You are currently browsing the Tech Social: Chicago Tech Entrepreneur’s Event Calendar weblog archives for August, 2006.
Join a bunch of web 2.0, software, startup, and consulting people to play Ultimate Frisbee in the Park. We play most Wednesdays, and you don’t even need to know how to play to show up. Usually between 6 and 12 people play a few games.
The tech folks, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists of nextChicago will be congregating once again on Tuesday, August 29th at 7:00pm. This time we’ll be getting together at Red Lion Pub, on 2446 N. Lincoln Avenue, a great English pub. Rumor has it the place is haunted, which means we could consider it a community service project as well – teaching the dead about all things Web 2.0.
nextChicago is a fun way to connect both socially and professionally with young people who have a stake in future of tech and new media in Chicago. Participants generally have less than ten years experience and we especially welcome recent graduates who are just starting their careers.
Direct Marketing is a direct communication to a customer or business that is designed to generate a response in the form of an order, a request for further information, or a visit to a store or other place of business. (Also called Direct Response Advertising)
This month’s seminar will deal with direct marketing.
You’ll learn what is or is not legal to send via email and fax, how to save money in direct mail campaigns, and what works - or fails - in direct mail, fax, email, and integrated campaigns.
Direct marketing differs from general marketing in that the result of a promotion is measurable in terms of response. Direct marketing is also largely dependent upon the use of customer files and lists. Direct marketing is utilized by virtually every type of business and organization. However, the primary users are magazine publishers, catalog houses, political campaign organizations and financial institutions.
E-mail and Internet marketing may be attracting buzz, but there are still strong incentives to send printed messages directly to customers whom you select. Direct mail gives you complete control over who sees your marketing, in contrast to advertising in print, online-mail, Web sites, or television.
For small businesses, where sales leads and customer contact information so often fall through the cracks, being able to market pinpointed prospects with postcards, flyers, catalogs, or personalized notes is a terrific opportunity. A well-crafted, road-tested direct mail package represents a cost-effective sales cycle all on its own, including advertising message, presentation, special offer, call to action and, ultimately, deal closer.
If you take the time to do it right, direct marketing can generate gratifying and measurable results.
As you establish and build your brand awareness among your key audiences, direct marketing provides you with the opportunity to ask these key audiences to DO something.
Direct marketing, in one form or another, is part of all our lives. It’s used by just about every business and non-profit. on church bulletins and utility bills, menus left under doors, coupon ads in newspapers and magazines, inserts with your bills-even the ads on back of grocery receipts and matchbooks. And, almost all direct marketing can be done better.
Come prepared to ask questions because all meetings are interactive.
2006 schedule:
September 25Â Strategic Alliances / Strategic Partnerships
October 30Â Â Â Â Â Â Distribution channels
November 27Â Â Financing a Company “What are your options”
Detailed directions to the Rice Campus:
The campus is just North of Butterfield Road (Rt 56) and a half-mile East of Naperville Road. You can take East-West toll road (I-88) West to the Naperville Road exit. Go North on Naperville Road to Butterfield Road (Rt 56) and turn right [East]. Turn left [North] at East Loop Road, the first stoplight on Butterfield Road. The IIT building is a short distance ahead on your right.
Every Monday morning this summer, open source hackers meet somewhere in downtown Chicago and work on the projects that interest them. It can reduce your temptation to just loaf around and read Slashdot.
All developers and technologists are welcome: Pythonizers, Rubyists, Perl Mongers, PHPimps, and Javanauts are welcome. Even Lispers, Schemers, OCamlists, Haskellians, Eiffelers, HyperTalkers, and Stegosauruses (COBOL programmers), too. 
If you are planning on attending this meeting, please RSVP to joshua.mcadams-at-gmail-dot-com
Mike Fragassi will be talking about “Perl Logging Practices”.
Jonathan Rockway will also be giving a presentation titled “An Introduction to Berkeley DB”.
For questions about this or any other upcoming meeting, please email Andy Lester at andy@petdance.com.
