I haven't blogged about COWPU in a while—possibly because there hasn't been a meeting lately, or possibly because, er, it might have slipped my mind—but there's a meeting this Wednesday, the 25th.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 5:30pm
G5 Search Marketing, 906 NW Harriman Street - Bend, OR 97701

Merb + ExtJs = Fun
Presented by Timmy Crawford, G5 Search Marketing

Agenda
5:30pm - Doors open, networking
5:50pm - Announcements and door prizes
6:00pm - Presentation

"Apres Geek" Beverages: Across the street at Blacksmith

COWPU stands for "Central Oregon Web Professionals Usergroup."

Web geeks (and other professionals), take note: next Friday, November 14th, there's a COWPU presentation on.

What:
Mark Turner will make a presentation on Git, the newest rage in version control.

When:
Friday, November 14th 2008
7:00 PM

Where:
The Bulletin
1777 SW Chandler Ave
Bend, OR 97702

Everyone is encouraged to bring beer and food.

If you're familiar with Twitter, then you likely know what a "tweet" more-or-less refers to. If you don't follow Twitter, then, ah... I guess you should start.

Julie Anderson (of Chubby Mommy Running Club fame) sends this along:

Alert! Impromptu "Tweet-Up" tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept. 24th) at the Black Smith restaurant, down town Bend. No host happy hour, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. Twitterers, bloggers, geeks, and friends all welcome. We may move on to a brew pub afterwards, depending on the crowd. At least 20 have confirmed, the more the merrier.

If you want to get in touch with Julie for more info, let me know and I'll pass it along. (I'm a little reticent about putting personal emails online. Don't we get enough spam?)

This is one of those thing I'd never heard of; but I imagine for people with diabetes, it's a pretty vital thing. Hosted by BMC, this is basically a press release in flyer format:

For children, adolescent, adult patients and their families.

Thursday, September 25, 2008
5:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Bend Memorial Clinic, Physicians Lounge (Second floor, upstairs from the main entrance)
Non-BMC Patients Welcome!

• Learn more about the insulin pump delivery system.
• Improve the effectiveness of boluses.
• Explore advanced insulin pump features.
• Troubleshoot with other insulin pump patients.

The COWPU blog has the details on the latest usergroup meeting:

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 4:00pm

Topic: The ultimate web balance between brand, search, content
Location: McMenamin's Old St Francis School - Rambler Room

Agenda:
4:00pm - Doors open, networking
4:30pm - Announcements and door prizes
4:45pm - Presentation

Starting at 4? Seems a bit early, most other meetings have started around 6.

The August COWPU meeting is taking place tonight, the 1st, but it's not the usual type of meeting:

Topic: Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Location: Vince Genna Stadium

Don't miss out!!

Enjoy a laid back evening at the ball park with the COWPU crew (and maybe some of our friends from BendTech, WoTech, and COISUG). Bring your family, friends, or anyone else you want to cheer, chicken-dance, and do the YMCA with. This will be a great chance to network and enjoy the laid-back fun at the game!

It starts at 6:30, and there will be beer involved.

The July meeting for COWPU has been posted. It's Tuesday, July 1st at 6pm at the McKay Cottage. The topic is Amazon Web Services.

Topic: Amazon Web Services - Is "Cloud Computing" the answer?

So you've created a sweet web application... now what? Age old decisions come into play when determining where to host the application, who's going to manage the servers, and how much bandwidth is needed. Is "Cloud Computing" the answer? Can you really just "throw" your application on the cloud and have all your hosting nightmares disappear?

For the next COWPU meeting we will be discussing this new paradigm of cloud computing ushered in by Amazon Web Services. This new way of doing things forces developers and administrators to think in an entirely different way when implementing a solution on the cloud.

Definitely an interesting topic for web developers. Be there!

Late notice, I know. The June COWPU meeting (Central Oregon Web Professionals Usergroup) is Monday, June 2nd.

Topic: Nothing in particular
Location: McKay Cottage

Hello fellow Cowpuddlians!

The first of the month is just around the corner. Our group has McKay Cottage for June 2 at 6pm. The restaurant is offering a nice dinner for anyone that wishes to purchase a meal:

- Warm Goat Cheese Salad (Caramelized walnuts, roasted peppers, mixed greens, goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.)
- Pesto Chicken Pasta (Chicken and radiatori pasta served with a creamy pesto sauce, pine nuts, sun dried tomatoes, and mushrooms topped with fresh Parmesan.)
- Apple Cinnamon Bread Pudding (Egg bread custard with chunks of tart apples and cinnamon, served with whiskey sauce.)
$11.95

Yummm... sure sounds good, doesn't it?! Please contact Jen directly if you wish to purchase a meal.

There is no speaker for this meeting, unless someone would like to step forward at the last minute. On the other hand, this might be a nice opportunity for us to socialize and chat about our projects and summer plans.

Doors open at 6pm, dinner is served at 6:30.

This card came in the mail today, and while I assume a bunch of people probably got it as well, I'm not sure what the Park & Rec's selection criteria might be—and I figured this would be something of interest to a lot of people.

