Archive

Beer and Blog field trip narrowly misses disaster and a good time was had by all

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on April 28, 2008
in Announcements
. 1 Comment

Beer and Blog Racers are neck and neck in the final straight away at SyKart

Our field trip to SyKart was a blast! @samgrover captured several pics of the Beer and Blog Racers laying down some rubber. We had a great time and plan to have another field trip in a few weeks. We talked about going to Glowing Greens, Ground Kontrol, and Grand Central Bowl as some next options. If you have any requests, drop them in the comments below.

As a wild side story, originally we were going to take our field trip to Pat’s Acres, but we couldn’t because they were closed to the public due to a race they were hosting. Well, during that race a racer’s kart caught air flipping end over end! Miraculously the driver was unharmed and lived to tell his theory about why. The whole incident was caught on tape and can be seen on the KPTV website.

Screen cap of racer flying through the air from the kart crash video

Go Speedracer, go go Speedracer

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on April 24, 2008
in Announcements
. 0 Comments

speedracer.jpg

You may or may not know, but this Sunday is field trip day!!!! Instead of our traditional meet up, we’re going to take it to the track and see who is the fastest blogger of them all. Sure to be a good time had by all, this trip will be a good bonding activity. We’ll practice falling backwards into each others arms as a trust builder. Well, maybe we’ll just stick to the karting. ;)

We’re going to hit up SyKart on Sunday at 1pm. If you haven’t seen my review of the place, you can read about karting in Portland on the Portland is Awesome blog.

The SyKart lowdown is:

  • Driving Requirements - Drivers must have a valid license or take the driving school. Must buy a SyKart license, which is $5. Must have a helmet liner ($2 to buy one).
  • Price - $15/driver/session. Sessions are 10 mins.
  • Location - 8205 SW Hunziker St., Tigard, OR 97223
  • Hours - 11am–11pm Mon–Fri, 11:30am–11pm Sat, 11:30am–10pm Sun
  • Contact - 503-684-5060

Looking forward to whipping your asses seeing you all there! Please RSVP on Upcoming if you’re going to be there. :)

Jive’s lead designer, Michael Sigler, is going to show you how to make pretty images for your blog posts

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on April 17, 2008
in Announcements
. 0 Comments

Sigler Design Everyone knows that a blog with no images is hell to read. We also know that many times a picture is worth a 1,000 words. As nice as all of that is, most of us are not designers. Well, Michael Sigler is going to show you some tips from the pros about how they make kick-ass images to make posts more inviting. Sigler plans to share a few apps that you can use instead of Photoshop as well as some links to super helpful resources. If you’ve been wanting to know how to not only make your images beautiful, but also how to control them in the layout, don’t miss this session!

Sigler is also the one that has been working on the branding for Beer and Blog, so we plan to reveal it at tomorrow’s meet up. As usual, you can RSVP on Upcoming. ;)

See you there!

BTW, if you haven’t seen his latest graphic, check out Sam Lawrence’s blog, Go Big Always, to see the MS Bullet Point.

Driving traffic to your site from the social web with Brian Reeder

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on April 4, 2008
in Announcements
. 3 Comments

Brian Reeder Tonight we’re going to explore how does one get traffic to their site from places like Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and more. To help us understand more about social promotion, Brian Reeder is going to share some of his knowledge that has helped him build traffic from social news sites. If you don’t know him already, here’s some background:

Brian started off working with the db clay guys helping them make their hand-made duct tape wallets. He’s since taken on more content management and webmaster work. That lead to him finding the rabbit hole of social news, and now he’s the #9 Top Stumbler in the world and works in cahoots with the Top Diggers in the world. Check it:

Top Stumblers

Now, this isn’t going to be a session about how to game the algorithm for social news sites. Instead, it will be a discussion about some of the etiquette, tips for social friendly content, and the art of networking. If you maintain a site that could use more traffic, you NEED to come to this session. If you are going to come, head on over and RSVP on Upcoming.

Everything you wanted to know about OpenID but couldn’t ask Scott Kveton

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on March 22, 2008
in Announcements
. 1 Comment

kveton.png OK boys and girls, this week Scott Kveton is going to help us understand the ins and outs of OpenID and how to implement it on your blog. I know @turoczy will be excited about this because we wants OpenID back on the comments form for SiliconFlorist. If you don’t know about OpenID, here’s a great excerpt from their site:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins.

If you don’t know Scott Kveton, then you can’t come. Just kidding. :) It’s just that he’s kind of a big deal. Kveton is the Chair of the OpenID Foundation. He’s also worked some high-up positions in Jan Rain, MyStrands, and now Vidoop. I’m sure that we’ll also talk with Scott about Vidoop, which is the next generation in online identity validation (after passwords).

