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Posted by Jake Goldman on 26th April 2011
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April 2011 Lightning Talks

We have a great roster for our anniversary meet up lightning talks!

Jesse Friedman of  Neal Advertising and SWORD Studios kicks us off with HTML5 WordPress Theming. Jesse will quickly dive into the HTML5 specs so we can get a feel for how cutting edge and next generation WordPress themes should be structured.

Aaron Ware of Digital Octane takes us in a different direction with Flash and WordPress. Even as HTML5 and JavaScript become more of a viable alternative to Flash content, there are still scenarios where the client needs can outweigh web standards. Aaron will show us how we can still store data in our favorite CMS (for menus, pages, and post data) and then output that data in XML files so that it can be easily parsed and displayed with Flash, jQuery, or any other JavaScript framework.

Suzanne McDonald of Designated Editor will blitz through all things in content in 5 Content Essentials to Execute via WordPress. Whether you’re using WordPress for posts or pages, you need to consider everything from SEO to Social to Usability to Editorial Calendars.

John James Jacoby of Automattic rounds out the night with A Preview of WordPress 3.2. John will walk us through a rapid demo of the latest WordPress 3.2 previews, showing off exciting new features in the pipe line like “distraction free writing.”

Posted by Jake Goldman on 7th April 2011
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Spring 2011 Lightning Talks! April 26th

It’s our 1 year anniversary, and we thought we’d celebrate with another round of lightening talks! The WordPress Providence Meetup will be on April 26th, 2010, at 6 pm, at McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon. We’ll be in their private room; food and drinks will be served. Parking is free on and off street (starts at 5:30 pm).

We’re looking for 4-5 speakers to give quick 5-minutes talks. Like before, and unlike Providence’s Pecha-Kucha, there are no rules for your talk. Well, maybe one: it has to be related to WordPress in some way. You have the floor, a projector, a laptop hook up, and 5 minutes of the group’s time.

We’re already following up on a few inquiries, but definitely still looking to fill slots – let us know if you would like to speak! Even if we run out of room, we’ll make sure you’re at the top of the list for our next round of lightning talks.

Keep an eye on this blog for a forthcoming list of lightning talks!

We are still finalizing a sponsor for this meetup; if you’re interested in a great sponsorship opportunity for only $99, let us know!

Doors open at 6 pm; we ask that you try to arrive by 6:30 pm for networking. The program starts promptly at 7 pm. The program includes introductions, several 5-minute lightning talks, and a chance to pick the brains of your fellow attendees.

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Posted by Jake Goldman on 8th March 2011
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Mobilize WordPress! March 22, 2011 @ McFadden’s

March’s WordPress Providence Meetup will take place on March 22, 2011, at 6 pm, at McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon. We’ll be in their private room; food and drinks will be served. Free drinks for the first 10 attendees, with free finger foods for all, courtesy this month’s sponsor. Parking is free on and off street (starts at 5:30 pm).

Back during our 3rd meetup, Providence’s MoFuse introduced us to their third party platform for mobilizing your website. Now we’re going to take a look at two other ways to mobilize your WordPress powered site.

After a quick discussion about choosing your mobile approach, we’ll have two short walkthroughs. Meetup organizer Drew Bennett will walk us through setting up the WPtouch plug-in, available in both free and premium/paid editions, demonstrating a simple and off the shelf way to mobilize your WordPress site. After Drew’s tutorial, we’ll walk through a more developer centric approach (speaker TBA), that involves a few simple custom lines of code in your header and a stylesheet built specifically for mobile. Whether you’re a simple WordPress blogger looking to nail the mobile audience, or a developer (WordPress user or not!) looking for some techniques to optimize your site for mobile, you’ll get something out of our March meetup!

This meet up is sponsored by BRIDGE Technical Solutions. BRIDGE Technical Solutions is a full-service Information Technology staffing firm with a fast growing information-centric security consulting practice. Headquartered in Rhode Island, BRIDGE has been proudly serving the Information Technology community in Rhode Island and Southeastern New England for more than a decade.

Doors open at 6 pm; we ask that you try to arrive no later than 6:30 pm for networking. The program starts promptly at 7 pm. The program includes introductions, about 40 minutes of presentation, and a chance to pick the brains of your fellow attendees. Even if you can’t stay for the presentation, stop by for networking and drinks!

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Posted by Jake Goldman on 20th December 2010
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CMS Smackdown! February 15, 2011 @ McFadden’s

UPDATE: Photos from the evening are now up and so is the video of the panel.

UPDATE: Due to snow, the original date of February 1st has been moved to February 15th. There’s still time to RSVP if you couldn’t make the 1st!

OK, so not really a smackdown, more like a friendly discussion on the pros and cons of some popular content management systems. We’re joining forces with the Providence Drupal Meetup for both of our inaugural 2011 events to help you figure out which CMS makes sense for you:

The panel will be moderated by Jeff Cram, of ISITE Design.

