A Sweet Wireless Schedule!
Several weeks ago, we were approached by Sweet Caesar about the possibility of them creating a wireless application that would make the schedules for mesh and meshU available on a Blackberry and an iPhone.
Intrigued, I met with Sweet Caesar’s Yaeko Tong, who showed me some of the Toronto-based company’s work. It was so impressive that it was a no-brainer for Sweet Caesar to do something for mesh.
Without gushing too much, the Sweet Caesar/mesh application is super sweet. Not only are there detailed schedules for mesh and meshU but the application includes:
- A tool that lets you rate every keynote, panel and workshop (one to five stars)
- Bios and photos for every meshU and mesh speaker
- A floor plan for MaRS so you can quickly find out where the keynotes, panels and workshops are located
- A map that lists the locations of the meshU party at The Drake, the mesh party at the Rockwood and the after-party at L’Espresso Bar Mercurio
Yaeko and her team have really gone above and beyond the call of duty. We’re extremely impressed!
If you want to download the Sweet Caesar/mesh application, it will be available here on May 19 (Monday).
Technorati Tags: mesh, meshU, Wireless
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The Social Agenda at mesh and meshU
They say that all work and no play is no fun, and the same applies to mesh and meshU.
After listening to terrific keynotes, panels and workshops, it’s important to relax, have a refreshment and meet some new people. So, here’s the social schedule for mesh and meshU
meshU:
After meshU on May 20, there will be a social at The Lounge at the Drake Hotel (1150 Queen St. W.) from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. This event is open to everyone (meshU ticket holders will get a complimentary cocktail from the Drake). The cocktail ticket and your invite will be included in your registration package at the registration desk at meshU.
mesh:
After the first day of mesh on May 21, the social in the MaRS Atrium will happen from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. This year, it’s being sponsored by tripharbor.ca, the new cruise start-up launched by our own Stuart MacDonald.
The after-party is happening at Rockwood Club (31 Mercer Street) from 7 p.m. to midnight. Sponsored by the Social Media Group, the after-party is a great night where we will continue to mesh with the Toronto tech community, including everyone who attended meshU.Transportation to Rockwood will be provided by Expedia.ca. As well, we are pleased to announce that we will be working with LittleGeeks.org to raise funds for their worthy mission of donating home computers and Internet connectivity to children in need.
There will also be an after-after-party on May 22. Stay tuned for more details.
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Get ‘Em While You Can
With two weeks to go before mesh, we wanted to give everyone a friendly reminder that if you are planning on coming, buy now to avoid disappointment.
We expect to sell out next week at the latest. You can buy mesh tickets here and meshU tickets here.
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mesh Schedule is Live!
Unlike the iPhone, which won’t be released until some time later this year, the mesh schedule is ready for consumption!
We’re excited about the keynotes, panels and workshops that are divided into four streams: society, media, marketing and business. Like the past two meshes (Editor’s note: Is that a real word?), we encourage every session to be interactive with lots of Q&A, discussions and conversations.
You’ll also notice that the schedule has plenty of slots between sessions to network, do demos, relax, blog, etc.
The schedule for meshU, a one-day event featuring hands-on workshops about the tools used to build online applications/service, is also available.
Tickets for mesh can be purchased here, while meshU tickets are available here.
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mesh meetup and meshU student tix
One quick reminder and one update on meshU:
The quick reminder is that we’re having a mesh meetup at the Irish
Embassy tonight (April 21) starting at about 7:30, so swing on by if
you’re in town and get some pre-mesh socializing in — the snacks are
on us.
The update about meshU is that we’re releasing a batch of 25
discount-priced ($30) student tickets for the day-long workshop event (more
info at the meshU site), so if you’re studying Web
design or development or programming or anything along those lines –
or know someone who is — be sure to book a ticket soon, because they
will probably go quickly.
To be honest, offering student tickets was something we meant to do
from the beginning, but it kind of slipped through the cracks during
all the planning of mesh and meshU — thanks to a number of our
friends and fans for calling us on it. We think it’s a great way of
giving back to the community, and helping the young Web developers and
designers of tomorrow.
mesh on!
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John Resig at will be at meshU talking about jQuery for designers
You know how the web has become a much more enjoyable medium over the past couple of years? All this “web 2.0” user experience candy? A huge part of the reason is Mozilla Firefox and the way it’s gained significant market share. The Mozilla Foundation has used this market share to champion open standards instead of proprietary technologies in the browser experience. One of the major advances has been in the use of JavaScript, which brings us to a discussion of John Resig.
John is a Mozilla Evangelist and the lead developer of jQuery. Here is what Justin at FreshBooks has to say about jQuery:
jQuery is hugely important for a number of reasons.
First, by abstracting over heinous cross-browser compatibility issues, developers are encouraged to build rich web applications without being afraid that their slick designs will turn into a flaming ball of terrible at the most inopportune of times.
Second, while jQuery isn’t unique in this regard, I think it’s safe to say that it sets the Javascript Rockstar bar particularly low by providing an API that enables users to accomplish a lot with very little code.
Third, it actually makes it _easier_ to do The Right Thing than to do the “quick-and-dirty-get-it-done-as-fast-as-humanly-possible” way that leads to unmaintainable and unreadable code that you would never publicly admit to writing.
