Multipack Birmingham

Saturday 14th Jan, The Old Joint Stock, Birmingham, 2pm-6pm

Come for a drink, and a bite to eat with one of the friendliest communities of web professionals, geeks and techies from across the West Midlands, to discuss code, standards, technology, and share our knowledge and experiences.

Follow @multipack for updates.

More info on Birmingham Meetup

Multipack Leamington - Special Event

Sunday Jan 22nd, 7pm to 11pm

Following her appearance at New Adventures in January, Denise Jacobs will be coming to a special Leamington Multipack event at our usual haunt, the White Horse. Organised by Leamington Multipack regular Nivi Morales, the night promises to be one full of our regular Leamington cheer.

This event will be running from 7pm to 11pm, so even if you’re not from Leamington or Warwick, why not pop over to have a chat with the author of The CSS Detective Guide and speaker at events such as SXSW, Future of Web Design, Voices That Matter: Web Design and Interlink.

The White Horse serve a fine Sunday Roast too, so if you’re in town for the day, stop in for something to eat and stay for a drink, a chat and a catch-up with the Leamington Multipack regulars.

Multipack Staffordshire

16th Jan, Littleton Arms, Penkridge, 7.30pm

A local midweek offshoot of the Multipack, join us for a midweek drink and an optional bite to eat, as we discuss all things web, geek and tech in Staffordshire and the surrounding areas.

More info on Staffordshire Meetup

Multipack Presents with Show and Tell

11th Feb, Science Park Aston, 2pm onwards

Presents and Show and Tell will be returning in 2012, kicking off in February with a “From Side-Project to Business” themed event, and we’re pleased to announce that we’ve lined up some terrific keynote speakers for our first event of the year:

- Elliot Jay Stocks will be talking about all things from 8 Faces to Viewport Industries

- Joel Gascoigne will be talking, via Skype from wherever he happens to be at the time, about the popular startup Buffer.

Attendance is free, as ever, but we’ll be using Eventbrite to gauge numbers for the event – head over to Eventbrite where you can get a free ticket for all of 2012’s Presents and Show and Tell events, or put £50 in the refreshments kitty by purchasing a Sponsor ticket.

New event: Birmingham Girl Geek Dinners

Launching this January, a new event for women in tech and geek related fields!

More in on the Girl Geek Dinner Lanyrd and their blog

New Event: Mobile Monday

A new event for anybody in the Midlands with an interest in mobile technology and the business opportunities it creates:

Mobile Monday Info

New Adventures

Plenty of Multipack folks are heading along to New Adventures in Web Design in Nottingham this month. Talk to @abitgone about the bowling team for the social…

Hydrahack

7th Feb, Urban Coffee Co, Birmingham

An after work opportunity to get together, drink coffee and code something cool.

More info on Hydra Hack

Wordpress Meetup

11th Jan, Old Joint Stock, Birmingham

For all people who use and develop for the popular blogging platform. A meetup with drinks, tips and chat.

More on the Wordpress Meetup

Hubmag

Multipack regular Trovster mentioned the launch of this Telford magazine. Somebody familiar is doing the film reviews

E4f Co-working Space

Our friends E4f at Science Park Aston have opened up their co-working space with a variety of membership levels. It’s a great hub for techy, game and web firms and would suit anybody starting out in those sectors.

More info at E4F

T-Shirts

Ant is organising some Multipack T-Shirts. Price will be between £20-£25 depending on how many are ordered. Sizes Small to XXXL, very large sizes may be slightly more expensive.

Price includes shirt, printing and postage for pickup at a Multipack Birmingham or Leamington event. Additional postage will apply if you want it posting to an address of your choosing.

The design is a simple, one colour screen print featuring the Multipack logo on the front chest pocket area of the t-shirt, and larger on the back. Black, Red, Maroon, Navy Blue, Olive, Brown, Royal Blue, Charcoal and Green are available. (see an example).

We’d like to get the t-shirts ordered, printed and delivered in time for the February event, so will need numbers by January 20th and money collected by January 27th.If anyone would like one, send an email to multipack at abitgone.co.uk

To get this newsletter by email, sign up on our homepage.

