Photo Credit: Bret A. Ancowitz, M.D. of Garris Photography

Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 5:30 – 9pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

Welcome back, everyone! After our August hiatus, Providence Geeks returns next week with what promises to be an excellent time.

Providence-based Shape Up The Nation is the leading provider of team-based corporate wellness programs to large corporations. At the September Geek Dinner, Chief Fit-Technician Brad Weinberg  will be presenting an overview of their start-up and launching a preview of its wellness “social-networking” functionality.  The company takes a fundamentally different approach to health improvement by harnessing the power of trusted social networks in companies to motivate individuals to improve their health.  Since winning the Rhode Island Business Plan competition in 2007, the company has launched its first product, TeamUp, successfully to over 60 clients in the US, Canada, and Europe.  Come to this month’s Providence Geek Dinner to see the future of wellness and you might just find another “Geek” to swim, bike, run with…

Click here to view a recent CBS feature story on Shape Up The Nation.

Click here to view a PBN interview with Brad

As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:

• 
  
• The event itself is FREE! Beverages and food are for sale at the adjoining bar and Taqueria Pacifica (delicious and cheap)
• 
  
• It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and take off whenever! And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not say the food isn’t good – it’s actually great)
• 
  
• Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, mash-ups, start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, etc. etc. etc.
• 
  
• There is Wi-Fi so bring your connected device of choice.
• 
  

David Berube and Annette Tonti from MoFuse presented at the last Geek Dinner of summer 2008. David and I stepped out into the lovely summer evening to chat about what you can do with MoFuse and what the future holds for them. Link to video page

Photo Copyright 2008 Nathaniel R. Walker

Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 5:30 – 9pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

The July Geek Dinner is the last one of the summer (we take “analog” August off). So be sure to join us for what promises to be an excellent evening.

Next week’s Geek Dinner will feature a very new, and super promising Providence-based startup – MoFuse, MoFuse lives where mobile devices meet blogs. From Asian news blogs to American politics and mobile gamers, MoFuse is seeing tremendous traction. They pride themselves at being first to market with features that bloggers and their readers really love. Earlier this year they were the first to launch a mobile blog version for the iPhone. Their approach is gaining them tremendous visibility with some of the best known bloggers including Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and Political Wire. Join Founder and Chief Architect, David Berube and CEO Annette Tonti as they discuss their bootstrapping approach to early development and plans to address a rapidly growing international base of users. And as a special early scoop only for Providence Geeks, they will talk about their upcoming embedded video launch. Free mobile blogs for all who attend! :-)

Please RSVP in the comments section of this post so that we can give the good folks at AS220 an estimated headcount. And while you’re at it, subscribe to Providence Geeks’ RSS feed (see sidebar) and/or join our very-low-volume email announcement list (for the announcement list, send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin over at Gmail with your name and affiliation).

As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:

• 
  
• The event itself is FREE! Beverages and food are for sale at the adjoining bar and Taqueria Pacifica (delicious and cheap)
• 
  
• It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and take off whenever… And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not say the food isn’t good—it’s actually great)
• 
  
• Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, mash-ups, start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, etc. etc. etc.
• 
  
• There is Wi-Fi so bring your connected device of choice.
• 
  

The folks from BatchBlue Software presented at last night’s geek dinner, and showed us what they’ve been working on lately. We caught up with Michelle Riggen-Ransom & Adam Darowski just as the night was winding down. Link to video page

Photo Copyright 2008 Nathaniel R. Walker

Wednesday, June 16, 2008, 5:30 – 9pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

Summer would seem to be upon us – so come slurp a cold one and scarf a spicy one while we talk tech.

June’s Geek Dinner will feature the return of BatchBlue – they’re back and even better than before! Since we last checked in with the Barrington-based startup (over a year ago), they’ve DEMOed in California, had some great press, discovered some Super Heroes and officially launched their first product, BatchBook, a contact organizer for small businesses. President Pamela O’Hara, President and User Experience Designer Adam Darowski will talk about how they are enjoying the ride and staying focused on customer feedback to drive the development efforts. BatchBlue launched their alpha version at Geeks a year ago and credits the local network for making the user-centric route they are taking work. And we hear they might share more free coffee and t-shirts with us, too.

Update: BatchBlue’s VP of Engineering Sean Ransom has just posted to the RI Nexus blog – Being Customer-Focused Means Actually Listening.

Please RSVP in the comments section of this post so that we can give the good folks at AS220 an estimated headcount. And while you’re at it, subscribe to Providence Geeks’ RSS feed (see sidebar) and/or join our very-low-volume email announcement list (for the announcement list, send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin over at Gmail with your name and affiliation).

As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:

• 
  
• The event itself is FREE! Beverages and food are for sale at the adjoining bar and Taqueria Pacifica (delicious and cheap)
• 
  
• It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and take off whenever… And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not say the food isn’t good—it’s actually great)
• 
  
• Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, mash-ups, start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, etc. etc. etc.
• 
  
• There is Wi-Fi so bring your connected device of choice.
•