In case I did not mention it, Justin is a bit of a jQuery booster, but he is also our resident software philosopher and I respect his opinion immensely.
Anyway, back to John. He is coming to give a workshop for designers called, “Building Interactive Prototypes with jQuery” – that may sound like it’s for developers, but it’s not – its for designers. Here’s the full description:
The prototyping process is a delicate dance of writing the smallest amount of code needed to create a compelling demo. This challenge is compounded by the fact that designers typically have to wait on their development teams for, seemingly simple, results. Why not circumvent the whole process by writing your own interactive JavaScript code using a JavaScript library, jQuery, that understands how unobtrusive, CSS-based, design works.
This will be a hands-on demonstration, so please bring your laptop.
Please remember to tell all the web developers, designers and project managers you know about meshU. It occurs to me that entrepreneurs and/or anyone building a web application will want to be there too. Tickets are $239, which is positively a steal for this kind of content. Hope you can make it.
New meshU speakers and sessions: John Lax and Kevin Hale
The details of speakers and sessions for meshU continue to develop, and some great stuff has gone up on the site over the past few days. We’re very pleased to announce that John Lax of Teehan+Lax and Kevin Hale of Infinity Box (the mad geniuses behind Wufoo) are now locked and loaded - details on the site, and we’ll be saying more about these sessions soon.
I’m excited about everything we have coming up, but meshU is really starting to take shape and it’ll be a blast. Nice words from John about the lineup: “I am planning on doing something really special for the presentation because, to be honest, I am totally intimidated by the other speakers.” Join us! Tickets are on sale here.
Tags: Infinity Box, John Lax, Kevin Hale, mesh, mesh08, meshU, Teehan Lax, Wufoo
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Let’s mesh @ The Irish Embassy
After a lot of work behind the scenes, the preparations for mesh ‘08 and our new event, meshU, are nearly complete. We’ve got some great keynotes - Matt Mason, Club Penguin’s Lane Merrifield and Warner Brother’s Ethan Kaplan - and some terrific panels featuring people such as blip.TV’s Dina Kaplan, Digg’s Daniel Burka, RedFlagDeals’ Derek Szeto and and Techdirt’s Michael Masnick.
Needless to say, we’re excited! So, let’s get together for some pre-mesh conversation, food and a few adult beverages on April 21 at The Irish Embassy. (Update: why not drop by the Facebook page and let us know whether you’re coming)
Here are the details:
When: Monday, April 21
Where: The Irish Embassy Pub & Grill, 49 Yonge Street (Click here for the Google Map.)
Time: 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Tickets are going fast for mesh and meshU. You can purchase your mesh tickets here, and your meshU tickets here.
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Ryan Carson at mesh and meshU
One of the great privileges of travelling to conferences is you get to meet extraordinary people - people who inspire you. About two years ago, on a long day after speaking at Web 2.0, I bumped into Ryan Carson. We’d never met, but we’d exchanged emails and talked on the phone. We decided to grab a quick bite to eat and a long story short, over the next three hours I discovered I’d found a kindered spirit.
Ryan is a sharing entrepreneur. Using his blog, other peoples blogs and his conference company, he invests a tremendous amount of energy sharing what he has learned building several businesses - including two web applications (DropSend and Amigo).
Ryan is going to speaking at mesh about “founders stories” and meshU about making the jump from your 9-5 to becoming an entrepreneur:
Leaving your 9 to 5 to launch your own company is exciting but a bit scary. With everything riding on your success you need to make sure that you have the best advice from the folks who’ve done it all before - that’s where this start-up workshop comes in.
I’m delighted to have Ryan (who’s flying from England to join us) at meshU and mesh, and I want to congratulate him and his wife Gill on their one week old boy Jackson. Thanks for coming Ryan; especially during such a special time.
Avi Bryant will be turning the tables at meshU
Avi Bryant just shipped me info for his workshop for the development stream at meshU.
Avi is a bit of a genius, the developers at my office may or may not worship his mental ingenuity and technical creativity (my words, not theirs). But don’t take my/their word for it, Toronto tech scene instigator and Microsoftie David Crow sounded off last week…I trust others will follow.
Anyway, here is a bit about Avi’s workshop:
Turning the Tables: Moving Beyond Relational Storage
Google doesn’t store your GMail in a MySQL table. Your Amazon shopping cart doesn’t act_as_list. Orbitz doesn’t run a SELECT to find the best flights. But when choosing technology, nearly every new web startup will reach for a relational database. Why? Can we do better?
This workshop will take a tour through how and why many of the most successful web applications store data outside of the confines of a RDBMS. We’ll explore when you should follow conventional wisdom about persistence and when you should go your own way: whether that means using a memory store, flat files, an object database, or a data service like Amazon’s SimpleDB or Microsoft’s SSDS.
The technology you use at the beginning of a project will have a profound impact as you grow. Make a thoughtful and informed choice, and your users and developers will both thank you later.
And about the man himself:
Avi Bryant is a founder and co-CEO of Dabble DB, a venture-backed startup based in Vancouver, BC. He’s also the creator of the Seaside web framework, and has given keynotes at RailsConf, Smalltalk Solutions, and elsewhere about his unusual - some say heretical - approaches to web development.
Don’t forget to get your meshU tickets!
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