Multipack Presents, Mobile

Saturday 14th May, Birmingham Science Park Aston

This month we have with another in our successful Presents series. This time the talks will focus on various strands of mobile development.

It’s at a new venue too, at Birmingham Science Park Aston, so don’t sleepwalk down to Digbeth!

We have:

• Dave Addey on iOS
• Paul Rhodes on PhoneGap
• Nick Harewood on Windows Phone 7

So we have an idea of numbers, please sign up on Lanyrd

The event starts at 4pm, but we’ll all meet up before hand at the Sack of Potatoes or Gosta Green to grab a pint and some lunch. Follow @multipack for last minute updates!

We’re still looking for people to talk Android or Mobile Web App development, drop us a line if you feel you have something to say!

Multipack Leamington

31st May, 7.30pm The White Horse

Join the Warwickshire contingent of the Multipack for a beverage and a chat about all things web.

Leamington Meet on Lanyrd

Node Workshop

Remy Sharp is running a Node.js workshop in Nottingham in May for web developers. The workshop is available at 50% off the “normal” price for a workshop at £200+VAT for the full day - the aim is to make it more accessible to smaller companies and freelancers.

The workshop runs on the 13-May. Full details about what you’ll learn from the workshop, booking and details are available.

Hydrahack

Tuesday 24th May, 7pm, Urban Coffee Co, Church St.

Can’t make the Saturday meetups? Feel like coding up a storm with Brum’s finest? Hydrahack is a great event to meetup and get some code done.

Hydrahack

Birmingham Science Park Aston

The talented guys at Studio Bonito have been hard at work on the new site for our Presents’ hosts

November Meetups

Multipack Presents : The Design Process

Saturday 20th Nov, 2pm, The Offices of One Black Bear

Join us for the last Presents event of the year, featuring three Multipack regulars; Gareth Brown, Andy Higgs and Paul Lloyd, as they talk about wireframing, AB testing, style guides and Photoshop techniques.

We meet beforehand (from about 1pm on) at the Old Crown in Digbeth for lunch and a pint, before heading to the offices of One Black Bear for the presentations.

If you’re new, keep an eye on http://twitter.com/multipack for last minute updates.

More event info,

Add yourself on Upcoming or Lanyrd so we can estimate numbers for refreshments.

Leamington Gathering

Tuesday 30th November, 7:30pm, The White Horse

Join our little geeky meet-up, for a few beers and some food. Discuss all things web design, development, social media, iphone, iPad and anything else that remotely resembles a geeky thing! Leamington Event Details

Gaming & Digital Technology day

An >event about starting a business around gaming technology, with talks from existing companies and support organisations.

We Are Birmingham

Opening this very weekend in Dale End, We Are Birmingham is a shop selling art and crafts created by people in Birmingham and
the West Midlands. Brought to you by the same minds as the Created in Brimingham pop up shop that rocked the Bullring earlier in the year.

We’re also looking for folks to speak at a November Multipack Presents event! Drop us a comment below if you are interested in talking to an audience of peers about web-related subjects.

Birmingham Gathering

Saturday 16th Oct, 2pm, Old Joint Stock

Share a celebratory pint or two with local web designers and developers! Discuss what’s happening in the industry, swap tips and tricks and generally enthuse about all things web!

This month topics will likely include the recent Expression Engine and Fronteers conferences, IE 9 Beta, HTML5 and the battle of the buzzwords.

If you’re new, keep an eye on @multipack for last minute updates. More event info at:

Brum Events page

Leamington Gathering

Tues 26th Oct, 7.30pm, The White Horse

Our Leamington branch gather to discuss webby stuff, startups and other topics.

Leamington Events Page

Hacks and Hackers October

Wed 20th Oct, 7pm, The Square Peg

A meeting of journalists and webby people for mutual benefit! Data journalism, visualisation, scraping, open data and other such wonders to be discussed.

Hacks and Hackers

Jobs - Online Community Manager

Talis are building a new product for data publishers and consumers to discover, share, remix and use data. Community will be a big part of it and we are now looking for a somebody to help us grow and nurture that community. In short, we are looking for an open data geek who enjoys helping other open data geeks make cool stuff for an exciting linked data project!

