Washington DC - Development Seed

Week in DC Tech: May 21

Development Seed — 2012-05-21T00:00:00-07:00

Want to take a look at the data on access to financial resources in Kenya and other countries, get the scoop on how to best leverage networks in startups, or learn how to grow your own food? There are meetups on these topics and others happening this week in Washington, DC. Below is our roundup of the technology events happening in town.

Monday, May 21

6:30 pm

Urban Farming Workshop: This workshop will teach DCers how to grow their own food in the city, take advantage of community gardens and farmers markets, and eat local. Come out for tips or to learn more about urban farming.

Tuesday, May 22

3:30 - 5:00 pm

Tracking Progress Toward Financial Access: This event, hosted by the New America Foundation, will look at the data on financial inclusion in Kenya, covering everything from traditional banks to microfinance institutions to mobile money’s impact on access. Our partners MIX Market will be there to talk about the latest microfinance data, including data visualizations like this one of South Africa.

6:00 pm

HackEDU Happy Hour: Do you work in education, or are you interested in bringing smarter technology to the space? Come out to this social event to meet other people working to improve education through better use of technology.

Wednesday, May 23

6:00 - 8:00 pm

Women Who Tech Cocktail Party: Come out for drinks and conversation with other ladies working in technology. This network spans across many technology fields and is a great resource for making new friends and connections between women working in technology.

6:30 pm

MongoDC Meetup: This month’s meetup will feature presentations on running MongoDB and on Variety, a schema analyzer for MongoDB. There will also be an open Q&A on anything topical.

Thursday, May 24

6:30 - 9:00 pm

Tech Cocktail’s Speaker Series: This event, the first in a series of presentations from entrepreneurs, will discuss how to best build and leverage a network to grow your startup.

Week in DC Tech: May 14

Development Seed — 2012-05-14T00:00:00-07:00

Interested in connecting with developers about node.js, HTML5, or R? How about learning about the history of mapping Washington, DC, or seeing examples of women using technology to change the world? These are just some of the technology events happening this week in Washington, DC, with more of our picks listed in the roundup below.

Tuesday, May 15

7:00 pm

NetSquared Meetup: Cloud Reality Check: Want to know why the cloud is so talked about? Come out to this meetup for a run down on what the cloud is, what its benefits are, and how it can help you and your organization.

Wednesday, May 16

5:00 pm

DC HTML5 Meetup: This meetup will bring together developers using HTML5 to connect and hear presentations by other developers on what they’re working on and tricks they’ve learned along the way.

6:30 pm

Interesting Visualizations with R: The R users group is meeting this month to talk about different visualization techniques in R, including one talk from the Census on making choropleth maps in R.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Looking for a fast, flexible, and scalable base for your next project? Node.js could be a good option. This meetup brings together local node.js developers to connect, talk shop, and learn through several short lightning talks.

Friday, May 18

All day (and Saturday)

Visualizing the Nation’s Capital: Two Centuries of Mapping Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress is hosting this two day conference on the history of Washington, DC, the planning of the city, and how mapping it has evolved from Washington’s day to today.

All day

Change Your World Conference: This one day event will showcase ways that women are using technology to influence policy, effect government, communicate with citizens, advocate for social issues, and effectively help change the world. Come out to hear some great case studies and meet interesting people.

All day

Drupal Government Day: This all day event will look at how open source software - specifically but not only Drupal - can be implemented in the government to improve online tools, communication, and efficiencies.

Week in DC Tech: May 7

Development Seed — 2012-05-07T00:00:00-07:00

As usual there are a lot of technology events happening in Washington, DC this week, from co-working opportunities, to discussions on node.js and jQuery, to random learning opportunities at Nerd Nite. Here’s our roundup of ones to hit.

Tuesday, May 8

6:30 pm

NovaNode Event: At this meetup, the folks from Doodle or Die - an online drawing game - will present on how and why they used node.js to build their application.

Wednesday, May 9

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls: Here’s your chance to work late with more than just your laptop to keep you company. Come out to work on a project and be ready to introduce yourself and your work to others.

Thursday, May 10

6:30 pm

DC Droids: The monthly Android meetup will feature a presentation by the developer behind CardioTrainer, an app with more than 5 million downloads, on how APIs and other tools can help expand your reach and market share.

7:00 pm

DC jQuery Meetup: Are you a jQuery developer? Come out to this meetup to hear presentations on building HTML5, jQuery Mobile, and PhoneGap apps connected to a cloud-based REST service using Tiggzi, and one on using jQuery with Raphaël to create interactive vector graphics

Saturday, May 12

6:00 pm

Nerd Nite: Don’t miss the last Nerd Nite before it goes on summer vacation. There will be three talks on organic chemistry, photosynthesis, and germs, mixed in with local music and of course drinks.

Week in DC Tech: April 30

Development Seed — 2012-04-30T00:00:00-07:00

A lot of international development folks are in town this week for the annual InterAction Forum, which is giving more of a focus to geo tools’ role in development. This leads to many interesting events this week around crisis mapping, disaster response, and OpenStreetMap, in addition to big draws like the monthly DC Tech meetup. Here is our roundup of technology events this week in Washington, DC. Have a great week!

Monday, April 30

6:30 pm

Data Science DC: This meetup will feature a presentation on how information and data visualization can help further science and lead to new and different discoveries. Come out to see examples of visualization tools and what’s possible and success stories of visualization leading new products, approaches, and knowledge.

Tuesday, May 1

7:00 pm

DC Tech Meetup #13: Hacks, Code, and Creative: This meetup always blows up and it looks like this month is no exception with more than 1,000 people RSVPing. Come out to meet them and hear 12 lightning talks on new projects, ideas, and the technology behind them.

Wednesday, May 2

6:00 pm

International Development and ICT4D DC Meetup: This happy hour and tweet up will bring together folks attending the InterAction Forum and those just working in international development to connect and talk about how technology can be used to better advance the field.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC Meetup: Crisis Mapping: This month’s meetup will feature five talks on crisis mapping, specifically looking at the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team’s work in Haiti and beyond, new preparedness experiments, and mapping in Indonesia and the jungles of Mexico. Come out to hear some great talks and meet other folks interested in international development and crisis mapping.

Thursday, May 3

9:00 - 10:30 am

Crowdsourcing for Disaster and Humanitarian Response: In this panel discussion, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team will discuss how free, collaborative maps like OpenStreetMap are uniquely valuable to humanitarian work and how to use and verified crowdsourced data to grow the geo dataset. RSVP here.

1:00 - 6:00 pm

New Tools in Mapping for Disasters and Development: The World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and InterAction are holding this half day workshop to teach people how to use free and open source mapping and GIS tools in projects and showcase successful examples of how they’ve been used successfully in disaster and development scenarios. We will be there to walk through how to make custom web maps with TileMill.

Open Government Happy Hour Tomorrow

Development Seed — 2012-04-26T00:00:00-07:00

We’re opening up the Development Seed garage for the first time this spring to host anopen government happy hour tomorrow (Friday, April 27). This event will kick off Transparency Camp, a two day unconference that brings together open data and open government advocates to act to make the government more transparent and accountable. It will be a great opportunity to start the conversation around what’s needed to open up more data and promote open by default within the government and other agencies.

The happy hour will run from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, where we’ll be serving up cold beers and tasty empanadas while they last. Our garage is located at 174 14th Street NW, between R and S streets. We’re off the alley, so walk around back and look for our sign.

