online reputation systems. Ebay, iKarma, TheGorb, the blogosphere.
10. The internet, Take 2: the rise and rise of the social web
11. Community building online: case studies
12. Community building online: creating and cultivating social objects
13. Community building: the new, new marketing
14. Community building: using online tools for better local communities
15. The new world of media: is online the future
16. The new world of media: how media is adapting
17. The new world of media: best practices
18. The new world of media: citizen journalism
19. The new world of media: ethics
20. The new world of media: mashups
21. Digital Storytelling
22. Student presentations and class discussion
23. Student presentations and class discussion
24. Student presentations and class discussion

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MOCAfresh celebration April 28, 12-4pm

Friday, April 27th, 2007



MOCAfresh celebration April 28, 12-4pm

Originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho.


MOCA will celebrate the best of young Miami with MOCA Fresh, a special day of art, music, dance, design and technology for teens and young adults. MOCA Fresh will be held on Saturday, April 28 from noon to 4 pm and is free of charge. In conjunction with the final weekend of MOCA’s exhibition Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge, MOCA Fresh will focus on the central elements of Cunningham’s creative legacy — the convergence of dance, art, music and technology in a spontaneous form to create new ‘fresh’ expression.

Fresh Moves, Fresh Sounds: Continuous live dance and music performances will be offered throughout the day. On stage in MOCA Plaza, Rudy Goblen of The Flipside Kings, will host a B-Boy break dance battle. In the spirit of legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham’s Chance Operations, each dancer will roll dice to determine their dance style. Also performing will be dance students from Norland High School and Charles Drew Middle School. Radio DJ KFoxx of 99 Jamz will host live performances by musical guests and audience members will be invited to join in a karaoke competition.

Fresh Tech: Scrapblog.com, a new tech start-up company based in Coral Gables will be demonstrating their new multimedia software which allows users to create multimedia on-line scrapbooks.

Fresh Forum: Students may explore new forms of expression in three separate interactive technology workshops: Art+Design, Music+Performance and. Anything+Everything. Sign up today for your 15 minutes of fame: mocafresh@mocanomi.org

Fresh Art: Students from Michael Krop Senior High School fine arts magnet program will exhibit their paintings, drawings, photography and sculpture in a special exhibition in MOCA’s Pavilion Gallery.

Fresh Gear: Designer R. Grimes will demonstrate silk-screening methods by creating custom t-shirts. Miami urban boutique, Culture Kings, will direct a sneaker design workshop. Participants are asked to bring their own gear.

Event details:
MOCA North Miami
April 28, 2007,noon to 4pm, FREE of charge
770 NE 125th ST, North Miami, FL 33161
305 893 6211 www.mocanomi.org

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First year!

Friday, April 27th, 2007



refreshmiami.org anniversary

Originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho.


Well, if you want to be picky about it, the first RefreshMiami occurred on May 4th, 2006, at a Starbuck’s on Alton Road with just a few people. Over the course of the year, Refresh has been an opportunity to meet people, to get involved in the local tech community, to learn about and follow local startups, to hear new speakers, to find a job and to have fun and chat in a relaxed atmosphere.

Over the next year, we hope to grow in new ways, including:

- regular monthly meetings with speakers
- informal bi-weekly or more frequent meetups
- workshops on web 2.0 / social media / design / running a startup
- co-working location discussion and setup
- bootstrap network ideas
- refreshmiami online forum

If you’ve got more ideas on how you would like to see RefreshMiami evolve, please let us know by posting a comment here, in our Facebook group, in the googlegroup or privately to Dan, Kim, Brian, Nick or me.

By the way, Brian recently sent out a survey, please respond by next week so he can compile the results. We’ve already learned that word of mouth brings in over half of new participants … so tell your friends!

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Future Dates & Speakers

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

To try and get Refresh on more calendars (and get more people showing up each month) we’ve scheduled meeting dates and secured the room at the University of Miami (thanks Kim!) for the following dates:

We’ll still post reminders each month, but now you can get the dates on your calendars and plan ahead — even invite someone to a future meeting!

Now, what we really need your help with are the speakers and topics: The format of the meetings will be changing slightly, with more time for casual conversation, but we still want to have main topics for each meeting, and speakers whenever possible.

To that end, please send me any topics or speakers you would like to see at Refresh, and I’ll get on organizing things pronto. I’m already working on rescheduling Paul Scrivens (from 9rules), and have been talking with a few other folks who would be happy to come down and speak (if anyone’s interested in hearing from Dan Benjamin of Cork’d and Hivelogic fame, let me know), but I’d love to match speakers with the topics you all want to hear about.

Thanks for helping make Refresh Miami better!

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Have Friends You Can Rely On

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

Some days just feel like a wild ride in a rodeo! Without the gloves!