More at http://www.talis.com/careers

Birmingham Gathering

Saturday 11th Sept 2pm, Old Joint Stock Birmingham

Share a pint or two with local web designers and developers! Discuss what’s happening in the industry, swap tips and tricks and generally enthuse about all things web!

This month topics will likely include dConstruct!

If you’re new, keep an eye on @multipack for last minute updates.

More Brum Meetng Info

Leamington Gathering

Tues 28th Sept, 7.30pm, The White Horse Leamington

Join the Warwickshire branch of the p’pack for web geekery!

More Leamington Meeting Info

Journalistic Hacking

Hack and Hackers 20th Sept, 1pm Coffee Lounge

A meeting of journalists and webby people for mutual benefit!

Hacks & Hackers Meeting Details

dConstruct Podcasts

Didn’t make it to Brighton for the geek-fest that is dConstruct? Interested in design and creativity, or the historiography of the web? You can listen to the wonderful talks and feel almost like you were there.

dConstruct Podcasts

Lanyrd

Want to track which web conferences your twitter mates are going to? Now you can with the rather nifty Lanyrd, another vowels somewhat optional service. Useful for finding new events on subjects that interest you.

Lanyrd

Designer-ness

Trev got in contact to mention local designer Aaron’s new website. Everybody should have a portfolio.

Birmingham Gathering

Saturday 10th July, 2pm, Old Joint Stock

Share a pint or two with local web designers and developers! Discuss what’s happening in the industry, swap tips and tricks and generally enthuse about all things web!

If you’re new, keep an eye on @multipack for last minute updates. More event info at: Brum Meetup on Upcoming

Leamington Gathering

Thursday 27th July, 7.30pm, The White Horse Leamington

Grab a pint in the Warwickshire sun and talk development, design and UX.

Leamington Meetup on Upcoming

StartupMill Brum

Monday July 19th, 6.00pm, Free

The StartupMill is a free community driven event for aspiring entrepreneurs and creative minds. Our aim is to create a network of young fresh thinking talent to collaborate, share knowledge and experiences to help each other get ahead in business.

Hacks and hackers

23rd July, All Day, Free!

Join Journalists and the 4IP funded scraperWiki in building cool stuff with Public Data. The aim is to show journalists how to use programming and design techniques to create online news stories and features; and vice versa, to show programmers how to find, develop, and polish stories and features. Hacks Signup

Tech Wednesday

10.00 am, July 21st, Resource Café, Birmingham Science Park Aston

Second of the new weekday events for web, techy and digital types in Brum.

Tech Wednesday

Epic Win?

Ever felt that your task list lacked a certain, well, gaming element? Soon you’ll be able to level up and collect achievements as you finish your daily tasks… EPIC WIN

June Meetups

Birmingham Gathering

12th June, 2pm, Old Joint Stock

Share a pint or two with local web designers and developers! Discuss what’s happening in the industry, swap tips and tricks and generally enthuse about all things web!

This month topics will likely include iPads, what is and isn’t HTML5, and who has a spare dribbble.com invite.

Brum Meetup on Upcoming

Leamington Gathering

29th June, 7.30pm, The White Horse Leamington

The first birthday of our plucky Leamington splinter group. Grab a pint in the Warwickshire sun and talk development, design and UX.

Leamington Meetup on Upcoming

If you're new, keep an eye on http://twitter.com/multipack for last minute updates.

Stuff to Watch in June

Tech Wednesday

10.00 am, June 16th, Resource Café, Birmingham Science Park Aston

A new weekday event for web/digital/tech people for Birmingham and the West Midlands.

http://www.techwednesday.com/

Going Mobile

14th June (TBC), FlipStorm, Evans Business Centre, Oldbury

A free session on "jQTouch: Building Web Apps That Work Everywhere". A developer-focused session focusing on mobile web app development for multiple platforms.