April NodeDC Meetup Tonight at 7pm

Development Seed — 2012-04-25T00:00:00-07:00

The monthly NodeDC meetup is tonight (April 25) at 7:00 pm at Stetson’s Famous Bar and Grill, by the intersection of 16th and U streets NW. This meetup brings together node.js developers and those interested in learning more about the server side JavaScript system. If you’re looking for fast, highly performant software for the online tools you build, you’ll want to check out node.js.

There are two lightning talks on the lineup for tonight:

Dane Springmeyer is in town for a visit and will give an introduction to message passing in node.js, which is critical to scale programs across many cores and machines. He’ll review useful tools, and cover the ‘child_process’ module, the new ‘cluster’ module, and third-party add on’s like zeromq.node.
Aaron Silverman will talk about his experiences using free sandbox hosting services like nodester and nodejitsu for hosting node.js.

Talks will start at 7:30 pm, after introductions of the group. More details on the meetup are at nodedc.github.com.

This event happens once a month. For updates on it and the group’s members, follow @nodedc on Twitter, join the meetup group, and watch the event site on github.

Week in DC Tech: April 23

Development Seed — 2012-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

There are several exciting events happening in Washington, DC this week. The always fun Transparency Camp is bringing together folks to hack for open government this weekend, and we’re kicking it off with a happy hour here in the Development Seed garage on Friday night. Plus there are meetups for node.js, DC Media Makers, DC nightowls, and others. See our roundup below, and have a great week!

Monday, April 23

7:00 pm

DC Media Makers: The future of books is in hot debate as book stores continue to close and more people are using tablets. Come to this meetup to debate what’s in store for books, and see a new interactive documentary-book from the folks at Arcade Sunshine.

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls: Work into the night with other people pushing hard on their projects. This group brings together folks to work together, share their projects, and identify possible points of collaboration.

Wednesday, April 25

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Node.js is one of the hottest software systems at the moment, known for it’s speed and flexibility. Come out to see how people are using it, what they’re building, and learn more about node.js

Friday, April 27

6:30 - 8:30 pm

Open Government Happy Hour: To kick off Transparency Camp this weekend we’re hosting an open government happy hour. Come out to meet other folks pushing for more open data, transparency, and collaboration in the government space and beyond.

Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29

9:00 am - 6:00 pm

Transparency Camp: This annual unconference brings together developers, government folks, journalists, and advocates to discuss and actively work toward making the government more transparent, accountable, and open. Come out to talk about what should be done and start hacking on solutions.

Week in DC Tech: April 16

Development Seed — 2012-04-16T00:00:00-07:00

Happy Emancipation Day! Today in Washington, DC we celebrate our only city-specific holiday, honoring Abraham Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves in the District nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation. While some offices are closed today, there are still some great technology events happening today and the rest of the week, including an open government developer meeting today at the FCC, startup events, and networking and shared working meetups.

Monday, April 16

11:00 am - 3:00 pm

FCC’s .Gov Developer Meetup: The FCC is hosting this event to bring together .gov developers across agencies to talk about how they can better work with and maintain data that’s being opened up under open government initiatives. Some of the topics they’ll touch on are APIs, open data storage, improved collaboration, and web services around data. Check it out if you’re a .gov developer or are working with government data.

Tuesday, April 18

7:00 pm

NetSquared: This month’s NetSquared meetup will recap the best sessions and takeaways at last month’s SXSW and NTEN conferences. If you weren’t able to attend - or were and want to give your input - come out to get the scoop.

8:30 pm - midnight

DC Nightowls: This week’s Nightowls meetup will be at Skyline Innovations in Dupont. Bring your laptop and be ready to share what you’re working on and get and give feedback with other participants.

Wednesday, April 19

8:30 am

Pitchit!: This startup event, held at USA Today’s offices, gives folks the opportunity to pitch their idea, get feedback from a group of investors and mentors, and possibly win $50,000 to move their idea forward.

6:00 pm

Hacker News Happy Hour: Come out to this happy to meet other Hacker News readers, demo your latest project or idea, pitch your startup, or just talk about technology with likeminded folks.

Week in DC Tech: April 9

Development Seed — 2012-04-09T00:00:00-07:00

It’s another busy week for technology folks here in DC, with events for pitching TechCrunch, bowling with jQuery developers, and nerding out over beers, presentations, and local music at Nerd Nite. The open source geo conference FOSS4G is also in town this week, holding a three day event on advancing open source in the geospatial space. It should be a fun week!

Monday, April 9

6:00 - 10:00 pm

TechCrunch DC Meetup: TechCrunch is in town and hosting a networking event tonight at RFD. TechCrunch writers will be there looking for pitches and ideas to add to their coverage, and are asking folks to bring their ipads loaded with their pitch decks.

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Meetups@MLK - Prelaunch: This meetup for meetup organizers will show what the Martin Luther King library has to offer in terms of space and equipment, and allow organizers to give feedback on how to best accommodate great events for the local tech community.

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls: Want to work late tonight with the support of others burning the midnight oil? Come out to the Nightowls meetup with your computer and latest project to work on and share with the group.

Tuesday, April 10

All day

FOSS4G Conference: Tomorrow and Wednesday developers and implementers will gather to discuss open source geospatial technology, touching on cool existing technologies and what’s needed to continue advancing moving forward. We’ll be there talking about the future of web mapping, our street-level map of the world, and cartography. Tickets are still available at the door.

6:30 pm

Node.js Explained: This month’s NoVa:JS meetup will feature a presentation on node.js, focusing on the basic theory and programming model central to Node’s approach and discussing the benefits and challenges that come with it. This meetup is in Reston, VA.

Thursday, April 12

7:00 pm

DC jQuery Meetup: Eleven members of the jQuery core team will be joining the DC jQuery group this month to talk about the JavaScript library and answer hands on questions for anyone having trouble figuring something out. Come out to pick their brains and meet other developers.

Friday, April 13

6:00 - 10:00 pm

Bowling for jQuery: Dinner, desserts, drinks, bowling, and jquery! This event will bring out several members of the core jQuery team along with local developers to kick back and talk code (and bowling).

Saturday, April 14

6:30 - 9:30 pm

Nerd Nite: Like to learn something on your Saturday evenings? This month’s Nerd Nite will feature talks on typography, the Nobel Prize sperm bank, and quantum computers, with music breaks from local band J Street.

Week in DC Tech: April 2

Development Seed — 2012-04-02T00:00:00-07:00

Want to learn what local people are doing with web maps or Python, or want to hear why big data and open source matter in business? Then check out the meetups happening this week in Washington, DC. Below is our roundup of the week’s events, and you can find more over at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, April 3

7:00 pm

DC Python: This month’s Python group meetup will feature a presentation on using the Python API to send push notifications to iOS, Android, and BlackBerry.

Wednesday, April 4

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC: Like to talk maps, GIS, and geo data? Come out for this lively meetup, which this month features lightning talks on rendering dynamic tiles with Mapnik and Tilelive and the new transit app OpenTripPlanner.

Thursday, April 5

6:00 pm

Open Analytics DC: This meetup will discuss the business value of big data and open source technologies, touching on the benefits of open source and agile building, and the performance and scalability of open tools.