Join a bunch of web 2.0, software, startup, and consulting people to play Ultimate Frisbee in the Park. We play most Wednesdays, and you don’t even need to know how to play to show up. Usually between 6 and 8 people play one 45 min to 1 hour long game.
It’s exhaustingly awesome! Just show up.
I’ve spoken with many of you about our idea of creating a workspace where entrepreneurs, hackers, and tech geeks, can consistently meet and get work done together. Something like this, for Chicago.
We’re currently are looking for a permanent physical space. In the mean time, we can meet up regularly at coffee shops.
CoWorking is going to throw an informal working session Tuesday Aug. 22 from noon to 5pm at Argo Tea on Randolph and State. You show up and work in an environment of other tech geeks and entrepreneurs. It’s a community and productive thing, combined.
Place a yellow post it note on your laptop monitor so others can recognize you as a co-working person.
This is short notice, but Keith had to work tomorrow and we thought some of you might enjoy each others’ company and productive energies.
-Jonathan
Neal Ford is our guest speaker for this Mobile Monday. Neal is the author of many books - Developing with Delphi: Object-Oriented Techniques, JBuilder 3 Unleashed, Art of Java Web Development, and The 2006 No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at numerous developers conferences worldwide - you might have heard him more rexently at the NFJS series.
We are also going to have a sneak preview of the Neuros OSD platform. (first MoMo to demo this worldwide and probably one of the first previews of the Neuros ever!). Neuros is a TI/Linux multimedia platform that uses open source applications, and is community supported.
We have been having regular meetings for four years now. We generally meet about once every other week. During our meetings, we have at least two presentations. The gatherings are as much a social event as they are a technical venue. Our meetings are structured and very democratic in nature. The agenda for each meeting are open to be edited by all of our members.
The Institute of Design is located at 350 North LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago, on the southwest corner of LaSalle and Kinzie streets, just north of the Chicago River, between the Merchandise Mart and the old “Traffic Court” building.
* Wednesday Aug 16, 6 - 7:15 pm
* North end of Grant park between Monroe and Jackson and Lakeshore and Columbia - map
* Free, just show up to play
* Skill optional, frisbees provided
Join a bunch of web 2.0, software, startup, and consulting people to play Ultimate Frisbee in the Park. We play most Wednesdays, and you don’t even need to know how to play to show up. Usually between 6 and 8 people play one 45 min to 1 hour long game.
It’s exhaustingly awesome! Email me today if you’re going to show up ( JAW [at] TechSocial.com ).
All are welcome. Php beginners and experts will benefit. Php and related technologies such as mysql, postgresql, gd, ming, etc. are discussed.
Formal meetings are the third Wednesday @ 6 pm of each month at the Info.com location. They host a social event on the first Saturday at 1 pm at Uncommon Ground (3800 Clark)
Come discover jMatter in a hands-on presentation where we’ll be developing a live application and hold discussions about this new empowering style of producing business applications.
Here is the link for all of Eitan’s talks and bio.
Visitor’s desk - the third floor just one level up the escalators above the train level. The location of the meeting is the 8th floor break room. NOTE: UNLESS YOU RSVP, YOU CANNOT ATTEND THE MEETING (BUILDING SECURITY RULES)
About the Speaker:Â Â Â Eitan Suez is a programmer living and working in Austin, Texas. He has been programming in Java since 1995 and is a certified Java Programmer. Eitan is the author of an open source Java documentation system named “ashkelon” (see http://ashkelon.sourceforge.net/ ), and more recently, the jMatter framework for extremely agile software construction for workgroups. Eitan speaks on the “No Fluff Just Stuff” series of programming Symposia on a variety of topics including Java Documentation Systems, Cascading Style Sheets, jMatter, Hibernate. Eitan is active with his local Austin? Java Users Group, and maintains weblogs at java.net, u2d.com, and jmatter.org/
The jMatter framework is a modern implementation of the Naked Objects Architectural Pattern using Swing, Hibernate, and deployed with Java WebStart. This open-source framework produces 2-tier workgroup apps (Swing front-ends that talk to rdbms back-ends) intended to be used in a LAN or VPN environment. Developers using a Naked Objects style framework focus on building a behaviourally complete domain model and leave everything else (UI, persistence, etc) to the framework. By focusing on the domain model only, jMatter claims to offer 10x productivity for building Swing workgroup apps.
The Chicago Java Users Group (CJUG) is dedicated to promoting Java related technologies in a network world. It is an arena where you can exchange information, problems, ideas, experiences, resources, and questions related to the Java language.
A New Day for Chicago Small Business
Date: Friday, August 11
Time: 8:00 am - 3:30 pm
Cost: Free Event
Location: University of Illinois at Chicago, UIC Pavilion, 525 South Racine Avenue
Contact: 312-744-3365
Get More Details & Register
The City Treasurer’s 5th Annual Small Business Expo is a forum designed to provide assistance to small business owners and those that would like to become one. The Expo will bring local government, lending institutions, and technical advisors together to provide information and direction that is vital to the success of a small business. Existing and prospective business owners can attend workshops, network with other business professionals, and obtain useful information from technical advisors and representatives of financial institutions.
Topics
Call jason at 3 1 2 - 3 7 3 . 8 5 5 6 if you get locked out or lost. The external doors should be open, but be sure to enter on the “east” side (Desplaines). Street (meter) parking is available in the area. Shoot for “free” (no meters) parking on the South side of the building if you’re lucky. And be sure to feed those meters; Brother Leader Daley collects tons of cash from meter fines in this area. Garage parking is also available across the street (technically across the interstate) at the very tall SkyBridge condo building.
This will be our best meeting yet! For folks who want to help setup, arrive at 6:30 and get first dibs on pizza-compliments of Uncle Roy (Singham)
Join a bunch of web 2.0, software, startup, and consulting people to play Ultimate Frisbee in the Park. We play most Wednesdays, and you don’t even need to know how to play to show up. Usually between 6 and 8 people play one 45 min to 1 hour long game.
It’s exhaustingly awesome! Email me today if you’re going to show up ( JAW [at] TechSocial.com ).
This message was listed incorrectly. There is NO meeting for ACM in August.
Founded in 1947, ACM is a major force in advancing the skills of information technology professionals and students worldwide. Today, our 75,000 members and the public turn to ACM for the industry’s leading Portal to Computing Literature, authoritative publications and pioneering conferences, providing leadership for the 21st century.
This message was listed incorrectly. There is NO meeting for ACM in August.
Sorry for the confusion.
Streamlined is an open source framework for quickly creating data-centric applications with Ruby on Rails. We’ve been using Rails and Ruby to build applications for our customers for going on two years now. Over time, we’ve realized that, like in just about every development platform before, we spent a lot of our time building and rebuilding the same stuff. Over time, we started pulling out the commonalities until we discovered we had the makings of a framework. Streamlined is the result of that. We want to take the redundancy out of building apps and let us (and you) focus on the things that make our apps different. (From the Streamlined website).
Bring your laptop with Ruby, Rails, and Streamlined installed if you’d like to participate in the coding exercises.
After Hour Access
The building entrance on Desplaines will be open until 7. The elevators will be on until 7 as well so that people can get to the 6th floor. After that, please feel free to call Jake at 773/905-9102 and I’ll have someone get you.
Directions: Take the Washington exit off of 94/90. ThoughtWorks is at the corner of Desplaines and Washington.
This is an informal event where you can meet with other php developers and entrepreneurs. I’ve attended several of their formal meetings and have consistently been impressed.
website: chiphpug.php.net contact: Richard Lynch 773-252-8914 chiphpug@l-i-e.com
We host this social event (except January and July) at 1 pm at Uncommon Ground (3800 Clark). Our formal meetings are the third Wednesday at 6 pm of each month.
Business Cards Optional
Windy City Linux Users Group (WCLUG)
We don’t have a set agenda. Come with questions and topics to discuss.
wesbsite: wclug.org   contact: Mike McCune 773-235-4276
wclug@wclug.org
Business Cards Optional