Sure, Scrapblog had been TechCrunched before, but not like this: The Real Scrapblog is Here … Finally. Previously, either we were still open with the first version, or we had put on the “bubble wrap” as we prepared for launch.

Except, of course, we haven’t launched yet!

We had been handing out a preview URL (www.scrapblog.com/preview) to friends and previous users of Scrapblog, to help us kick the tires, adjust the mirrors and rev up the engine before we got on the highway.

Despite our plans, it didn’t quite work out that way and once TechCrunch posted URL, bloggers picked it up and word started to get out.

Thankfully, our advisors, including Shel, David and Tara, and our peers, including Jeremiah, Hyku, Douglas Karr, and Ryan Stewart pitched in with their respective megaphones to point out that we’re still tidying up around here ;)

And lost in the excitement was a bit of heroism by our developers, who had already been pushed to the max. As Tara and Ryan
describe, Omar and his team stepped up to the plate to collaborate with
Adobe’s Apollo team, who wanted to demo a kick-ass application. Since
Scrapblog is built in Flex, Omar downloaded the Apollo SDK and stitched
together a demoable application for the platform. With a bit more work,
we can be ready for Apollo, which is “totally” cool for a whole bunch
of reasons I won’t go into. As a bonus, it runs on the laptop as well,
so now we can demo Scrapblog without being connected to the “innernets” ;)

Anyway, having advisors, mentors and peers to count on is critical for a startup. But so is having a great bunch of friends, from a great local community. And RefreshMiami was there for us through this, with Brian, Kim, Jason and others pitching in with comments today.

Looking at it from 30,000 feet, though, RefreshMiami counts even more for us. It has been a focal point of inspiration, learning and fraternizing, as we help each other grow the web in Miami. The web 2.0 and the web of friendships.

Remind you of a Beatles song?

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RefreshMiami Mar’07 summary

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

kim grinfeder

Originally uploaded by alex*c.

Paul Scrivens of 9rules.com was due to talk to us yesterday, but unfortunately was obliged to cancel because his flight had a mishap just a few hours before our meeting.

Instead, we gathered a great panel with Dan Rubin, Nick Dominguez, Carlos Garcia and Brian Breslin, who fielded our questions about the latest trends in design online. We spoke about CSS, rich internet applications, Adobe Flex, new browsing platforms and mobile browsing, new forms of blogging, the use of Twitter, design as strategy, community building, new social networks including Virb, photosharing using Flickr, copyright/copyleft and more. Pictures of our meeting can be found at the RefreshMiami Flickr group.

RefreshMiami’s first anniversary is coming up and alot has happened in our local web/tech community over the past year. For starters The Gorb launched recently, Our Scene has gotten good vibes and Scrapblog, where I work, is launching very soon. Oh, and let’s not forget Naples-based IMified, where in just a few weeks after launch, 13,000 users had completed over 100,000 tasks!

Because of this activity, a number of people have gotten jobs and internships through networking at our meetings, including Mike Gowen, Caleb Elston and myself. And as a reminder, Nobox is hiring, as is Our Scene.

But local entrepreneurs and startups need more than networking and conferences. So we’d like to set up a co-working location in Miami, along with an investment fund. And we’re trying to set up a “Bootsrap Network” here, where professionals help each other in a pay-it-forwards kind of way. More on these initiatives later. And if you can help with these, please let us know: we’re doing this in our spare times.

Last but definitely not least, we’d like to thank the University of Miami and Professor Kim Grinfeder for their very significant help with RefreshMiami. Congratulations are also in order for Kim, who was recently hired as Director Interactive Technologies at the Knight Center for International Media.

Our next meeting will be next month and we’re contacting speakers. See you in April!

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Dinner with Gapingvoid.com this Thursday

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

hugh macleod

Originally uploaded by alex*c.

Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid.com will be in town this week and we’ll be going to dinner. The details are to be determined, but the dinner will be held on Thursday, March 13th, 2007 at 8pm. We know it’s very short notice, but we only confirmed this today. Please sign up at this post on the Scrapblog blog so we can get a headcount and plan accordingly.

Most readers of this blog would know Gapingvoid, but if you don’t, here’s a quick bio of Hugh MacLeod. Besides “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”, Hugh’s main gig is Marketing Strategist for Stormhoek, a small South African vineyard, whose Web 2.0 approach to wine making is currently getting a lot of international attention in the wine trade. Hugh also does the marketing for a bespoke Savile Row tailoring firm, English Cut with Thomas Mahon, arguably one of the best half-dozen tailors in the world. Stormhoek and English Cut have all to do with what Hugh calls “The Global Microbrand”. He was named one of the top 50 marketers of 2006 by AdAge.

There may even be some some Gapingvoid and Stormhoek goodies to give out. And again, we apologize for the very short notice and hope you can make it.

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