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

Wednesday, December 6, 2006, 5:30pm – 9pm+
AS220
115 Empire Street, Providence, RI

Providence Geeks, which first emerged in 2006, will be holding our last Geek Dinner of the year on December 6th. It promises to be a great one.

To reflect the spirit of the holidays, we’re going to switch things up a bit this month, and feature a “dotorg.” Providence-based CitizenSpeak founder Jo Lee will be presenting their award-winning, open source e-advocacy tools. (See follow-on post for details.)

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’ 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:

• It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and vamoose whenever… And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities.


• 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.


• Food and beverages are for sale at the adjoining Taqueria Pacifica and bar.


• There is WiFi so bring your connected device of choice.


• We have AS220’s performance space from 5:30pm to approximately 7pm. After that the geekery moves to AS220’s adjoining cafe.

Last week, Providence Geek Owen Johnson’s web startup, Investment Instruments, launched Rentometer, a mashup for comparing your rent to those of similar nearby apartments. As the following links attest the webosphere is loving it:

• LifeHacker


• Digg

Investment Instruments’ flagship site, iiProperty, provides rental property owners with an impressive line-up of web-based property management tools. And yes, Owen will be presenting the larger iiProperty offering at an upcoming Geek Dinner.

Chris Bloom is heading up a new local Meetup: Providence Intranet Developers Group. Their August Meetup is scheduled for this Thursday, August 10 at 12:00 PM.

Providence Geek and Projo blogger, Sheila Lennon, has created a most helpful Google Maps-based mashup of Southern New England beaches. Apparently there are other ways to get a tan than sitting in front of your dual 21” monitors 3 days and nights straight. Who knew?

If so, all you need is a winning idea. The winner of the NGEN Wireless Contest gets six months of access on the RI-WINS pilot network, $1,000, and more.

To enter the contest, you’ll first need to join the Business Innovation Factory’s N-GEN Network, which is “a coalition of young innovators committed to collaborative innovation”. Next, submit an awesome idea for a mobile wireless application that runs on the RI-WINS network, and make it so excellent that you’re the winner. Of course, if you win the contest, you’ll have to do some work and make your idea become a reality.

The contest is open to teams as well as individuals, so if you’re looking for a great opportunity to meet some like-minded wireless hackers, be sure to attend our June 14th geek dinner. For complete details on the contest, check out the N-GEN web site.