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Utah Social Media Developers Garage – Great Turnout!

Posted on July 14, 2008 by jessestay

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a few days now and I want to apologize to our generous sponsors that gave us a place to host the meeting and great food, all at no cost to us for taking so long. We had one of our highest attendance meetings ever for the Utah Social Media Developers Garage last Tuesday, where we watched a great video from the Palo Alto Facebook Developers Garage in May, and then went over the new Facebook Design. There were many great questions, and I think people are more enthusiastic than ever on building Facebook apps. We had near 25 attend, and I only expect that number to grow based on the excitement we saw.

I am always impressed at these meetings, as I seem to meet new Facebook developers working on new Apps each time we have these things. Facebook is truly on the radar for many businesses in Utah – I’m very excited to see what comes out of it!

A special thanks goes to EPIC Ventures and Rachel Strate, who hosted the event – if you are writing a Facebook App and need some investment, give Rachel a ring! Also thanks to Bungee Labs, who at the last minute stepped in to provide Pizza for everyone. I’ve reviewed them before but I do recommend you try them out and see how they can fit into your software development plans if you get a chance. If your business would like to host or provide food for future events, please let me know – it’s a great way to get in front of a group of developers!

These meetings are a true community effort – if you would like to help out or be an officer please let me know and we’ll get you involved in helping me plan the events. Heck, if you think you can do it better I’m open to even letting you take over! These are not my events, but yours, so I want to be sure those attending are able to contribute – if you’re interested in helping please let me know. Also, please let me know if you have an idea for a meeting.

Our next meeting will be September 9 from 7pm to 10pm so add it to your calendars now! My O’Reilly Book, FBML Essentials, will be available then and perhaps we can do a Facebook development focus around that – maybe a launch party of some sort? You can learn more about our group on the group’s official Facebook Group here, or by joining the Google Group here.

Utah Social Media Developers / Facebook Developer Garage Tomorrow at 7pm!

Posted on July 8, 2008 by jessestay

Those of you in the Facebook Group or Google group have already received notice about this but I just realized I hadn’t blogged about it yet. Tomorrow we have a great Facebook Developers Garage planned here in Salt Lake City. Facebook has sent us a professional copy of the DVD of the Palo Alto Facebook Developers Garage that I was able to attend in May, so we’re going to watch that, and then go over some of the new changes that are coming into play for the new Facebook design.

This should be a great event if your a developer or even non-techie, as it will help you see some of the integration points you can build into with the new design. A lot will be changing with the new Facebook design, so if you are currently, or are planning to build a Facebook application, either as a developer or in a marketing or business position, you’ll definitely want to attend. This is a completely open event so please invite your friends! All I ask is that you RSVP here.

We are still looking for someone that can provide food for the event so if your company would like some great exposure in front of possibly 20-30 developers and Facebook-interested people, please contact me! In the meantime, the event will be hosted at EPIC Ventures in downtown Salt Lake City and they will be providing snacks and drinks for all that attend. I’d like to thank them personally for hosting the event – they are doing this after hosting our food for last month’s event!

All in all, this should be a fun event as all of them are. If for some reason you can’t attend, our next meeting will be September 9th from 7pm to 10pm so put that on your calendar! I’ll look forward to seeing you all there!

Here’s a map to EPIC Ventures – it has been recommended that you park in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building parking lot across the street. I’m told they can provide vouchers for that. Also, if you arrive late a phone number will be posted on the door of the Zions building for Rachel Strate – please call that number and we’ll let you in!:

Epic Ventures
One South Main St, 8th floor
Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Next Utah Social Media Developers Garage: May 13th at Bungee Labs

Posted on May 7, 2008 by jessestay

Our Utah Social Media Developers Garages (UTSMDev) happen every second Tuesday of every other month, and that is coming up one week from today. Our next meeting will be on May 13th from 7pm to 10pm at the same place as last time, Bungee Labs. We’ll bring the Wii or Xbox in case there’s time to play afterwards.

At this event, Bungee is going to show us a simple “Hello World” for Facebook using their Bungee Connect Platform. For those unaware, Bungee had “Platform as a Service” down before Google App Engine came out, and have recently even partnered with Amazon EC2 in order to provide full server access beyond their current platform. I have some videos of their stuff I took while at Web 2.0 Expo that I’ll try to post later this week in my “Utah Startups” series.

I am still looking for businesses to sponsor snacks and drinks (or even a full dinner – Bungee supplied Fuddruckers for our last event!) for the event – if your business would like some exposure I’ll be sure you get the credit. It could be a great way to meet new developers, Social Media experts, and bloggers!

As usual, while this event is targeted towards developers, everyone is welcome at the event, as it could be a good way for your business to meet developers in this area, as well as just learn a little more about the Social Media space! For future announcements of UTSMDev events, be sure to subscribe to our Google Groups mailing list here!

Bungee Labs is located in the old WordPress building on the second floor – you can find directions here:

625 E Technology Ave B2300
Orem, UT 84097

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=625+E+Technology+Ave,+84097&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.724817,82.265625&ie=UTF8&ll=40.325575,-111.679738&spn=0.008163,0.020084&z=16&iwloc=cent

Please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page.

Utah Social Media Developers Garage Has a Mailing LIst

Posted on April 11, 2008 by jessestay

I mentioned this at the Hackathon in March, but have not had the time to blog about it yet. Thus far all announcements for the Utah Social Media Developers Garage Meetings and Utah Facebook Developers Garage Meetings have been announced either through this blog, or our Facebook Group. I’ve now created a Google Group for us at http://groups.google.com/group/utsmdev. Please sign up there and I’ll issue all announcements via that list. Google Groups provides a more neutral ground in the sense that users don’t have to have an account to use it (to an extent), as compared to the Facebook groups. We’ll keep the Facebook groups around, and depending on membership I’ll still send announcements there as well, but I encourage all to sign up on the Google Group if possible. In addition, having a mailing list will allow us to have more of a discussion. This way if you are working on a project in Facebook, or OpenSocial, or even WordPress or Twitter or other APIs and you run into issues, you can ask the group and we can work together to solve the problem. I figure this way we’ll be able to all build a strong Social Media Development community here in Utah that others can rely on. Google groups will also give us a page we can tell others about the group, when the next meeting is, etc. If you have some graphics and HTML skills to help with that I am open to volunteers!

Also, I have created a Google Code repository at http://code.google.com/p/utsmdev/. For anyone okay with producing their code under the GPL, this will give you a place to store your code, and collaborate with others on the code, track issues, etc. If you want commit permissions to that repository please contact me and I’ll add you. As Google App Engine gets more integration into these things we’ll also set up a hosting option through Google App Engine to actually host your apps. Hopefully all these options will make it all much easier for everyone to get out and collaborate in their coding. It’s a good time to be a developer…

P.S. – We will continue on in our every-other-month meeting structure now, so our next meeting will be the second Tuesday in May. I’m working on a speaker, so if you know anyone or have ideas let me know!