Signup on Facebook

Start ups in Sheffield

7th June 7pm-9pm, The GIST Lab, Grinders Hill / Brown Street

A bit further afield than we normally go, but the UK startup scene needs all the help it can get! A free community driven event for aspiring entrepreneurs and creative minds. Startup Mill

Kicking it off!

Apparently there's some kind of foote-the-ball tournament happening soon. Once again, Si has been busy building his handy Microformat-based calendar for the occasion.

A Post a Week

Dave posts something every week about getting the most from Wordpress. Tips and tricks, and a nice site design too! A post a week

New to Ruby

Joel is finding his way from the wilds of PHP to the lowlands of Ruby on Rails and blogging along the way. Useful reading if you're considering a similar move. http://www.multipack.co.uk/blog/?p=396 Welcome to your monthly roundup of Midlands webby stuff!

If you’re new, keep an eye on @multipack for last minute updates. More event info.

Userlab Openday

The Nice folks at Userlab, part of Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, are having another openday and usability clinic on Thursday May 6, 2010 from 8:00am - 8:00pm.

Pop along if you want to talk about user-research, usability testing and potential collaborations.

Rails for Beginners

Michael Grimes has organised a meetup for people want to try their hand at Ruby on Rails. Tuesday 4th May, 7pm, Venue is at BCU.

Ignite Brum

One to watch for future events, as it’s still in the early stages, the concept is: 5 Minutes and 20 slides…what would you teach us?

Design with Intent

A nice set of cards for helping you think about design problems from different angles, comign soon in dead tree form, but you can download the PDF and make your own.

March Meetup

Share a pint or two with local web designers and developers! Discuss what’s happening in the industry, swap tips and tricks and generally enthuse about all things web! Likely topics of conversation include HTML5, CSS3, interaction design, PHP, Python, recent projects and writing web copy.

If you’re new, keep an eye on @multipack for last minute updates. More event info at Upcoming

Green Thanks

Thanks to everybody who turned up to ‘Hack the Planet’. There was a great atmosphere and some realy neat ideas. Two decent hacks were put together by the end of play. Write-up and live app demos to be confirmed shortly, but there’s a flickr pool of photos to be going on with.

Theatrics

The inimitable Matthew Somerville got in contact to mention his latest project - Theatricalia - a database of past, present and future theatre productions. Of interest to anybody who likes to tread the boards or see a good theatre played…

Jobs Galore!

Over at the forum there are several folks desperate to hire webby types! Jobs on offer include PHP Developers in Leamington and the Jewellery Quarter - and a Frontend Developer role too! So if you’re looking for something and match those skills, pop over to the forums for more info.

Brum Twestival

25th March at Poppy Red is Birmingham’s Twitter Festival thing, your chance to meet some virtual acquaintances in the flesh and raise some money for charity.

Launch 48

Launch48 aims to bring together participants from different backgrounds and levels of experience in the web industry to think/plan/develop and launch one or multiple web apps in one weekend.

Caffeinated Data

Paul Bradshaw, who runs the MA Online Journalism at BCU, is organising the first Brum #data Coffee on 11th March. For people who like their open data, mashups and a good roasted blend.

Multipack Hacks… The Planet

Saturday 20th of February, 10am - 6pm
Offices of One Black Bear, Fazeley Studios

A hackday event about building things to reduce our industry’s environmental impact. Just bring some ideas and a willingness to design, write copy or code!

Can we reduce the landfill-destined swag at conferences with a web app? Can we lower our carbon footprint by highlighting local conferences? These and other ideas to be explored!

There’ll be food and drink courtesy of our kind sponsors Campaign Monitor.

For more information see a.green:focus and upcoming for event signup.

Kicking Off the F1

Si has been busy again with his Microformat-enriched series of sports sites. So if you’re a fan of Rugby or Formula One you should check out Six Nations Kickoff and F1 Calendar to keep up-to-date with all the important dates.

Government Data a Go-Go

You probably heard about the launch of Data.gov.uk earlier in the month, but there’s a Birmingham connection to this new site. Local company Talis provided the semantic web platform which hosts lots of the data. Read more on their Nodalities Blog.

Evolution of a Python Programmer

Funny if you do code, plus bonus linguistic jape for those who don’t.