12 May Digital Britain Unconference Manchester

URL: http://digitalbritainmcr.eventbrite.com/
Email: info@manchesterdigital.com
Dates:12 May 2009
Venue: MDDA, 117-119 Portland Street, M1 6ED

Itinerary:

18:00 registration
18:30 unconference
20:00 drinks and networking

A chance tell the Government what the Manchester digital community thinks about the Digital Britain ideas.

This is one of a series of events across the UK to respond to the Digital Britain Interim Report from Stephen Carter.

Come along and join the discussion.

More details to follow soon.

Sheffield Linux Users Group (ShefLUG)

Sheffield Linux Users Group (ShefLUG)

Meetings are free and open to anyone to attend

Saturday 2nd May 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

For the past two years we have held meetings at Starbucks coffee shop
at Western Bank next to the University. We thought that our May
meeting might go down well at the Walkley Cottage. The address is...

Walkley Cottage Inn
46 Bole Hill Rd
Sheffield, S6 5DD
0114 234 4968

http://www.walkleycottage.co.uk/

If you don't have a car then you might like to know that the No: 94
and 95 buses run from High Street and Church Street (across from the
Cathedral) through the city centre to the pub. This is a frequent bus
service every 10 to 15 minutes during the day. Call 01709 515151 for
bus information. Use Google maps if you don't know where the Walkley
Cottage is. Tea and coffee is available. There is a good selection of
beers which are well looked after. Look out for someone sitting next
to an Hewlett-Packard penguin with a laptop in front of him.

http://www.sheflug.org.uk/meeting.html

The topic of the meeting will be a general discussion or we can fix
some hardware or software. If you need some help with that we can
most likely point you in the right direction. If you want to
know more about anything else come along and ask questions. We seem
to have a growing band of EeePC people who bring them along to
meetings. Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope and it's associated operating
systems have been released. We can also discuss this release and how
to install it.

9th May UNsustainable Unconference@FACT

"UNsustainable UNconference (May 9, 12.00pm, free admission) relies on
the knowledge of its audience-participants as the core programme.

A Manifesto for Change

An unconference is a participant driven face-to-face conference that
set's its own agenda and facilities inclusive debate.

The UNsustainable UNconference comes out of FACT's response to the
city's Year of Environment, and the urgent need to have a forum to
advance the ecology and dialogue around the sustainability of society.
Held alongside our first project that explores this question, Climate
for Change, the UNconference invites communities of interest who have
been engaged in this project and who are operating through self-
organising networks and alternative models of both capital and
cultural production.

During the course of the debate the participants will generate a
Manifesto for Change; drafted by multiple authors, looking at
envisaging and identifying the principles to adhere to, to live in a
more sustainable world. A People's Plan rather than a Master Plan

There will be invited experts, consultants who are participating in
civic discourse on social change and climate change, and all are are
invited to contribute"


we'd like to ask that yourself (as well as any of your colleagues,
associate groups, participants & friends sign up and come along and
join in the debate)

and to add your/their details to: http://climateforchange.fact.co.uk/unsustainable_unconference

5th May OpenCoffee Leeds {May}

If you're working in the creative or digital industries, we'd love you to come hang out, chat, demo or just network with others...usually around 20-25 people each month...sometimes more :)

OpenCoffee itself runs from 10am to noon, but Old Broadcasting House has an open house in the afternoon with plenty of hotdesks available for those who wish to work into the afternoon and stick around for the company :)

Full details at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2408058/

29th April, Bradford LUG

Just a reminder that the Bradford LUG will be meeting this Wednesday
(29th April)

PLEASE NOTE: We do not have access to our regular meeting place for this
month only. Instead we are meeting in the Sir Titus Salt Pub (just up
from the Alhambra Theatre).

It will be a less formal meeting as a result, but you may want to
discuss...

Multimedia - the topic for next time
Ubuntu 9.04
Organising an OpenSteet map weekend
How to make a digital photoframe from an old laptop - (nice one
Richard!)
and more...

Hope to see you there.
--
David Carpenter

Fri 1 May: ManLUG social (currybeer)

As usual for the first Friday of the month, a group of us from ManLUG (and various other geek groups) will be going out for a curry and some drinks on Friday 1st May. We'll be meeting in our usual venue of Hardy's Well pub[1], Rusholme, from 7:30pm and then heading off for a meal after a couple of drinks. If you haven't been before, one of us will usually be wearing a geek t-shirt of some description, so we should be fairly easy to spot, and we'll be looking out for people anyway.