Week in DC Tech: March 19th

Development Seed — 2012-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

Want to meet other developers using node.js or MongoDB, hear short stories from journalists and others about their work, or get advice straight from entrepreneurs who “made it”? Then check out the tech events happening this week in Washington, DC. Our roundup is below, and a full calendar is available at DC Tech Events.

Monday, March 19

7:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Come out for two talks on using node.js to visualize data - one on solving the problem of analyzing road density data with redis, d3, sqlite, and polymaps, and one on turning Capital Bikeshare data into a scoreboard of fastest point-to-point trips using the Persevere API.

Tuesday, March 20

6:30 pm

DC Lean Startup Circle: This meetup on “Lessons Learned the Hard Way” will have the founders of CareerBuilder and Evite sharing stories and advice gleamed from the trenches of startups to help others avoid mistakes they made.

Wednesday, March 21

6:30 pm

ONA DC: This month NPR is hosting the online news association meetup, which will feature five minute lightning talks on how journalists are using online technology in their reporting.

6:30 pm

MongoDC Meetup: Want to learn more about MongoDB and meet folks using it? Check out this meetup. There will also be a presentation on the new MongoDB Aggregation Framework.

Thursday, March 22

6:00 - 11:00 pm

IgniteDC #9: 16 artists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers will talk for five minutes using 20 slides on topics like Syria, Super PACs, DJs, and “Sht We All Say” at this event. Come out to hear their stories.

Week in DC Tech: March 12th

Development Seed — 2012-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

Spring has hit Washington, DC with temperatures in the 70s all week. But if you can pull yourself inside, there are some good technology events scheduled. Below is our roundup for the week, and you can find a full calendar at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, March 13

6:00 - 8:00 pm

DC Women in GIS: This group brings together women working in GIS and mapping technologies from across the DC region. The inaugural meetup drew a good and energetic crowd - it will be fun to see how this group grows with the geo explosion happening now in the city.

7:00 pm

Pair Programming: Want to hack on a problem with the help of another programmer? Come out to this meetup ready to program with a partner.

Wednesday, March 14

6:30 - 8:30 pm

Legal Issues for Founders: Legal missteps can cause some of the biggest headaches for entrepreneurs. In this event, a VC and startup lawyer will discuss the biggest issues to look for and be sure to nail from the start.

8:30 pm - 3:00 am

DC Nightowls: Bring a laptop and be ready to get to work with others into the night. Introductions will give you a chance to get to know other folks and become familiar with their projects, and of course to see if there’s overlap and possibilities for collaboration.

Week in DC Tech: March 5th

Development Seed — 2012-03-05T00:00:00-08:00

Whether you’re looking for a progressive and technological crowd to watch Super Tuesday results roll in with, celebrate or get advice on start ups, or learn the latest technology power or uses of mapping, there are meetups for you this week in Washington, DC. Below is our roundup of the week’s events.

Monday, March 5

6:00 - 9:00 pm

#DCTech SXSW Pre-Party: Headed to SXSW? Come out to meet local folks before hitting the larger conference, or just stop by to meet other folks interested in an event like SXSW.

Tuesday, March 6

6:30 - 8:30 pm

DC Com Tech for Progress: Super Meetup: Join other progressives to hear from for U.S CTO Aneesh Chopra and co-chair of Technology for Obama Adam Riggs talk about the technology they’re utilizing, where it’s headed, and what can be done to help the reelection campaign. Following the presentations, the group will watch Super Tuesday results come in over drinks.

7:00 pm

DC Python Meetup: This month’s meetup will feature a talk on the geospatial data and maps used in Everyblock.

7:30 - 10:00 pm

Entreprelooza!: This party is in support and celebration of entrepreneurs and the folks behind startups, and will bring folks together to watch CTRL, ALT…Compete, a documentary about startup life. Followed by a date auction, of course. Sound intriguing? Come out to experience it and meet people leading local technology startups.

Wednesday, March 7

6:30 8:30 pm

Book Discussion: The Partnership Charter: David Gage, author of The Partnership Charter, will speak on building and maintaining business partnerships among startup founders, specifically talking on points such as managing expectations, scenario planning, and conflict resolution. He’ll also be taking audience questions.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

Geo DC Meetup: This month’s Geo DC meetup - bringing together folks interested in geography, mapping, geodata, and data visualization - will feature four lightning talks on topics ranging from Maryland’s opening up of GIS data to mapping disputed waterways and food truck movements to looking at map projections in new and interesting ways. Come early to get a drink - these meetups draw a crowd.

Week in DC Tech: February 27th

Development Seed — 2012-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

Data is the focus of several events in Washington, DC this week, with the weekend’s Datadrive to help nonprofits better use, visualize, and make decisions with their data, and the Big Data meetup. There are also events around startups, networking, and more. Check out our roundup below, and visit DC Tech Events for the full calendar.

Monday, February 27

8:30 pm

DC Nightowls Co-Working Group: Looking for some camaraderie as you work into the wee hours of the night? This event will give you a chance to do so while meeting new people and hearing what they’re working on.

Tuesday, February 28

6:30 pm

Startup Rockstars 11: Want to meet the people behind and working at local startups? This meetup is a great opportunity, with three presentations on local startups mixed in with time for networking.

Wednesday, February 29

6:30 pm

Big Data DC: This month’s meetup will feature presentations on the production practicalities of developing on CouchDB, along with some case studies, and on the distributed database solution Riak. This meetup is in McLean, VA.

Friday, March 2

7:00 pm

DC Data Drive Opening Mixer: Listen to participating organizations pitch their data and where they need help, before breaking to talk data and data solutions over drinks. This is the opening happy hour for this weekend’s Data Without Borders Datadive.

This Weekend

9:00 am - 6:00 pm (Noon on Sunday)

Data Without Borders Datadive: This weekend event organized by the New America Foundation will bring together socially conscious organizations that have data and want to use it with people who can help them analyze it, open it, visualize it, and get it into people’s hands. Sign up and join a team to make data more actionable.

Week in DC Tech: President's Day Edition

Development Seed — 2012-02-20T00:00:00-08:00

Happy President’s Day! While it’s a short week for some, it’s still a full week of technology events in the city. Below are our picks for the week, and you can find a full calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Monday, February 20

7:00 pm

NodeDC + DCjQuery Meetup: Tonight the NodeDC and DCjQuery groups are joining forces for a joint meetup on all things JavaScript. Lightning talks will cover topics like async.js, HTML Canvas, and building gaming sites. Come out to learn about Node.js and meet developers working with it, jQuery, and JavaScript.

Tuesday, February 21

7:00 pm

Django District: This month’s Django meetup will have lightning talks on seven different topics related to the web framework, ranging from integrating EC2 and Github to building multilingual sites to what’s coming in Django 1.4. Come out to learn more about Django and meet other developers using it.

NetSquared Meetup: This month NetSquared will host a conversation with Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet, where he’ll discuss his book and answer questions.

Wednesday, February 22

7:00 pm

ONA DC: This month’s meetup will look at LegiStorm, a site that puts out data on Congress and all of its staff. Specifically, folks from LegiStorm will demo their new paid subscription service and show what data it includes.

Thursday, February 23

7:15 pm

Selenium Basics: This month’s meetup around Selenium, a web application testing system that automates browsers, will cover the basics of creating and running tests.

Week in DC Tech: Social Media Week

Development Seed — 2012-02-13T00:00:00-08:00

It’s Social Media Week, and here in Washington, DC we’re joining other cities around the world to celebrate. Below are our event picks for the week, and I recommend you check out the full Social Media Week calendar to see which of the 10+ daily events you want to attend.

