We featured Josh Silverman of StudyEgg at the January 2012 Providence Geek Dinner, where he talked about what they are doing to replace 18th century pedagogy with personalized, interactive learning tools. We caught up with Josh after his talk to learn more. [Video link]

At the March 2011 Providence Geek Dinner, Jan Hesthaven of ICERM (Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics) gave us an overview of the institute’s mission, explained some ways that they’ll be reaching out to the community, and helped us understand what this all means for the geek community. I caught up with Jan after his talk and we recorded this short video. [Video link]

Providence Geeks closed out 2010 with a bang. Our December Geek Dinner featured the first public presentation by soon-to-be-Providence-based interactive entertainment company – 38 Studios. We caught up with CEO Jen MacLean after her talk to learn more about what they are doing. [Video link]

Founded by Brown CS ‘09 graduate Andres Douglas, Bakodo is a Providence-based startup that’s all about doing awesome things with barcodes. At the November 2010 Providence Geeks, Andres told the Bakodo story, showed off their impressive services, and revealed some of his secrets for making hugely popular mobile apps. I caught up with him after his talk and we made this video. [Video link]

At the October 2010 Providence Geek Dinner, Josh Clark, author of Tapworthy and operator of his hypertext laboratory Global Moxie, spoke about how designers can get a handle on the touch screen devices that have been all the rage. I caught up with Josh after his talk. [Video link]

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010, 5:30 – 8:30pm
Firehouse 13, 41 Central Street, Providence, RI Map < --NOTE!!
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

The October Geek Dinner is a few short days away, and we’re going to be switching things up a little this month:

1.		First, we’ll be taking over the bar and performance space at the excellent Firehouse 13 on Providence’s West Side. Nice.
2.		Shelter – check. Drink – check. Ah right, we need food… Ivan and the other kind folks at Haven Brothers have agreed to park their awesome catering rig right outside the Firehouse. Sweet.
3.		Last – but certainly not least – we need a killer presenter to make the evening… I got it: Josh Clark of Global Moxie – Bingo – one of the most talented, not to mention nicest, new-ish additions to Providence’s burgeoning tech-meets-design scene.

Josh is going to school us – the good kind of schooling – in the dark art of creating “Tapworthy” mobile experiences. In addition to covering the juiciest parts of his new bestselling O’Reilly book on designing great iPhone apps, Josh is going to share what he’s learning advising some of the world’s largest media companies on their mobile strategies. Josh is even going to give us a sneak peek into some of his early iPad / tablet app design ideas, which will likely form the foundation of his next book.

Need I say it? You’re not going to want to miss this.

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 Haven Bros truck.


• 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 September 2010 Providence Geek Dinner, Spiros Eliopoulos, Chris Erway, and Dan Kuebrich gave us the low-down on Tracelytics, which helps you figure out why the heck your web site is running so slow. We caught up with them after their presentation to learn more. [Video link]

At the July 2010 Providence Geek Dinner, co-founders Andrew Draper and Ken Johnson told the story of Manpacks. I caught up with them after their presentation. [Video link]

At the May 2010 Providence Geek Dinner, Swipely CEO Angus Davis demoed their service to the public and opened the beta to a room full of new users. I caught up with Angus after the Geek Dinner to learn more. [Video link]

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010, 5:30 – 8:30pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

Providence-based NABsys is on a serious roll. The startup’s latest achievements include closing a $7 million Series B round and naming semiconductor legend and Analog Devices co-founder Ray Stata to its board.

While frequently described as a bio-tech company, NABsys is much more. As they explain:

Nabsys is a life sciences company working at the intersection of physics, biology, and computer science to revolutionize medicine through clinical-grade whole-geonome DNA sequencing. NABsys is one of five companies to receive a ”$1000 Genome” award from the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

At the April Geek Dinner, Nabsys President & CEO and Providence-native Barret Bready will give an overview of NABsys focusing on the impressive computer science and information technology that is enabling his company to make major breakthroughs in DNA sequencing.

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 bar and new restaurant.


• 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.