Category: Events and Happenings

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Social media happy hour

Today I ventured out to the downtown Taco Boy for the the Social Media Club (Charleston) happy hour. It was a nice fun and informal get-together with a surprisingly diverse crowd of people.

It was my first trip to Taco Boy, and it turned out pretty good. The Taco Boy is dog friendly, something I wish I had known earlier. I’m sure the dogs would have loved to go meet everybody.

There was a pretty good turn out of people at today’s event. There were a few familiar faces, but also a lot of new ones. It was nice meeting new people, and also meeting some of the people I’ve met on Twitter.

A group of people holding drinks and socializing in the outdoor area of a restaurant
A group of people sitting at a long table in a restaurant

Jared told me the guy in the hat is the TwitPic guy.

Three people sitting around a square table socializing
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Dukes BBQ Meatup

It was road tripping up to Ridgeville for the latest Lowcountry BBQ meatup at Duke’s BBQ this evening.

Word on the street is that Duke’s BBQ is pretty good (one of the best most would say), and I’d have to say the street is pretty accurate.

Like many of the really good BBQ places, it’s not fancy inside. Walking into the door you’re greeted by the large main seating area with 3 large tables (perfect for large groups or communal dining). Off to the side is more table seating. Pony up to the cashier and pay your $8 (plus tax) and dig into the buffet. Buffet items are pretty standard for a SC BBQ place: rice, hash, sweet potatoes, pulled pork, chicken and a few other things.

Duke's BBQ building
A group of people sitting at a table eating BBQ

I think my favourite item was the hash. Almost gravy like, it was good over rice or just straight up. Give me a bowl of the hash and I’ll be happy. Mmmm, hash…

A styrofoam plate of pulld pork BBQ, hash and rice, coleslaw, and hushpuppies

A plate of this would make me happy too.

A serving container of pulld pork BBQ

George Pasley was the lucky winner of the Media Mogul Twitter contest between the Carolina Regional Business Journal and The Digitel. George’s prize: a couple of boxes of Moon Pies and two cases of RC Cola.

Two people standing in front of the Duke's BBQ sign shaking hands. One is holding a box of Moon Pies. A box of moon pies and two cases of RC Cola are sittingo n the ground.
Three people standing in front of the Duke's BBQ sign. The person on the right is holding a box of Moon Pies. The person on in the middle and on the left are shaking hands. The person on the left is holding a case of RC Cola.
Two signs posted inside Duke's BBQ. One sign reads Dukes Bar-B-Que. Pig In or Pig Out. Ridgeville, SC. The other sign says Dukes Bar-B-Que, Ridgeville, SC

The Ridgeville Duke’s is pretty good, and worth the trip. I’m starting to think that I’ll have to move because I live too far away from all my favourite BBQ joints.

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Southeast Linuxfest recap

Went roadtripping out to Clemson for the first annual Southeast Linuxfest with a few of my fellow CSCLUG-ers. The drive up there was pretty uneventful, and also doubled as a preview of what to expect when I head back up there for orientation.

The conference turned out quite well, with attendance numbers that far exceeded what was expected. Last numbers I saw said 455 registrations with a little over 360 actually showing up. Pretty awesome for a first year conference. Of course now the bar has been set pretty high for next year’s conference.

Meeting the people I’d been working with online to plan the conference was pretty cool. In typical fashion, I ended up taking on the task of photographer and spent most of my time wandering around taking photos of everything. I did stop long enough to catch a few very good talks, and bounced around from room to room catching snippets of other talks.

The talk by Richard Weait on the OpenStreetMap project was one of the more interesting talks that I made it to. Completely open mapping data that you can do pretty much anything with. And it’s not limited to just street data either. What’s really neat is that almost all of the map data comes from user contributions. Browsing around Charleston, SC shows a reasonably complete map, but there are gaps here and there that could probably be filled in with a few mapping parties. At the beginning of the talk, Richard asked the audience what else maps were good for, and I shouted out “finding out when the train is coming”. It was a reference to a Flintstones episode (“The Story of Rocky’s Raiders“), but I don’t think anybody got it.

Another talk by Brian Leonard on developing for platforms beyond just your own computer was pretty interesting. Showed off some pretty simple but interesting things that can be done with Netbeans and VirtualBox.

The performance by DualCore at the after-party was pretty good. Rap/hip-hop usually isn’t my thing, but their nerdcore style is something I could possibly get into.

Very soon planning for the 2010 Southeast Linuxfest will begin. I’m expecting it’s going to be a lot of work to make it at least as good (preferably better) than this year’s event.

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Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk

This year Charleston is a location for the 2nd annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk and I’m helping to organize it, along with Chuck!

What is it? It’s a day (July 18) where hundreds of people/photo geeks all across the world will get together in groups and go take pictures. So far there are 400 locations all over the world with walks being planned.

For the Charleston event, the plan is to start the gathering at the Gazebo in White Point Gardens at 9AM July 18 and head up the peninsula from there. I’ll try to work out a route that will take the group through some interesting areas, but the route will be flexible. If people in the group know of other good spots to go to, we can do that. Afterwards, we’ll descend on the unsuspecting Tommy Condon’s for lunch and celebratory libations..

The photo walks are limited to 50 people, so if you want to go, check out the photo walk page and sign up.

I think what I need to do is get with Joan and have her help me plan out a route. Even better would be to get her to come along!

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LCB’s third anniversary

Heather noted that most of the better attended meetups happened to be ones that I threw together. I think I just got volunteered for stuff.

Today’s third anniversary meetup turned out pretty well. Had about 20 bloggers and tweeters show up, possibly much to the dismay of the lone newbie waitress working the patio area who was expecting a slow evening. I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers that showed.

It’s always good to get together and I think everybody had a pretty good time.

Several #jaredrumours were being formulated.