Tuesday, February 14

8:30 am

We Love DC: Head to Dupont Circle to check out this pop-up photo booth where OnomonoMEDIA and the People’s District will be asking people “what do you love about Washington?”. The exhibit will highlight the “wonderful and unique elements of DC” - from the monuments and history to food trucks and jumbo slice.

Wednesday, February 15

10:00 am - noon

Beyond the PDF: This event hosted by the Center for Digital Information will look at how policy and research organizations can better use technology, data, and data visualization tools to stretch the use and utility of their reports, whitepapers, books, and policy briefs.

6:00 pm

Digital Trivia Night: Pub trivia with a technical spin. Come test out your knowledge of technology minutiae with the chance to win a $100 bar tab.

7:00 pm

DC Tech Meetup: This month’s DC Tech meetup - always a packed event - will have five short demos of new platforms, and talks on social media by Macon Phillips from the White House and Joaquin Alvarado from American Public Radio.

Thursday, February 16

5:30 - 8:30 pm

Who was Really Behind Internet Blackout Day?: This panel discussion will look at who was behind the “Internet Blackout Day” to protest SOPA and PIPA and what caused the most impact. Happy hour planned for after the discussion.

6:30 pm

Refresh DC: This month’s meetup will tie into Social Media Week, with the art director from nclud talking about new approaches and best practices for social media design.

6:30 - 9:30 pm

Tech Cocktail’s DC Winter Mixer: Come out to meet technologists, investors, bloggers, and entrepreneurs over cocktails and find out the latest projects folks are working on.

This Weekend

9:00 am - 5:00 pm

RootsCamp: This two day unconference brings together organizers and campaigners to learn the latest techniques and strategies around getting their message out online, engaging their audience, and successfully communicating their message. Eric and DJ will be there showing folks how to make custom web maps with TileMill.

9:00 am - 6:00 pm

OpenStreetMap Hack Weekend: Come help improve OpenStreetMap this weekend. Just bring a laptop and be ready to hack on some core components, editors, documentation, data, and anything else that could use some love. Tom and AJ will be there to help from our team.

Week in DC Tech: February 6th

Development Seed — 2012-02-06T00:00:00-08:00

There is a lot happening in the technology scene this week in Washington, DC, with events on openness in government, R, and mobiles in international development. Add to the mix two storytelling events and some happy hours, and it’s a great week. Below is our roundup of events, and you can find a full calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, February 7

7:00 - 9:00 pm

The Anecdote: Stories about Not Love: In preparation of Valentine’s Day - or in spite of it - come out for a night of storytelling about failed love, dating troubles, and overall bad romance. Danny Harris from the People’s District - whose stories we helped map - is one of the presenters.

Wednesday, February 8

9:00 - 10:00 am

Open Innovation: Tools to Solve Problems and Grow the Economy: At this event held by the Center for American Progress, exiting U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra will talk about his work pushing for open policies around innovation and how the government can stay on track - and open - moving forward.

Thursday, February 9

3:30 - 5:30 pm

Mobile Disconnect: Can Mobile Solutions Really Combat Global Poverty?: This panel discussion hosted by the New America Foundation will look at the potential of mobile phones aiding international development and political activism, and also the limitations in their use.

6:00 - 10:00 pm

ICT4Drinks in DC: After the Mobile Disconnect event, attendees and others in the international development and technology sectors will meet to continue the discussion over drinks. If you want to talk mobiles in development and pick the brains of presenters and attendees, check this out.

6:30 pm

R Lightning Talks: Want to dip your toe into a bunch of different topics around R? This month’s R user group will feature seven lightning talks on topics like R’s spatial tools, version control in Git, and webscraping with R.

Saturday, February 11

6:30 - 9:30 pm

Nerd Nite: Nerds in Love: Want to start your Saturday night by learning about the science of love, sexual attraction to objects, and frogs mixed with some drinks and live music? Then Nerd Nite at DC9 is your ticket.

Week in DC Tech: January 30th Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-30T00:00:00-08:00

There are several interesting events happening this week in Washington, DC, from strategically using open data to improve response to climate change to mapping traditionally undocumented areas and slums to talking real-time data at Tech@State. See our roundup below for the events we’re hoping to attend this month, and find a full calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, January 31

Noon to 1:30 pm

World Bank Climate Data Briefing: On the heels of opening up of a large climate dataset, the World Bank is hosting this discussion on how open data can help respond to climate change. This meeting is specifically focused on developers working with data and data visualizations, and climate change experts. Alex and Eric will be there to talk about the benefits of open data and how to release it in usable ways.

Wednesday, February 1

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC Meetup: This month’s meetup will look at mapping slums and other un ddocumented areas, with speakers presenting on the techniques they’ve successfully used to map areas in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, East Jerusalem, Cite Soleil, and more. Really looking forward to this one.

Thursday, February 2

7:00 - 9:00 pm

CocoaHeads Meetup: This meetup will feature two presentations from Apple developers and give you a chance to meet and talk with local developers building on the platform.

Friday, February 3

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Tech@State: Real-Time Awareness: Access to real-time data and the ability to quickly process and analyze can tremendously help when responding to disasters and breaking events. Tech@State will look at how to deliver real-time data and use it effectively. Alex and I will be here, specifically interesting in talking about data visualizations.

Saturday, February 4

8:30 am - 4:00 pm

Tech@State Unconference: Following Friday’s event, this will be a hands on dive into using technology to help collect, filter, analyze, and visualize real-time data. Check it out if you want to work with some real data and code.

Week in DC Tech: January 23rd Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

Interested in learning about Python, meeting other people behind tech startups, or just working into the night with friends? Check out our roundup of technology events in Washington, DC this week, and check out that full event calendar over at DC Tech Events.

Monday, January 21

8:45 pm

DC Nightowls Co-Working Group: Interested in brainstorming, bouncing ideas, hacking, or just working late night? Check out this meetup to get some work done and meet other productive people.

Tuesday, January 22

6:30 pm

DC Lean Startup Circle Meetup: Folks from local startups like UmbaBox, mphoria, and HelloWallet will talk about their strategies for reaching out to new customers and keeping them on board at this meetup.

7:00 pm

DC jQuery Meetup: This month the DC jQuery group is teaming up with the Selenium meetup to talk about testing suites like Jasmine and others.

Thursday, January 26

6:30 pm

Refresh DC: Want to learn more about what services are offered in the cloud, and what all the hype is about? Check out this month’s meetup for an introduction.

Saturday, January 28

11:00 am - 2:00 pm

Python Web Scraping 101 for Journalists: The good folks at the Sunlight Foundation are hosting this hacking how to, introducing the fundamentals of Python using a simple web scraping example. If you’ve been wanting to dive in or hone up on Python, you’ll want to check this out.

Week in DC Tech: January 16th Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-16T00:00:00-08:00

There’s a lot going on in the Washington, DC technology space this week with meetups on Node.js, nonprofit mapping, big data, SOPA, and more. Below is our roundup of the events, and you can find the full local calendar at DC Tech Events.

Monday, January 16

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: Want to learn more about the high performance javascript engine that’s powering more and more data heavy sites and our set of MapBox tools? Come out for this meetup to learn more about node.js, see what’s being built with it, and meet local developers.

