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]

First up, launched in early 2010, Manpacks is poised to storm the male undergarment market with its unique web-based subscription model. Already, Manpacks has been covered by the likes of the New York Times, MAXIM, and NPR. They count as clients Internet luminaries including TWIT’s Leo Laporte and Engine Yard Co-Founder/Charify CEO Lance Walley. At the July Providence Geeks, Co-Founders Andrew Draper and Ken Johnson will tell the Manpacks story, as well as give a sense of where their scrappy startup is headed. Hint: Manpacks is only about underwear, like Amazon was only about books. Full disclosure: Manpacks is a member team of the 2010 class of Betaspring, a Providence-based startup accelerator, in which I am a proud partner.

And then, we’re going on on our first ever Providence Geeks field trip – a whole two blocks away to get a the Geek tour of AS220’s new Mercantile Block. The 50,000 square foot building will open this fall, and will house a hugely expanded AS220 Labs, as well as dozens of live-work studios for artists and other members of the local creative community (yes, that includes Geeks!)

We hope you can make it! (Remember, we take August off, so this is the last chance for us to all convene before September.)
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.

At the June Geek Dinner, OSHEAN CEO (and Internet2 Board Member) George Loftus gave us an overview of OSHEAN’s impressive first 10 years, as well as the exciting vision for where it’s headed. After the geek dinner, we caught up with George to learn all about OSHEAN. [Video link]

Photo credit: Data Janitor, on Flickr

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010, 5:30 – 8:30pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

Did you know that Rhode Island boasts one of the country’s top cyber-infrastructures dedicated to research and education? A lot of the credit for this goes to OSHEAN – a Providence-based consortium of over 30 local non-profit and government entities, including all of the state’s colleges, universities and and hospitals.

At the June Geek Dinner, OSHEAN CEO (and Internet2 Board Member) George Loftus will give an overview of OSHEAN’s impressive first 10 years, as well as the exciting vision for where it’s headed. Topics will include OSHEAN’s 500 miles of fiber infrastructure, Internet2, and the Ocean State Consortium for Advanced Resources’ (OSCAR) plans for a statewide supercomputing and green data center infrastructure.

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.

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, May 12th, 2010, 5:30 – 8:30pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)

If you haven’t already seen today’s national tech news, Providence-based startup Swipely has just announced a limited beta launch of their highly-anticipated “social shopping” service. Better still, they also announced a $7.5 million Series A round, led by some of the tech world’s savviest investors.

Swipely CEO and Providence-native Angus Davis was not only the youngest employee at Netscape during its halycon days, but also a co-founder of interactive voice-leader TellMe, which Microsoft acquired a couple of years ago to the tune of close to $1 billion. Takeaway = Swipely is one to watch.

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.

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.

Ever wonder where we find the photos for the Providence Geek Dinner announcements? So do we sometimes. And that’s where you come in. Do you have a great picture of Providence that we can use for an announcement? If so, please add it to this Flickr group! All we ask is that you use the Creative Commons Attribution or Creative Commons Attribution+Share Alike license, which makes it easier for us to remix it into an announcement picture.

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010, 5:30 – 8:30pm
AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI
FREE (buy your own food and drink – it’s cheap)
Transportation and Parking Tips

The March Geek Dinner is a particularly big one for me.

Wednesday evening, my brother Chris and I are going to be giving the first public preview of Lockify. We have developed a new web-based method for safely sharing sensitive information over the Internet.

Lockifying sensitive information before sharing it online protects you and your contacts. Doing so helps guard against interception, copying, archiving, security breaches, data-mining and other rotten stuff.

Please RSVP at Facebook (In the interest of making it more “viral”, we’re doing our RSVPs on 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.

At the February 2010 Providence Geek Dinner, Custom Flow Solution CEO Hanaan Rosenthal gave us a look at their system for generating the graphs that adorn the pages of papers such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe. I caught up with Hanaan after the Geek Dinner to learn more. [Video link]