Events highlights for the week of June 22 – June 28, 2009

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking, “I wish I could design a map using Twitter that was a good user experience and utilized Google Book Search.”

Well Technically Philly reader, you’re in luck! Our fair city has a diverse slate of events this week that will make your strange hypothetical dream a reality in no time.

Get started after work on Tuesday and join the pun-loving OpenStreetMap enthusiasts over at the Prohibition Tap Room for “Mappy Hour.” Although, you shouldn’t have too much to drink, as it is awfully hard to chart the trails in Fairmount Park when you can’t walk straight.

PhillyCHI (which is not a box score for the upcoming Phillies-Cubs series) is getting together Wednesday to listen to Kyle Soucy, their former chair, talk usability testing. This is the first time in weeks that the group has held an event in city limits, so you best take El out to University City if you have been meaning to catch PhillyCHI in action.

On Thursday, you can either continue the usability theme with the UX Book Club meeting over at P’unk Ave, or you can head to Center City for the June Philly Tweetup.

Round out the week on Friday as University City continues its Google obsession with a meeting about how Google Books and Google Scholar affect librarians. Librarians, whatever you decide, please leave the card catalog alone. That thing is awesome.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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Events highlights for the week of May 11 – May 17, 2009

Hello, newly sunny Philadelphia, that’s a hell of a farmer’s tan you’ve got there.

Let’s keep that weekend energy going with our region’s active tech community. Half of our highlights are straight outta West Philly. It’s not bias, we swear! But if you just refuse to do anything West of the Schuylkill, our events calendar would be happy to schedule an appointment for you.

On Saturday and Sunday, help University City with some GPS mapping. The folks at Philly OpenStreetMap realized long ago that Google might one day threaten our existence so they’re mapping the world until it happens. How else are you gonna find the way to good Chinese restaurant when the Goog steals your identity and shuts down Maps?

Wednesday, academia will sign-up for Second Life, get harassed by creepy dudes and annoying tweens, and beg for a way to get the heck out of there while still applying some of those virtual concepts to higher education. With Wharton hosting, it might be a little smarter than our summary.

Monday, IndyHall will host a PHP Meetup featuring Sigurd Magnusson of Silverstripe, an open source CMS for the WordPress haters out there. Magnusson will even be taking feature requests, so give him some advice or he’ll ignore your feedback when the next version hits.

Philly Office Geeks are trying to spread the word about social media in the business community on Tuesday. It might be a clever attempt at getting network privileges for Facebook in the office, but we’d bet there’s a little more too it than that.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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