Tuesday, January 17

7:00 pm

Netsquared: Modern Mapping: We’re presenting at this month’s meetup talking about how nonprofits can use web maps to better communicate about their work, track operations, and connect people. We’ll also walk through how technical and non-technical users alike can go from a spreadsheet to an interactive web map in ten minutes using TileMill and MapBox tools.

Erlang Hack Night: Come out to hack on Erlang with other developers. This event will group two to three people of various coding levels together to address a common challenge while pair programming. It’s a great opportunity to improve your Erlang coding and grow the community.

Wednesday, January 18

10:00 am to Noon

Emergency DC Tech Meetup: There’s no doubt that if passed, SOPA will hugely impact the technology community. DC Tech is organizing people to go to the Hill to advocate against the measure.

6:30 pm

Big Data and Mongo DC Joint Meetup: The Big Data and Mongo meetup groups are teaming up this month with presentations on MongoDB and advice for monitoring big data systems.

Thursday, January 19

7:00 pm

ONA: Homicide Watch: This month ONA’s meetup will look at Homicide Watch, a website that covers every single homicide in Washington, DC from the criminal act until conviction. The site has received good attention for giving a voice to victims and for providing some of the most thorough crime coverage in the area.

From Google Maps to Open Source With MapBox and Leaflet

Development Seed — 2012-01-12T00:00:00-08:00

Switching from the Google Maps API to an open source library like Leaflet gives you the ability to choose between new, open, and less expensive mapping alternatives like MapBox, MapQuest Open, and OpenStreetMap.

Since releasing our API connector Wax and documenting the MapBox API in its totality, we’ve paid special attention to making sure that MapBox maps work in numerous clients - Modest Maps, Leaflet, Polymaps, OpenLayers and even the Google Maps API v3. We’ve been able to do this because the entire specification is open source, including our interactivity code, and because we provide something that Google doesn’t: direct tile access.

While you can use TileJSON to automatically configure our maps, it’s just a shortcut to adding a normal layer to a mapping API. It’s simple to use MapBox tiles without using any code from MapBox - so it’s also easy to try out different tile providers to find the one that best fits your usage and budget. Leaflet is a great place to start in making the jump from Google because it’s very similar to the Google Maps API.

Creating a basic map with Google Maps:

{% highlight js %} var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById(‘map_canvas’), { center: new google.maps.LatLng(51.505, -0.09), zoom: 8, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP }); {% endhighlight %}

and in Leaflet:

{% highlight js %} var map = new L.Map(‘map’, { center: new L.LatLng(51.505, -0.09), zoom: 8, layers: new L.TileLayer(‘http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/mapbox.world-bright/{z}/{x}/{y}.png’) }); {% endhighlight %}

Markers and overlays in Leaflet

Unlike Modest Maps, the nano-sized framework we use for MapBox Hosting’s embed functionality, Leaflet supports an array of markers and polygon overlays very similar to Google Maps. There are custom icons, and you can bring in your GeoJSON for polygon overlays.

For large datasets and powerful styling controls, TileMill is unbeatable, but smaller dynamic data can work really well in Leaflet - and often better than it does with the Google Maps API. One example of this is StreetEasy, a real estate aggregator that just made the switch from Google Maps to custom MapBox maps.

Adding a marker in the Google Maps API looks like:

{% highlight js %} var marker = new google.maps.Marker({ position: new google.maps.LatLng(51.505, -0.09), map: map, title:’Hello World!’ }); {% endhighlight %}

And in Leaflet it isn’t much different:

{% highlight js %} var marker = new L.Marker(new L.LatLng(51.505, -0.09)); marker.bindPopup(‘Hello, world!’); map.addLayer(marker); {% endhighlight %}

Try out Leaflet

If you’re looking to experiment with alternatives to Google Maps, Leaflet’s a great way to go. It gives you flexibility between tile providers, a rich feature set, and unlike the Google Maps API it’s BSD-licensed open source code. For help working with Leaflet and MapBox, just ask us on the MapBox support site.

MapBox for fast, reliable custom map tile hosting

In addition to your data markers and polygons rendered through Leaflet, you can add in layers of map tiles for a custom base map, or additional features like restaurants, transit stops, or neighborhood boundaries. Try using TileMill to style your own data or pull in extracts from OpenStreetMap. When you’re ready to share your maps, check out MapBox plans starting at just $5 a month. MapBox includes server-side compositing so your maps will be fast even as you add more layers and work well on mobiles.

Week in DC Tech: January 9th Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-09T00:00:00-08:00

After a few slow weeks around the holidays, the DC tech space is heating back up with events on map design, startup networking, and social events like the monthly Nerd Nite. Below are our picks for the week, and you can find a full calendar at DC Tech Events. Have a great week!

Wednesday, January 11

Noon

Hackers and Founders Lunchtime Meetups: This brand new meetup brings technology creators and investors together in small groups over lunch. It’s organized by the folks from the Hacker News meetup group and powered by Wednesdays.com.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

Geo DC Meetup: This month the Geo Meetup will look at the experience of using maps, with lightning talks on designing intuitive maps, how maps have changed over the years, and special considerations needed in transit maps. This meetup always draws a enthusiastic crowd of folks working in GIS, geography, and map and is a great opportunity to meet people working in the field and learn about what they are making.

Saturday, January 14

6:30 - 9:30 pm

Nerd Nite: The Republican primaries have brought religion to the forefront of politics, but one question not being answered is why isn’t America more secular. This month’s Nerd Nite will answer this, plus why some smart people box and the environmental impact of chicken farming. In between talks, you can listen to music from local artist Adrian Krygowski and of course grab some drinks.

Week in DC Tech: New Year's Edition

Development Seed — 2012-01-03T00:00:00-08:00

Happy New Year! We hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and is ready for an exciting 2012. The technology scene is coming back from break, with several interesting events happening this week and a full schedule for the rest of January. Below is a roundup of ones that caught our eye, and you can see the full calendar at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, January 3

7:00 pm

DC Python meetup: This month’s meetup will look at the Python hosting service Heroku, with folks from their team presenting on the cloud application platform and its services.

7:00 pm

Book Club: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success”: This monthly women’s book club will discuss one of Malcolm Gladwell’s interesting reads - Outliers: The Story of Success, which has applications to everything from business to work life to child rearing. Head out to La Madeleine in Bethesda if you’d like to join the conversation.

Saturday, January 7

9:00 am - 5:45 pm

UXCamp DC 2012: This day long unconference is all about user experience - whether that’s on the web, on a mobile, or in taking action in the real world. Come out to share what you know and learn from other UX folks, bar camp style.

Happy Holidays!

Development Seed — 2011-12-23T00:00:00-08:00

Happy holidays! It’s been a fantastic year. We’ve had a blast working with the international development, mapping, node.js, and open source communities, and can’t wait to keep at it coming year.

To celebrate the holidays and get ready for the coming year, our office will be closed from December 24 until January 2. See you next year!

Week in DC Tech: December 19th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-12-19T00:00:00-08:00

It’s a quiet week in the technology space with the holidays right around the corner. There are a still a couple fun tech (and other) events out there as you’ll see in the roundup below, but otherwise enjoy the holidays and stay tuned for more in the New Year!

Monday, December 19

8:30 - 11:30 pm

DC Nightowls Co-Working Group: Want to work into the night surrounding by others pounding away? The DC Nightowls group brings together folks to work, brainstorm, and bounce ideas off each other after hours.

