NWOACM

The Central Ohio ACM chapter has announced its upcoming meeting schedule (subject to change). Chapter meetings are usually held on the third Wednesday of each month. NWOACM members are welcome to attend!

Over on my blog, someone asked:

New to area and how do I find any info on local user groups???

Our page on Related organizations is a starting list - but we are sure there are more user groups.

What are we missing? Leave a comment here and we will add it.

The Toledo Area Linux Users Group has kicked off 2007 with a few meetings to re-organize. They are seeking feedback on their new constitution which they drafted yesterday, January 13th.

They will now gather on the 3rd Saturday of the month. Their next meeting will be:

Saturday, February 17, 2007
2:00pm to 5:00pm
Topic(s): To be determined
Location: Stautzenberger College, 5355 Southwyck Blvd

And you can also pencil in these 3rd Saturdays onto your calendar:

Save $50 on a world-class developers conference in Sandusky, Ohio, January 18-19. Register at codemash.org and use 06ZY86 as your "Sponsor Invitation Code".

CodeMash is a unique event that will educate developers on current practices, methodologies and technology trends in variety of platforms and development languages such as Java, .NET, Ruby and PHP.

Michigan State University is recruiting students now for the Fall 2007 launch of our Serious Game Design masters degree program. We seek outstanding students with a desire to create and study games which change the world.

Serious Games are games with a purpose beyond entertainment, including but not limited to games for learning, games for health, and games for policy and social change. Designing effective, engaging serious games requires theoretical understanding of learning, cognition, emotion, and play. Along with great game design, serious games need content and pedagogy expertise, design research, and impact research. Our graduate program can help you gain the knowledge and experience you will need.

The CIO Forum is planning more events. NWOACM used their Open Source Forum in 2005 to help kick our new group off. Their list of events for 2006/2007:

Thursday, December 7: Visit to Platform Labs new location on the UT campus for a luncheon

March 29, 2007 - Big Event - Digital Forensics

May 2007 - Bruce Petryshak (CIO, BGSU) has agreed to host the group on the BGSU campus

News from NWNUG:

Because the last Tuesday of the month falls on Halloween, I have
decided to bump this month's meeting up a week to October 24th.
November's meeting will be earlier too, in order to accomodate our
INETA speaker, and there will not be a meeting in December.

This month (October), we have Drew Robbins, our Microsoft
Developer Evangelist, stopping by to introduce the future of
Windows UI development to us. Windows Presentation Foundation
will be released soon as part of the upcoming .NET Framework v3.0.

Starting in 2007, we will likely move the regular meeting to the

"Continuing its effort to transition toward a knowledge-based economy, the Toledo/northwest Ohio region has added a new resource designed to help grow and attract technology-related businesses.

At a press conference this morning, Platform Lab announced its expansion into Toledo, promoting itself as a resource that will provide companies the ability to greatly improve their IT capabilities at a very low cost."

Read more: Toledo Attracts IT Test and Training Facility, Providing Competitive Advantage for Local Businesses

World Usability Day is November 14th - a series of events around the world in celebration of technology that improves our lives - see worldusabilityday.org.

We are trying to organize an NWOACM event on that day to be a part of it. Stay tuned.

Michigan is having a state-wide event (a conference at MSU's Usability and Accessibility Center) and Cleveland, Columbus and Dayton/Cincy are also planning events.

Attendees
Mike Brinkman, president
Keith Instone, secretary
Steve Stiles, treasurer
Julie Barnes
Larry Dunning
Mark Chandler

1. We are all set for another year of existence from an ACM standpoint
- we have completed the annual report and such.

2. Most in attendance paid their annual dues = $10 for ACM members.

3. Mike is in charge of finding a local restaurant (probably in the BG
area) for regular social / dinner gatherings. We agreed $20 per person
was a good target. Thinking about once every other month. There might
be some discussion topics, but we were thinking mostly using these as