See you there!

Paul

[1] http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/20/2009/Hardys_Well/Rusholme

P.S. There's also a web site where the details of socials are
announced:

http://www.manlug.org.uk

1-29 May 2009 Leading Lights exhibition

Leading Lights exhibition

Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), Manchester
Friday 1 May 2009 - Friday 29 May 2009 10am-5pm
www.mosi.org.uk

Leading Lights is an inspiring new exhibition of portraits by award-winning photographer Richard Cannon. It showcases 19 Ambassadors from all over the UK who are using science, technology, engineering and maths to push the boundaries of what is possible and to make the world a better and more exciting place to live.

http://www.stemnet.org.uk/news/viewitem.cfm?cit_id=382837

13 - 16 May 2009 Social Technologies Summit

Social Technologies Summit

Contact Theatre, Manchester 13 - 16 May 2009

The Social Technologies Summit is the leading international conference that brings together 500 opinion formers, futurologists, artists, researchers and technologists to explore the latest upgrade affecting today's digital culture.

Pioneering ideas will be presented, which will transform the way you and your organisation operate, innovate and interact. Combining keynotes, critical debates, demonstrations and experiences with open space and participatory sessions, it is an engaging, critical and essential event to attend.

The themes for the conference this year include Environment 2.0, Digital Futures, Identity and Trust, Mobile and Semantic Web: Cultural Algorithms.

22 April NW Hackspace Meeting in Liverpool

NW Hackspace Meeting in Liverpool
Wednesday April 22, 2009 from 7:00pm - 8:30pm

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology)
88 Wood Street
Liverpool, England L1 4D Get Directions

A start to getting together a crowd to open a NW Hackspace in
Liverpool:

Starting Weds 22 April, a fortnightly meet-up at 7pm at FACT. We may
try and meet in their media lab at some time, but we'll start with the
bar.

Adrian McEwan will bring along Bubblino (as seen on BBC ;) to the
first meeting. Format will be informal discussion after a short intro
on hackspaces.

One reason for choosing this coming Wednesday is that it follows
straight on from the Small Steps to Sustainability meeting on Creative
Learning [1] - something that very much includes having fun in a
hackerspace. I hope that some people will find themselves staying on
from Small Steps for the Hackspace Meeting (or coming early to the HS
meeting, to take part in Small Steps).

Note that Birmingham hackspace combine regular pub meetings with
occasional weekend hackdays. Help us find a venue and we'll be doing
the same.

Upcoming
Webpage

17th April, Bradford LUG social

Date: Friday 17th April 2009

Time: 8pm onwards
Place:
*NOTE NEW VENUE* The Courtyard
A bit more information about The Courtyard as requested!

It is the University Student Union bar, and is on the ground floor of the Communal Building on the main campus - maps here: http://www.brad.ac.uk/about/find/maps.php

If coming by public transport, the best thing to do is walk/get the bus up Gt Horton Road, turn right just before the Sports Centre then walk down the ramp past Waterstones, towards the JB Priestly Library. Follow the walkway down the side of the library which overlooks the ampitheatre - this takes you to the Communal Building. Go down the steps (there is also aan accessible lift) and The Courtyard is just on your right.

If coming by car, there will be plenty of spaces and there are no parking restrictions on campus after 5.30. There are no barriers to the car parks off Longside Lane, so that's probably the easiest place to park. Also the right side of campus for the bar then! The Courtyard is at the most 1 or 2 minutes walk from these car parks.

April 25th, DFEY-NW :: Manchester

DFEY-NW (Digital Freedom in Education & Youth - North West) is a group
focusing on young people and issues of freedom in the digital world,
based in the Northwest of England at the moment.

When
Saturday April 25th 2009 12:30pm -> ~4:00pm

Where
BBC Manchester, New Broadcasting House, Oxford Road, Manchester, M60 1SJ
Photo: http://tiny.pl/z7bf
Map: http://tiny.pl/z7b1
Nearest train station: Manchester Oxford Road (3 mins walking distance)

Attending?
Due to BBC restrictions, you need to tell us:
http://dfeynw4.eventbrite.com/
or feel free to email us on team@nw.dfey.org to let us know you are
coming...

Ubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty' Release Party
The day before the meeting is the Ubuntu release party in Manchester.
It looks like it's going to be a load of fun. Maybe see you there?
Details: http://is.gd/sKLf

14th April, GeekUp Manchester

When
6:00 PM Tuesday April 14th, 2009
Where
Revolution Deansgate, Deansgate Locks, Whitworth Street, Manchester M1 5LH
Upcoming
Let us know if your attending on the upcoming.org event page.

15th April, Cloud Computing Event, Manchester

Manchester is finally hosting a cloud computing event attended by key
players on the 15th of April at eOffice from 6 to 9pm. See here for event details.

The event programme includes an hour of speeches and 40 minutes of
panel discussion followed by our famous StartUp4Slaughter session,
this time featuring ThinSpace, a thin client technology from the North
West.

Our speakers and panelists will offer insight to cloud computing and
how you could leverage cloud computing for competitive advantage.

- Simon Bruzzoni - Amazon Web Services (flying in from Italy)
- Bindi Karia - Microsoft Azure (and BizSpark leader in the UK)
- Ivan Farneti - Doughty Hanson (VC looking actively for investment
opportunities in cloud computing)
- Roy Shelton - H2O Networks (fibre through sewer lines covering the
last mile)
- Lisa Leyzell - ThinSpace (thin client)

8th April, AgileYorkshire Meeting: Crystal Clear Methodology

In this session Richard Fennell, will attempt to provide an overview of Crystal Clear, an agile project methodology proposed by Alistair Cockburn in his book of the same name. This will be from the view of a novice to the methodology, looking at how it appears to pragmatically match the process in place in many companies that are attempting to be agile but do not match the full rigour of Scrum or XP.

Venue: Victoria Hotel, Central Leeds
Date/Time: Wednesday, 8th April, 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start.
More details: http://www.agileyorkshire.org/

16th April, NWRUG - BDD, you know you should be doing it

So, you’re testing your code right? Of course you are! But are you
testing your code as well as it can be tested? This month Ashley
Moran, Testing Maven, will be giving a talk and practical session on
Behaviour Driven Development and how it should be done right.
We’re starting 30 minutes earlier this month due to the practical
nature of the session.

This month we have sponsorship from Engine Yard so there will be free
Pizza (and maybe Beer and soft drinks, depending on the numbers)
during the talks.

Schedule
• 6:00pm :: Welcome & Pre-session bar visit
• 6:30pm :: BDD, why you should be doing it and how. Pizzas provided
by Engine Yard will be served during the session
• 8:30pm :: Drinks at the BBC bar afterwards, then somewhere else
nearby after that closes at about 21:00.

Sign Up
If you would like to attend this event please email me
(nwrug AT willj.net) as the BBC need a list of attendees before the event
and I really need to know the numbers so I can order the right amount
of food and drink. This month I shall be publicly coating people with
blancmange who turn up without emailing me. You have been warned.

Location
This meeting is being held at one of our regular venues, the BBC
Manchester main building on Oxford Road in central Manchester

You can find the exact same information on the NWRUG site

April 15th, GeekUp With Dirk Ginader of Yahoo!

This month, GeekUp Leeds will be upgrading it's regular venue and heading up the hill once again to Old Broadcasting House for a one off special.

This time we've managed to entice Dirk Ginader of Yahoo! fame up from that London to tell us all about the virtues of JavaScript Accessibility.

When
6:00 PM Wednesday April 15th 2009

Where
Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9EN
Photo
Google Map

Who's this Dirk Ginader then?
In the rough early days of the world wide web Dirk Ginader changed his Passion to his Profession and founded the Unit Interactive of a large Advertising Agency in Mainz, Germany. After nearly 9 Years the Web Standards and Accessibility Enthusiast answered the call of Yahoo! to join the Web Development Team and the Accessibility Task Force in London. In his Spare time he is developing, speaking and blogging about open source accessible JavaScript and Web Development in General.

Attending?
Tell us

Extra
There will be beer (and soft drinks) and a possible visit to the Dry Dock afterwards for yet more beer!

Our Friends
All this would not be possible without our good friends at NTI. They have very kindly paid for the whole event, so a big thanks to them.