Tuesday, December 20

6:30 pm

Games Gateway at the National Zoo: The National Zoo always does it up for the holidays with their annual Zoo Lights celebration, and this year they’re adding a conservation themed scavenger hunt to the mix. Come out for the game, holiday lights, drinks, and of course the animals.

Week in DC Tech: December 12th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-12-12T00:00:00-08:00

As the end of the year nears, the local technology community continues to organize some great events. This week there are events on node.js, the platform for building fast, scalable applications that we use for our data and mapping sites, open journalism, and longform reading, plus a party thrown by the startup folks at Proudly Made In DC. Our roundup is below, and check out DC Tech Events for more meetups happening around town.

Monday, December 12

5:00 pm

Panel on Open Journalism: The Online News Association is hosting this panel on Open Journalism to talk about bringing transparency to the field and how to change the existing culture to be more open.

Wednesday, December 14

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: This month’s node.js meetup will include three quick lightning talks on deploying node apps, the browser-based node debugging tool node-inspector, and the concept of TTD for APIs using node. If you want to learn some quick tricks with node.js, meet other local developers, and learn why node.js is gaining in popularity, come out to this meetup.

Thursday, December 15

5:00 - 8:00 pm

ProudlyMadeInDC Birthday Party: Proudly Made in DC - the startup network connecting and promoting local entrepreneurs and technologists - is celebrating one year in operation by throwing a party. Check it out to learn about local startups and meet the people behind them.

6:00 pm

The State of Reading: Want the latest scoop on online readers like the Kindle and iPad, and read it later services like the excellent Instapaper? At this meetup, Will Mitchell from Washington City Paper and Longform.org will discuss the state of longform reading looking at both the technology and journalism sides.

7:00 pm

NetSquared: Leveraging Video for Social Change: This month’s NetSquared meetup will look at how nonprofits can leverage video for social change, with presentations by the filmmaker behind Choosing Prevention and an online communications strategist.

Week in DC Tech: December 5th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-12-05T00:00:00-08:00

It’s the last week before the big rush of holiday parties and end of the year festivities, and why not enjoy it by attending a few technology events. There are some great events planned like the GeoDC showcase of nonprofits use of maps and the always huge DC Tech meetup. Our roundup of the week’s events is below.

I also wanted to give a shout out to CodeNow, a DC nonprofit teaching high school kids how to code. They are raising money to buy netbooks for students for next year. You can find out more about them and donate here.

Tuesday, December 6

8:30 - 10:00 am

Technology Salon: This month’s Technology Salon will look at how mobile financial services are impacting international development, with a presentation on mPay Connect and how USAID sees using services like this moving forward.

2:00 - 3:45 pm

Mapping and Technology to Improve Governance of Natural Resources: This panel discussion led by the World Bank will discuss how interactive maps can be used to promote transparency and good governance of natural resources, and will be followed by a hands on barcamp to walk through how to use mapping technologies. Alex will be there discussing mapping in general and showing folks how to use MapBox tools.

7:00 pm

DC Tech Meetup: This meetup - always one of the largest of the month - will look at social commerce with talks by folks from companies like Shopsy, Living Social, and Uscoop.

Wednesday, December 7

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC: Nonprofit Mapping Showcase: This month’s GeoDC meetup is all about nonprofits. Four NGOs - InterAction, Population Action International, World Resources Institute, and A Wider Circle will talk about how they use maps to improve efficiencies in their work. Come to see some great, effective maps and to talk to fellow mappers over drinks.

Saturday, December 10

7:00 - 10:00 pm

Nerd Nite: In its second anniversary event, Nerd Nite will take on important topics like animal poo, pseudoscience and the paranormal, and the life of a vet with folks giving presentations on each, interspersed with live music from the local band The Torches.

Week in DC Tech: November 28th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-11-28T00:00:00-08:00

While recovering from turkey overload post Thanksgiving, find some distraction in the technology events happening in town. Below is our roundup of what’s happening this week in Washington, DC, and you can find a full calendar at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, November 29

6:30 pm

Gaining Customer Traction Fast: Want to bring customers over to your startup’s service quickly? A conversation on how to do this will kick off this event, followed by targeted advice for folks working at different startups in the crowd.

Wednesday, November 30

9:00 pm

DC Nightowls Co-Working Group: Do you thrive off the energy of others even into the wee hours of the night? This late night working group brings people together who are looking for company as they work into the night.

Saturday, December 3

9:00 am - 9:00 pm

Erlang DC Conference: Do you use Erlang, or are you curious about it? This one day conference will run the gambit from offering a crash course in Erlang to diving into advanced techniques on using it.

10:00 am - 5:00 pm

International Open Data Hackathon DC: As part of this weekend’s international open data day, DC will host a one day hackathon to work on tools turning open data into maps, charts, tables, and other visualizations that effectively communicate the open data sets available on the city.

Week in DC Tech: November Thanksgiving Edition

Development Seed — 2011-11-21T00:00:00-08:00

Thanksgiving is right around the corner! As usual the short week means a quiet week, with many people heading out of town to celebrate the holiday. Below is a recap a technology event scheduled that caught our eye, as well as a worthwhile pre-dinner event happening on Thanksgiving day for those staying in town. Have a great holiday week!

Monday, November 21

6:30 pm

Choose Your Own Adventure: This is a choose your own adventure presentation - technology style. Adam Jacob from Opscode will talk for five minutes about topics like infrastructure automation, cloud computing, NoSQL, building open source communities and funding a start up, with the audience shouting out questions and new topics to move on to throughout.

Thursday, November 24

9:00 am

Thanksgiving Day Trot for Hunger: With homelessness and hunger rising in the Washington, DC area, So Others Might Eat is helping feed the hungry and help them stay healthy and get back on their feet. If you’re in town, why not help out by running a 5k and raising money for their work.

Week in DC Tech: November 14th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-11-14T00:00:00-08:00

On the heels of DCWeek, there are still a ton of technology events scheduled on topics ranging from developer meetups on Node.js and MongoDB to policy discussions to days long hackathons. Below is a roundup of events happening this week that caught our eye, and you can find a full calendar at DC Tech Events.

Monday, November 14

6:00 pm

Hacker News Meetup: Read Hacker News? This event connects readers to talk about startups and hacking, show demos, and just share the latest news.

7:00 - 9:00 pm

NodeDC Meetup: This meetup will bring together node.js developers and the curious to talk about the server-side JavaScript environment known for its speed and scalability. Four lightning talks are on the schedule on topics like CouchDB, bridging Cocoa to Node.js, and running node.js apps in Ubuntu with Upstart.

Tuesday, November 15

7:00 pm

Content & Brand Management: A Case Study with Aids.gov: This month the Web Content Mavens group will look at the comprehensive content strategy behind Aids.gov, including using online, social media, and mobile content and how they targeted different audiences throughout.

Wednesday, November 16

9:00 - 1130 am

The Future of Technology Policy & Regulation: What is the right balance?: Technology policy, whether that’s spectrum regulations or copyright law, has a huge impact on innovation, both positive and negative. This panel discussion will look at proposed policies and how they in particular will impact innovation and participation.

6:30 pm

MongoDB Meetup: This month’s MongoDB meetup is an open mic, with anyone able to take the floor to give a quick lightning talk on a subject related to MongoDB.