Here’s what it looks like when you have OpenID installed on your blog:
OpenID integrated in the comment form on a blog

You might want this on your blog because OpenID users only have to put in their ID and it autopopulates their name, website, and email address; which are the three things you have to enter on every blog in order to leave comments. Not only does it speed things up for your OpenID users, but it makes your blog look more progressive, which means you look cooler. Value and style, that’s OpenID on your blog.

It looks like the Green Dragon is working out great as a venue, so let’s do that again. If you do this sorta thing, RSVP on Upcoming.

Aaron Hockley will be breaking down Wordpress 2.5 for us

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on March 20, 2008
in Announcements
. 3 Comments

nav-wide.png
If you don’t know, Wordpress 2.5 is kind of a big deal. It will be significant Wordpress update. Aaron is saying he’ll convince you to switch to WP if you don’t use the WP already. I’d love to see @michaelsigler’s point of view on this. And some @chriskalani? @ahockley said it like this:

Aaron Hockley

WordPress 2.5 is due to be released any day now, and the upgrade offers both cosmetic and functionality enhancements for the WordPress platform. Come learn about what’s new, what looks different, what theme authors should know, and what plugin authors (and users) should keep in mind for the upgrade. And if you’re not currently using WordPress… come let me convince you to switch platforms.

We seemed to have a good time at the Green Dragon last time, so let’s do that again. If you do this sorta thing, RSVP on Upcoming.

Let’s try out the Green Dragon

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on March 14, 2008
in Announcements
. 0 Comments

Green Dragon Bistro and Brewpub Hey boys and girls, it’s the day of the week again when we get together over beers and work on some blog diggity. We’ve been searching for a venue that meets all of the unique needs for our group, and this week we’re trying the Green Dragon. The Lucky Lab has been great, but they only have 1 electrical outlet and when their Intarweb goes down it can be broken for a week or more. We tried Roots Brewery, but again, it was hard to find a suitable place that also rocked some nearby outlets. So, at the behest of @mtrichardson, we’re tryin’ out the Green Dragon tonight. There is no theme for this evening except for what is on the minds of the attendees. As usual, I’d love it if you would RSVP on Upcoming if you’re, well, coming.

Marshall Kirkpatrick to lead this week’s session on “Making your business’s blog a mover and a shaker”

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on March 5, 2008
in Announcements
. 5 Comments

Marshall Kirkpatrick as photographed by Thomas Hawk Oooohweee. I’m looking forward to this one. Marshall Kirkpatrick will lead a beer and blog session on how to make your business’s blog a mover and shaker. Corporate blogging has been a challenge for many businesses, so this session should provide some valuable insights from one of the web’s top blogging experts. If you’ve been waiting to check out beer and blog, this is definitely one not to miss.

If you are going, it’s always appreciated that you RSVP on Upcoming.

About Marshall
Marshall has been a lead writer for AOL and TechCrunch and is currently filling that role for Read/WriteWeb. In addition to blogging, he provides consulting services for strategy, usability, and promotion. If you would like to know more about him, check out his blog at http://www.marshallk.com/

Update your blog software

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on February 28, 2008
in Announcements
. 2 Comments

Update your blog softwareOne of the most common things people ask me about is how to update their blog. I know I have several outdated installations that could use an update to the most current version of my CMS, Wordpress. But, a manual update can take a while, and I’ve heard rumors of people using a thing called Subversion to magically update their blogs with the push of a button. Well, it’s high time we got to the bottom of this update Nirvana. So, this week we’ll focus on how to update your blog.

The truth is, I’m not sure how to do this. I’m going to do some research and bring my findings, but I’d love the attendees to look into this problem before hand as well. I’m especially looking for people to research solutions for CMSs other than Wordpress (or androgynous solutions).

If you’re planning on attending, it would be super cool if you’d RSVP on Upcoming.

Adam Duvander from Portland Web Innovators will be your guest host tomorrow!

Published
by
Justin Kistner
on February 21, 2008
in Announcements
. 0 Comments

VegasI will be leaving for Vegas tomorrow to celebrate with my lil bro who just turned 21. In the mean time, Adam Duvander from Portland Web Innovators will be your rockin’ guest host tomorrow. Beer and blog will be a work session tomorrow. Bring that little list of updates, bugs, and questions with you to the Lucky Lab from 4-6pm and make some progress on it! If you going, it would be sweet if you would RSVP on Upcoming, but it’s not required.

Look forward to hearing some good stories and sharing a few of my own when I get back!