Yeah, I'm lazy/geeky enough to scan it rather than re-type in the details.

Yes, it's a bit short on notice, but this Wednesday, April 30th, is another local blogger get-together. This time it's being held at the The Summit Saloon and Stage, downtown in the old O'Kane Building at 125 NW Oregon Avenue.

It starts at "5:30ish" and the "official" description I have to pass on is:

The first blogger meetup was a big success! Since then there's been a lot of growth and new folks have popped up in our local "blogosphere". Meetups like this are a nice chance for all of us to gather, unwind, and put some faces together with the blogs.

This event is primarily intended for bloggers who wish to meet other bloggers. If you don't have a blog, then this may not be the get-together for you. So, if you just can't stand not being there and don't already have a blog... what are you waiting for?!

I'll be there for sure. Will you?

The title says it all. Though if you're unfamiliar, "COWPU" stands for Central Oregon Web Professionals Usergroup. The meeting is indeed on April Fool's Day.

Topic: Make Your Site Go Faster with Web Caching (by Ricardo Newbery)
Location: McKay Cottage

A presentation by web application developer, Ricardo Newbery, on web caching principles and technologies. We will talk about basic principles and concrete examples of application caching, proxy caching, and browser caching.

Doors open at 5:30.

(Lifted from the COWPU site, credit Jen for writing it and Shannon for organizing it.)

Feb 21, 5:30ish at the Blacksmith (happy hour, woot!), Downtown Bend
RSVP to Shannon at shanlee at gmail.com

Keep in mind, this is intended for bloggers who wish to meet other bloggers. This will be a nice chance for all of us to gather, and put some faces together with the blogs. If you don't have a blog, then this may not be the get-together for you. So, if you just can't stand not being there and don't already have a blog... what are you waiting for?!

Scott says,

The Central Oregon Inventor's Group will be meeting November 12th, from 6pm to 8pm, at the Central Oregon Environmental Center.

Our speaker will be Patrick Kruse, the Owner of Ruff Wear. Ruff Wear is the leading manufacturer of gear For Dogs On The Go®.

Location: Central Oregon Environmental Center, Audubon Room, 16 NW Kansas, Bend
Time: November 12th, from 6pm to 8pm.

This sounds interesting—more interesting, I have to admit, than when I first misread this as "Investors" rather than Inventors.

Wish they had a website, though. One of the few things I found online about them was a mention in this Bulletin article.

Ah, the Central Oregon Web Professionals Usergroup (ie, COWPU)... every time I hear about the next meeting or think to look when it is, it's the day before and I already have plans. Well, I already have plans for tomorrow, but it sounds good to those who can make it. Jen writes:

I have gifts (including books from O'Reilly Publishing) that will be raffled following Ricardo's presentation. Everyone that attends will receive a raffle ticket. In addition, if you bring a friend and/or RSVP for the meeting (on upcoming.org or leave a comment) you will receive another raffle ticket.

Tomorrow's meeting (that's Wednesday, June 20th) will be held at the Deschutes Public Library. Here's the pertinent details from the Upcoming page:

The topic this month is Plone CMS presented by Ric Newbery.

Come check out Plone CMS, an open source content management system used by organizations as diverse as NASA, Marriott, Continental Airlines, Oxfam, eBay, Trolltech, Nokia, and Creative Commons. Supported by thousands of developers from around the world, Plone is one of the most sophisticated, popular, and easy to use Enterprise Content Management Systems on the market today.

After the presentation we will head down the street to O'Kanes Pub (at McMenamin's) for socializing around the outdoor fireplace!

Agenda:
6:00pm - Networking and discussion
6:30pm - Presentation by Ric
8:00pm - Social at McMenamin's - O'Kanes Pub

Jen has announced on her blog the next meeting of the local web professionals usergroup on Wednesday, December 6th.

Programmers, SEO-er's, Web developers & designers in Central Oregon... This is an opportunity to network and share ideas with others in your field! This month's topic is citywide wifi. (Big thanks to Ricardo for suggesting this topic!) Frank Miller from Bendbroadband will be joining us to talk about Instanet To Go and other exciting technology coming to Bend in the near future.

Agenda:
6:00pm - Pizza and networking
6:30pm - Presentation by Bendbroadband

The meeting will be at Edge Wireless on Columbia Street. If you can attend, leave a comment on Jen's post or visit the Upcoming.org page for this event.

Jen has posted a notice for a web developer (and programmer/coder and designer) user group meeting to kick off on Wednesday, October 11 (and crossposted here on craigslist).

This is an opportunity to network and share ideas with others in your field! This kick-off meeting is intended as a meet-and-greet, and to find out what topics are of interest to attendees in Central Oregon.

The meeting will be held at Edge Wireless Corporate Headquarters, 650 SW Columbia Street. Pizza and sodas will be provided.

This is something I've been interested in for awhile, and I know Jen and Jake have blogged about this before. Looks like it's finally on.

Excellent! I'll try to be there myself.