This Weekend

All weekend

Startup Weekend: Have an interesting idea for a startup or product and want to team up with developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, and other folks to help move your idea forward? Startup Weeked is designed to do just that, getting creators in the same room to work together to develop several ideas, with the winner receiving a cash prize and a chance to compete in an international startup battle.

Recapping DC Tech Foosball Shootout

Development Seed — 2011-11-08T00:00:00-08:00

Last night 24 teams battled it out in single elimination games to see who was the best foosball team of the night in the DC Tech Foosball Shootout. There was an amazing amount of talent in the room with excited, heated, and practically professional games from the very first round.

After some practice time to get everyone loose and warmed up, we finalized the bracket and started playing.

There was one Development Seed vs. Development Seed match up, with Foolsball advancing over Team Canada.

Games got more exciting in the semi-finals, when we switched to best of three matches. Here’s Foolsball playing Backalley FC.

Then we hit the championship game, with Backalley FC pitted against TeamWebs.

We got going on the big screen so everyone could watch.

And after 23 different matchups, we had our champions - Backalley FC.

Backalley FC, the foosball tournament champions.

Congrats to the champions, and a big thanks to everyone who came out to play and to watch. We’re excited to host more foosball tournaments in the future - so stay tuned. Enjoy the rest of DC Week!

Week in DC Tech: DC Week

Development Seed — 2011-11-07T00:00:00-08:00

DCWeek - the week long technology festival and community conference - is in full swing and has organized and sparked a ton of events, parties, art installations, panel discussions, and trainings happening throughout the city. I highly recommend you check out the full DC Week schedule. Here is a look at the events we’re participating in this week.

Monday, November 7

6:00 pm - late

DC Tech Foosball Shootout: We’re hosting a foosball tournament and party tonight in the Development Seed garage! Find a teammate, rsvp, and battle for the glory and the trophy. We’ll also have beer, pizza, ping pong, and t-shirts. Hope to see you there.

Tuesday, November 8

7:00 pm

NetSquared: Hot Tech Trends: Looking Back at 2011 and Ahead at 2012: In this meetup, folks from Epolitics.com, the Travel Channel, Ashoka Changemakers, and iStrategy Labs will talk about what they see as the year’s hottest tech trends and discuss what’s next on the horizon.

Wednesday, November 9

6:00 - 9:00 pm

DCWEEK 2011 Keynotes: In one of the more corporate focused events of DC Week, the keynote sessions will include talks from AT&T Labs, Ford, and Intel Labs, among others, as well as an intro from DC Mayor Vincent Gray and a presentation from Post Secret creator Frank Warren.

Thursday, November 10

11:00 am - Noon

Open Source and Open Data: This panel discussion on open data will look at what strategies can be used at the federal level to get out more - and more usable - open data. Alex will discuss our approach to open data, along with Haley Van Dyck from USAID who will share our work together mapping the famine in the Horn of Africa, Jeff Walpole from Phase2 Technology, and Tom Lee from Sunlight Labs.

Friday, November 11

8:00 - 11:30 pm

DC Week Closing Party: The very last event of DC Week will fittingly be a party. We will be there to help with the community showcase of the nonprofit A Wider Circle, who we worked with to map its operations collecting furniture donations and distributing them to people transitioning from shelters in Washington, DC. The showcase will be similar to the one we did together at the National Building Museum for the 24 Hour City Project.

DC Tech Foosball Shootout: The Rules

Development Seed — 2011-11-03T00:00:00-07:00

The first ever DC Tech Foosball Shootout is happening this Monday, November 7, as part of the week long DC Week festival. So far 28 teams have signed up to compete for city-wide bragging rights and the first prize trophy. To play just find a teammate, come up with a team name, and show up ready to play. Game time is 7:00 pm, with all teams needing to arrive by then, and we’ll kick things off at 6:00 pm with food, drinks, and practice time.

We’ll play standard foosball - one ball and teams of two. Here’s a run down of some of the most debatable rules we’ll follow, and when questions arise we’ll refer to the official USTSA rule book.

No spinning of the rods. Anything rotating 360 degrees is spinning.
No jarring, sliding, or lifting of the table.
If you do one of the above, the other team can either play the ball from the current position or re-serve.
Initial server will be determined by either a coin flip or by which team has more points. All other serves will be made by the team last scored on.
Spinning the ball during a serve is legal, but the serving team can only score off of a serve if one of their players strikes the ball.
The ball is in play once it has been served and touches the table.
If the ball leaves the table or is declared dead (meaning no player can touch it), the last team to serve it will serve again.
If the ball enters the goal but pops back out, it’s still a goal.
You can only play with two rods at any time, and can only switch positions before a serve.
Coaching is allowed, but only during time outs and in-between games.

If you’re not a foosball player, come out for the party! We’ll have drinks, food, music, non-foosball related games, and plenty of interesting people to meet. More details are on the event page.

Week in DC Tech: Halloween Edition

Development Seed — 2011-10-31T00:00:00-07:00

Happy Halloween! In addition to the holiday related festivities tonight, this week marks the start of DC Week, a week long festival that brings together designers, developers, artists, and entrepreneurs through parties and other events. This roundup highlights the events we’re hoping to hit up this week. You can see the full DC Week schedule here, and the overall DC technology calendar at DC Tech Events.

And be sure to mark your calendars for the DC Week event we’re hosting next Monday - the DC Tech Foosball Shootout.

Wednesday, November 2

7:00 - 9:00 pm

GeoDC Meetup: Maps in Government: This month’s GeoDC meetup will feature short discussions by federal geographical information officers from the FCC, EPA, and NOAA about how they use maps and data in their work, what limitations and challenges they face, and where they’d like to take this work in the future. The discussion will provide good insight into how the government is and wants to be using maps to improve efficiencies and better share the stories behind their data with the public.

Friday, November 4

10:30 pm

DC Week Opening Party: DC Week kicks off with a party at the 9:30 Club featuring performances from eight different bands, including Tom’s band Teen Mom, a trio who plays fuzz-pop love ballads. We’ll be there in force to celebrate.

Saturday, November 5

Noon to 5:00 pm

Bridging DC’s Digital Divide: This event, led by the nonprofit Bread for the City, will feature a series of discussions on how to bring more and better broadband access to DC residents.

1:00 - 2:30 pm

Temporary Urbanism Explored: Pop up storefronts are becoming increasingly popular in DC. This event, hosted at the National Building Museum, will look at this technique and others for activating abandoned spaces in emerging neighborhoods.

Sunday, November 6

8:00 am - 6:00 pm

DC Week Hackathon: In true DC fashion, this hackathon will get folks using government resources - like services, programs, procurement, and data - to build apps that entrepreneurs and small businesses can use to better take advantage of these resources. Results will be judged, with a prize pool of $20,000.

Noon to 1:30 pm

Photography for Good: Slideshows + Discussion: This event will feature the work of three photographers who are bringing awareness to social issues through their photography, followed by a panel discussion on their work, its impact, and how others can get involved.

DC Tech Foosball Shootout + Party

Development Seed — 2011-10-28T00:00:00-07:00

Fancy yourself a foosball player, or just an aficionado? Come out for the DC Tech Foosball Shootout, where teams of two from across the DC tech community will duke it out tournament style to see who will bring home the trophy.