Not a coder? Don’t worry. The focus of the panel will be on choosing your CMS, not geeky (but cool) technical intricacies. Whether you’re a business decision maker trying to decide which way to go, a designer / aspiring CMS developer wondering which platform to dip your toe in, or just curious about the pros and cons of each system, this is the panel for you. But even if you’ve already chosen a side, and are knee deep in technical intricacies, show up: challenge our panelists’ advice, help out the newbies in the crowd, and show your support!

With panelists from companies like Automattic and Acquia on the roster, we’re anticipating a lot of interest, and space is limited at McFadden’s! We’ll let you know here and on Twitter if there’s still space the day of (for you last minute types), but if you want to be guaranteed a spot, register on Eventbrite!

The joint meet up will take place on February 15, 2011, at 6 pm, at McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon. We’ll be in their private room; food and drinks will be served. Parking is free on and off street (starts at 5:30 pm). There will be free drinks for the first 20 attendees as well as free finger foods for all courtesy of our sponsors.

Because we we anticipate higher turn out for our joint meet up, we have two sponsors: Monotype and Oomph (formerly C. Murray Consulting).

Monotype is the easy way to add great looking fonts to your website with a few easy steps. Just choose your fonts from the widest selection of high quality fonts on the net, assign them to your text, and add a short script to your site! Monotype offers over 8,000 fonts, supports over 40 languages, and is the exclusive home of celebrated fonts like Helvetica and Univers. Sign up for free today!

Oomph – recently known as C. Murray Consulting – is a web strategy, development, and design firm located in Providence with an emphasis on open platforms like WordPress and Drupal. The difference between common and uncommon web experiences, Oomph serves clients around the world, from small Rhode Island start ups to international companies in the UK and Australia. If you still need help choosing your CMS, or have chosen your CMS and need some help, get in touch with Oomph today!

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Posted by Jake Goldman on 29th November 2010
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Holiday Lightning Talks: The Line Up!

If you thought our last round of lightning talks was solid, wait till you see this month’s line up!

Headlining the lightning talks  is new Providence resident John James Jacoby – one of the core developers of BuddyPress, the official social networking add-on for WordPress. John has spoken at WordCamps around the country and helped organize a WordCamp in his previous home town of Miami. He just moved to Providence at the beginning of November, and we’re thrilled to have him in our community and participating in our meet up. John will be presenting BuddyPress in 5 Minutes, a great introduction for those of you who have not yet checked out BuddyPress!

Coming in at the #2 slot is Bill Dennen, who has been a participant in our community since the first meet up. Bill is a Web Technologist and Sysadmin at Wheaton College. He has worked with web technologies since the days of NCSA Mosaic. Bill will be presenting Under the Hood: How Wheaton uses WordPress. Wheaton College, in nearby Norton, Massachusetts, has been migrating from a home-grown CMS to WordPress with Multisite. Even with thousands of pages spread across dozens of sub-sites, they have found that WordPress can handle just about anything. Bill will provide an overview of the project and talk about what is running behind the scenes, including a mix of off-the-shelf plugins and custom code.

In the #3 spot is Mike Marinelli, Co-Founder of The Healthy Design, a website creation and design and online marketing firm aimed at helping wellness professionals grow their business online. Mike will be presenting Clean Up Your Media Library and Increase Site Speed. All of your unused images and other media may be dramatically slowing your site down. Mike found a handy plugin that helps you clean out your media library called the Upload Janitor. This plugin allows you to reclaim disk space and clean up your uploads folder by deleting old uploads you are no longer linking to. Upload Janitor will even automatically make an archive of all files to be erased, including their original paths, so you can restore if necessary.

Lightning talk #4 is by regular meet up participant Jonathan Derosiers. Jonathan is the in house web developer for Slocum Design Studio in his home town of Dartmouth, MA. He enjoys taking on new challenges, and has developed everything from WordPress plugins to Twitter Applications. Jonathan will be presenting More is better….. Right? As a society this is drilled into our minds. And generally yes, more content is better. However in a time of infinite information, it is important not to overwhelm your users. Organization is key to a good user experience. Jonathan will go over the progression of new and old ways to do this, and how WordPress has made this much easier to do over the last few versions with new features such as custom post types.

Rounding out our holiday talks at slot #5 is J. Hogue, Creative Director for C. Murray Consulting and former owner of Highchair Designhaus. J. will present Innovative WordPress: Behind ThinkingArizona. J was the creative lead and project manager for ThinkingArizona.com, an innovative, WordPress-powered website edited and produced by the former editor of the Boston Globe. J. will give a quick tour of the website, and demonstrate how ThinkingArizona takes advantage of custom post types and custom taxonomies on the back end to create a well organized, easy to manage online magazine.