Photo by Jess Zimbabwe on flickr, some rights reserved

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012, 5:30 – 8pm
ICERM, 121 South Main Street, Providence RI
RSVP at Facebook

ICERM (Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics) officially opened last fall in the renovated top 2 (amazing) floors of 121 South Main Street, and we’re all invited to visit that space. Hot topics that the ICERM community is expected to tackle include cryptography, cybersecurity, personalized medicine, search engines and social networks.

On Wednesday the 23rd, Professors George Karniadakis and Jeffrey Hoffstein will give us a double header of talks. Professor Karniadakis will present on the topic of how math and supercomputers are powering virtual biomedicine, and Professor Hoffstein will give a talk called “Math + Cryptography = $$? A funny thing happened on the way to the bank”. Don’t miss this!

We’re grateful to this geek dinner’s sponsor, Betaspring, who is stepping in to close any gap in funds between what you folks eat and drink and the minimum that our caterer requires. (Also, the early application deadline is fast approaching for Betaspring’s Fall 2012 accelerator.

Please RSVP at Facebook – and while you’re there please join our Facebook group. And if you want to join our very-low-volume email announcement send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin@gmail.com 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 right at ICERM, brought to you by Russell Morin Fine Catering.


• Doors open at 5:30pm. Socializing, eating and drinking up until the presentation/q&a around 6:30pm. Afterwards, back to socializing, eating, drinking…


• 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.

At the April 2012 Geek Dinner, Batchbook CEO Pamela O’Hara and “server whisperer” Adam Tucker gave a sneak peek at the newly redesigned and rebuilt Batchbook “social CRM”. I caught up with them after their talk to get some more details. [Video link]

Photo by Jef Nickerson.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012, 5:30 – 8pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)
RSVP at Facebook

Happy Spring everyone! We’re going to celebrate this glorious season with a rebirth of sorts.

Over the past year, Providence-based BatchBlue has completely redesigned and rebuilt its venerable Batchbook “social CRM” web & mobile applications from the ground up. This is a major undertaking, made even harder by having to seamlessly transition the thousands of paying Batchbook users over to the new system.

At the April Geek Dinner this coming Wednesday, CEO Pamela O’Hara will give a sneak peek at their new baby, and discuss the opportunities and challenges such a huge “rewrite” entails.

Bonus: Batchblue is one of founding members and a driving force behind the phenomenally popular Small Business Web – a network of Internet software companies that serve small businesses (members include everyone from Freshbooks to Google). Pamela will give an update on recent exciting developments within the SBW.

Please RSVP at Facebook – and while you’re there please join our Facebook group. And if you want to join our very-low-volume email announcement send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin@gmail.com 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 AS220’s excellent bar and restaurant.


• Doors open at 5:30pm. Socializing, eating and drinking up until the 30 min presentation/q&a around 6:30pm. Afterwards, back to socializing, eating, drinking…


• 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.

Photo by J. Stephen Conn on flickr, some rights reserved

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012, 5:30 – 8pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)
RSVP at Facebook

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” the saying goes. On the Internet though, the problem is often that we’re so buried under heaps of semi-relevant, disparate marketing metrics, that we don’t know even know where to begin. Log onto Google Analytics today? How about Facebook? Twitter? Mailchimp? ….

Founded in 2011, Providence-based startup Revenizer aims to stop the madness by enabling businesses to easily identify, track, and (most importantly) act upon a select few key metrics in a single web-based interface (think easy marketing scorecards).

At the March Geek Dinner, Revenizer CEO Phil Rogers will tell the story of his early-stage startup and give a sneak peek at its soon-to-launch service to make actionable-marketing-analytics easy.

Disclosure: Revenizer is a graduate of the Betaspring startup accelerator (Summer ‘11 class), where I’m a Partner.

Please RSVP at Facebook – and while you’re there please join our Facebook group. And if you want to join our very-low-volume email announcement send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin@gmail.com 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 AS220’s excellent bar and restaurant.


• Doors open at 5:30pm. Socializing, eating and drinking up until the 30 min presentation/q&a around 6:30pm. Afterwards, back to socializing, eating, drinking…


• 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.

Jeff Robbins, CEO of Lullabot, joined us at the last Providence Geek Dinner to tell us all about Lullabot and Videola (their new video management system and video delivery platform). I caught up with Jeff after his talk to learn more. [Video link]