On Monday, November 7 after work we’ll turn on the music in our garage and will be serving beer and snacks as the tournament gets underway. Drinking will start at 6:00, with the tournament starting at 7:00 pm. Everyone is welcome to come to play, cheer on the teams, or just enjoy the drinks and company. This is part of the DC Week celebrations and will be a great chance to casually meet people early in the week as things get going.

More details on the tournament are on the event page, where you can also rsvp to play or watch. We’ll post updates in the coming days on how the tournament will work, and in the meantime find a teammate, come up with a fun team name, and brush up on the official USTA rules.

Week in DC Tech: October 24th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-10-24T00:00:00-07:00

Take a break this week from planning your Halloween costume to learn something new at a technology event. Below is a roundup of technology events happening this week that peaked our interested, and you can see the full calendar at DC Tech Events. Have a great week!

Monday, October 24

9:00 pm

DC Night Owls Co-Working Group: Finding yourself lonely as you burn the midnight oil? Join other late workers for the camaraderie, and if you’re so inclined to work together and bounce ideas off each other.

Tuesday, October 25

6:30 pm

DC Tech Offline Happy Hour: Do you work with a bunch of tech folks but don’t actually work on the tech yourself? This meetup group brings together folks who work in communications, operations, finance, and other non-tech specific areas within the technology sector.

7:00 pm

DC jQuery Meetup: This month’s meetup will discuss what’s new in jQuery 1.7, as well as recapping the recent jQuery conference in Boston. If you’re interested in meeting other jQuery developers or learning more about the cross browser JavaScript library, come out for this event.

Wednesday, October 26

8:30 am - 6:00 pm

AgileDC: Agile Philanthropy has organized this all day conference to help nonprofits learn how to use an agile approach to their work, whether that’s fundraising, communications, organizing volunteer efforts, or something else. If you’re interested in learning about agile development or would like to broaden your knowledge on it, check out this free conference.

Week in DC Tech: October 17th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-10-17T00:00:00-07:00

Want to meet other developers using Node.js, get a quick intro to 16 different topics, or build tools to solve real world water problems? Events on all of these topics, as well as many others, are taking place this week in Washington, DC. Below is a roundup of our picks for the week, and check out DC Tech Events for a full calendar.

Monday, October 17

7:00 pm

Big Data DC Meetup #5: This month’s Big Data meetup will focus on Cassandra, with sessions on a new Cassandra query language and one looking at what’s new in Apache Cassandra 1.0.

Tuesday, October 18

9:00 am - 6:00 pm

TEDxPennQuarter: This local TED event focus on reinvention, with 20+ talks on reinventing things like newspapers, storytelling, medicine, hip hop, and beer. Tickets are still available for $99 a pop.

7:00 pm

BrainSquared: This month Netsquared is taking a new approach to its meetups and asking for full participation by everyone. Come ready to talk about a technology trend, challenge, or idea that’s been on your mind in casual conversations with other participants.

Wednesday, October 19

7:00 - 9:00 pm

Node.js Meetup: The third-ever Node.js meetup has two great talks on the lineup, with a presentation on testing Node.js web applications with the async testing framework expresso, and one on the multi-cloud datastore client Sunny.js. We’re hosting this in our garage and invite everyone with an interest in Node to attend.

Thursday, October 20

6:00 - 10:00 pm

Ignite DC #8: In the always fun Ignite event, 16 artists, technologists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers will talk for five minutes on a topic they’re passionate about. If you want to quickly learn about some new topics and meet interesting people, this is a great venue for you.

Saturday and Sunday, October 22 and 23

All day

WaterHackathon: This weekend the World Bank is organizing a hackathon to bring together the brainpower of developers and water and sanitation folks to solve real water problems. Access to clean water and adequate sanitation is something that unfortunately way too many people do not have, and it’s great to see a local effort to solve specific water problems with technology. The DC hackathon is one of 10 happening simultaneously around the world.

Week in DC Tech: October 10th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

As usual there are a lot of technology events happening in Washington, DC this week, ranging from startup pitches to cloud unconferences to discussions on how crowd sourcing should be applied to disaster response and international development. Below is a recap of our picks for the week, and for a full calendar check out DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, October 11

8:30 - 5:00 pm

CloudCamp DC: Do you have ideas on the direction cloud computing should be headed, or technologies and ideas it should adopt or test out? Then check out CloudCamp, an unconference where developers will exchange ideas on how to make cloud computing better.

9:00 am - 5:00 pm

Distilled Intelligence: 55 startups will pitch to a room full of investors and entrepreneurs in the hopes of securing angel or other funding for their idea. Check out the list of participants, and sign up if you’re game.

6:30 pm

Intro to R: Want to find out more about the statistical computing language R? Come out to this meetup for an introduction to it and see some examples of what you can with it.

Wednesday, October 12

5:30 - 7:00 pm

Crowdsourcing and Social Computation in International Development: George Washington University is hosting this discussion on how crowd sourcing can be used in international development, discussing both its potential benefits and pitfalls and the always stellar example of how it provided emergency communications services and mapping resources after Haiti’s earthquake.

6:00 pm

Hacker News Meetup: Do you read Hacker News or promote your favorite articles and tools there? Go meet other participants at this meetup where folks will talk startups and technology, give demos, and get to know each other.

Week in DC Tech: October 3rd Edition

Development Seed — 2011-10-03T00:00:00-07:00

Want to learn more about the geographical history of beers, what the government is going to update their use of technology, or how to play the accordian? Then check out some of the technology events happening this week in Washington, DC. Our roundup is below, and you can see the full calendar at DC Tech Events.

Monday, October 3

New Media Meetup: Interested in design principles for mobile application? This meetup will feature a discussion on this and how design can help you work smarter.

Tuesday, October 4

DC Tech Meeutp: Always one of the largest technology events, this month’s DC Tech Meetup should be particularly interesting with its focus on politics, advocacy, and government.

Wednesday, October 5

Geo DC Meetup: In celebration of Oktoberfest, a local geographer will walk through the history of American breweries and how the beers have spread around the world.

Saturday, October 8

Nerd Nite: Want to learn something on your Saturday night? Check out Nerd Nite for presentations on accordions, cryptographers, and meritocracy over a few beers and some live music.

Week in DC Tech: September 26th Edition

Development Seed — 2011-09-26T00:00:00-07:00

Want a glimpse at what may blow existing social media tools out of the water, learn about design from a developers perspective, or just talk jQuery and mobile phones over beers? Then check out the technology events happening in DC this week. Below is a quick roundup, and you can find a full calendar over DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, September 27

5:00 - 9:00 pm

Disruptathon Social Media: Curious, or have ideas, on what will be the next big thing in social media? Come out to this happy hour to meet 20 companies disrupting the status quo and make your predictions on which will stick.

7:00 pm

DC jQuery: This month’s DC jQuery meetup will feature a presentation on the stickyheader.js plugin. If you’re interested or just want to talk jQuery, come out for this event.

Wednesday, September 28

6:00 - 9:30 pm

Web Content Gets Social - And Mobile: Interested in talking about social media on mobile devices, and learning about how you can better take advantage of this? This month’s Web Content Mavens meetup will host “conversation tables” on topics related to this, as well as general networking over drinks.

6:30 - 8:30 pm

Design for Hackers: Are you a developer looking for an practical explanation on how goo design works, or just curious as to what a developer has to say to this? David Kadavy, author of Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty, will give a preview of his “White Noise” talk at SXSW on just this.