miami blogger dinner at los ranchos, originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho.

Continuing what has been a stellar year in Miami in terms of online conferences, the The Word of Mouth Marketing University came to town. To welcome some our friends from out of town who came to speak at the event, including Rohit Bhargava, Joseph Jaffe, JC Hutchins and Jason Anello, we organized a blogger dinner last night:

Brian Breslin of infinimedia

Joseph Jaffe of Crayon

Jay Berkowitz of Ten Goden Rules

By the way, Josh Hallett snapped some great photos at WOMMU, some of which appear on WOMMU's good live blog. Have a look!

May 9, 2008 in Events & Conferences | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

  RefreshMiami Anniversary 
  Pictured: Kristen Taylor and Dan Rubin.

On Wednesday, May 2nd, we celebrated the two-year anniversary of RefreshMiami! When a few of us first met at a Starbuck's in South Beach on May 5th, 2006 (Brian Breslin, Chris and Rebecca Saylor, Robert Murray and I), little did we know how significantly the RefreshMiami community would impact our lives. As Brian writes on the RefreshMiami blog:

"So its been 2 years. Wow. In the last 2 years I have either met or interacted with hundreds of great people in the south florida tech community. Lots of people have gotten jobs, made friends, and had a great time. So with that in mind, I think its time we celebrate."

Celebrate we did! Here are some photos. Michael Tangeman compares RefreshMiami to the First Tuesdays and such of the early dot.com days (see also comments on his post):

"It is so refreshingly unlike the dot.com days here in Miami. No suits, no VCs just flown in from the Valley, no investment bankers looking to take somebody public, no lawyers handing out cards and wanting to get in on the deals. The talk is about technology and apps and projects and what people are up to, not about shares and options and exit strategies."

If you're new to Miami and looking to meet and connect with other web entrepreneurs, developers and designers in South Florida, here's how to participate:

1) join the 220 member strong RefreshMiami Google Group for discussion on local tech issues, job postings and more;

2) join our group on Facebook;

3) if you're on LinkedIn, we just started a group there. Here's the link to join;

4) Subscribe to the RefreshMiami blog;

5) Come to our next meetup! Our next event is on May 28th in Coconut Grove ... see you there!

May 7, 2008 in Events & Conferences | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

BarCampMiami came and left us some great memories. David Parmet and Michael Tangeman wrote up summaries; here are my Flickr photos tagged BarCampMiami08 and unbeknownst to me, Michael recorded a video of the introduction to BarCamp:

Thanks in no small part to the Future of Web Apps conference and to the RefreshMiami group, close to 300 people participated in BarCampMiami. Over 35 presentations were given, including a sneak preview of Kevin Marks' Open Social presentation the next day at FOWA.

We have Nick Dominguez, Michael Montgomery, Chris Saylor, Brian Breslin and dearYvette to thank for helping organize our event. The folks at the Adrienne Arsht Center of the Performing Arts were most helpful by allowing us to stay past closing hours and by lending us extra rooms. A special shout out goes to Mel Kirk and Ryan Carson at Carsonified, who graciously invited BarCampMiami in their venue for FOWA.

Most of all, we have all the participants to thank, who made this such a rich experience. The participants run BarCamp and they made this one great.

March 4, 2008 in Events & Conferences | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack