On Tuesday this week the Austin WordPress Group will be meeting to go over their plans for the future. Looks like there are actually some spots still available for this one, so better jump on it fast before it fills up!
Apparently SEO is extremely popular in Austin, because they have one of, if not, the biggest group right now. The group is called SEO-Austin on Meetup. Roger Dooley, a featured blogger on Internet Marketing, will be speaking at their meeting on Wed this week. The talk is entitled, Brainy Web Marketing: Neuromarketing Tips to Boost Traffic and Conversion.
Also on Wed is the Austin Python Group (not web). They will be going over disaster recovery and fire dynamics simulators.
AustinPHP is this week, on its new night! They are meeting on the 2nd Thursday instead of the 2nd Tuesday. Hopefully this time slot will be much more convenient for people! This month they have a guest speaker, Kevin Schroeder, from Zend who will be going over phpcloud and Zend Studio 9. Kevin runs the show at the yearly Zendcon!
Wednesday is the Austin NoSQL group. They have been meeting recently at the uShip offices downtown. 10gen is sponsoring their meeting this month. If you missed the last talk AustinTechVideos has it posted here. This month Ben Beecher will be talking about how MongoDB uses GridFS to efficiently store large objects on the file system.
On Thursday this week at the Node meetup they are going to be talking about debugging and testing your code. They are meeting a new location this week, HubAustin, so be sure to look up their address before you head out.
The last thing to checkout this week is actually the first thing coming up. On Tuesday the Joomla User Group will be going over the upcoming release of Joomla 2.5. It looking like this will be their biggest group in a while, so be sure to check it out!
Blood donors are sexy! Our second Cospace blood drive is coming up on Wednesday, December 14 from 1:30-5:00pm. The bloodmobile will be in the parking lot of 911 W Anderson Lane, Austin 78757.
Please follow the instructions below to make an appointment. Also please forward these on to anyone who might like to give blood – all are welcome! Donor Appointment Instructions
Register online at https://www.inyourhandsonline.org/index.cfm?group=registration&function=appointment&opID=0. On the next page, click “Find a Drive.” Under Step 1, type “cospace” in the Code box and then click search. Under Step 2, click on 12/14/2011. Under Step 3, click on “Schedule” next to the time you want to come in. Then click OK and follow the directions from there.
(If you have any problems, sarah@cospaceatx.com is also able to register you.)
Find out what to do to prepare and find answers to any questions you might have at http://www.inyourhands.org/aboutblooddonation.php. Remember to drink lots of water before you donate blood and to eat lots of protein that day. After You Donate
Come on up to Cospace in suite 203! Blood donors are welcome to stay at Cospace for the rest of the day to work and hang out. We will even thank you properly with cobbler!
You’ve probably heard the news by now: Facebook has acquired Gowalla, and now it’s official. This news just a few days after it was reported that Gowalla was looking to sell. Soon members of the team, including CEO Josh Williams, will be relocated to join Facebook in-house at Palo Alto and Gowalla as a service will be winding down.
Without a doubt, Gowalla has been the flagship startup for Austin for the past few years. As a city, we’re sad to see it dismantle. It goes without saying that such a talent acquisition is a huge dent in the ATX web community. The Gowalla team have been very active in local meetups and training events. Individuals and the company presence will noticeably be missing from events in the future.
On a personal note: It’s no secret that over the past 2 years the ATX Web Show has been overly-supportive of Gowalla. If a Gowalla podcast ever existed, we were it. We had a great time endlessly reporting on Gowalla, interviewing them, and even working closely with the team to release our own Gowalla API app Goodfoot. We’re sad to hear about the loss of our city’s “coolest” startup, but mostly we’re just going to miss our friends and drinking buddies. We wish everyone the best and brightest future.
