Event highlights for the week of March 23 – March 29, 2009

Update: Edited Geeks Who Give

This week on our events calendar, the Social Media Club will feature a globally popular author discussing Shiny Object Syndrome, Bloblive‘s paid open-mic will be free to newcomers and Princeton Java Users Group has invited a renowned Javascript and Flex front-end developer to dish chops.

Geeks Who Give and Tattooed Mom are practically giving away drinks in exchange for donations to Philadelphia Futures, a local nonprofit dedicated to getting kids into college.

Technically Philly will be attending Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference 2009 and giving you a dose of, well, emerging technologies. And last but certainly not least, HealthCamp Philadelphia will make a huge splash with its BarCamp-inspired health tech conference.

As will always be the case, the events listed in our highlights are free to attend. Please check our Events calendar for more information and view the details after the jump.

Monday, March 23: The Social Media Club has Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications and author of the globally popular blog on public relations and social media. Livingston was named the “local blogging guru” by the Washington Post, and wrote Now Is Gone: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs. The group will discuss Shiny Object Syndrome and how to stop it. What’s SOS, you ask? When companies jump the bandwagon on social communications tools just ’cause. We guarantee at least one mention of Jimmy Fallon and the Digg guys’ Twitter experiment last week. 6:30p.m., Center City. RSVP. [View more events]

Tuesday, March 24: We’re cautious of posting paid events in our event highlights, but Bloblive‘s “open-mic night for ideas,” might be worth checking out; If not for the networking potential, than for the fact that the event is free for newcomers. Bloblive is brought to you by IdeaBlob, the monthly cash giveaway contest for ideas, which has given local companies a shot in the past. 6:30p.m., Conshohocken, Montgomery County. RSVP. [View more events]

Wednesday, March 25: Princeton Java Users Group will feature internationally renowned speaker, author, and O’Reilly blogger, Shashank Tiwari. Tiwari is an expert group member on a number of Java Community Process specs, has been recognized as an Adobe Flex Champion, and is an active contributor to open source initiatives. Tiwari will lead a discussion on models for communications between Java servers and rich web applications. BlazeDS, Flex, JavaScript, and other front-ends will be discussed with a healthy mix of theory, code and practice. 7:00p.m., East Windsor, New Jersey. Details. [View more events]

Thursday, March 26 Thursday, April 2: Geeks Who Give is holding a Game Night to benefit Philadelphia Futures, a local nonprofit dedicated to helping students achieve their dream of a college education. Come out to Tattooed Mom to play board games, card games, and more with mind-blowing drink specials ($1.50 Pabst Blue Ribbon). All GWG asks is that you bring either one USB jump drive or one package of school-appropriate office supplies (such as pens, pencils highlighters, etc.). And in case you’re feeling really generous, I’m sure no one would complain about a donation of a few dozen MacBook Air notebooks. 6:00p.m., Center City South. Details. [View more events]

Friday, March 27: Check for our coverage of Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference 2009 on Thursday and Friday of this week. The two-day conference will be keynoted by Michael Tiemann, VP of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat and President of the Open Source Initiative, and Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CTO of Blue State Digital, which spearheaded Obama for America’s online initiatives.

Saturday, March 28: Health providers, health industry experts and technology pros will be attending the much anticipated HealthCamp Philadelphia on Saturday. The BarCamp-inspired meetup will help put the tech back in health care technology, with discussions ranging from Web technologies, to mobile and social media, to process innovation. It sounds like ticket availability may be slim to none, so head on over and register if you’re interested in changing the health industry. And for the record, Michael Moore is not on the attendee list. All day, Washington West. RSVP. [View more events]

Every Monday morning, Technically Philly will preview the best free tech events in Philadelphia and the surrounding region. See others here.