At last night’s geek dinner, Arnell Milhouse talked about how his company, Eyegloo, is building a virtual representation of Providence. It should be a lot of fun to stroll around when it opens to the public in the next couple of months. Check out the video above for more details.

Photo Credit: Bret A. Ancowitz, M.D. of Garris Photography

Wednesday, April 25, 2007, 5:30pm – 9pm+
AS220
115 Empire Street, Providence, RI

This is all too perfectly fitting - at the April Geek Dinner, Arnell Milhouse - Providence Geek, President of the Downtown Merchants Association, and Founder of interactive media services company Eyegloo - will give the first (and an extremely early) public sneak peak of Eyegloo’s ambitious “Virtual Providence” project.

Eyegloo is in the process of recreating all of Downtown Providence  within the megapopular online 3D community Second Life (the image to the right shows Arnell’s SL persona in front of the RI Convention Center).  Virtual Providence aims to become the first real world city that has been recreated in a 3D world, where you will be able to visit, walk the streets, and go in an out of actual stores and restaurants.

Arnell will explain how Eyegloo is doing it, including their use of Second Life’s LSL scripting language. He will also introduce the innovative business model behind Virtual Providence.

BONUS: Yes! There will be a virtual dimension to the presentation itself – stay tuned.

Please RSVP in the comments section of this post so that we can give the good folks at AS220 an estimated headcount. And while you’re at it, subscribe to Providence Geeks’ RSS feed (see sidebar) and/or join our very-low-volume email announcement list (for the announcement list, send an email to Jack Templin, jtemplin over at Gmail with your name and affiliation).

As always, for first-timers here are the details on the Geek Dinners:

• It’s totally casual. Wear whatever, bring whoever, arrive and vamoose whenever… And don’t worry about eating or not – come famished or full – eating is optional, and frankly, the least of the festivities (that’s not say the food isn’t good—it’s actually great).
• Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, mash-ups, start-ups, new devices, innovative business models, interaction design, social computing, digital art, web services, etc. etc. etc.
• Food and beverages are for sale at the adjoining Taqueria Pacifica and bar.
• There is WiFi so bring your connected device of choice.

Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Geekcorps, co-founder of Global Voices, and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law, will speak on Monday, April 23rd at 4pm at  Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

Details here.

Here’s the latest from the Providence Geeks ad-hoc job board:

• The New England Institute of Technology seeks adjunct faculty to teach e-commerce courses
• Axon Labs seeks a Sleep Lab Director
• Verisign seeks a Java Developer
• GLAD WORKS seeks a Full-Time Web Developer
• Noosphere Networks seeks a Paid Summer Intern
• Location, Inc. seeks a Web Designer

And remember you can always post jobs for free as long as they are are 1.) local and 2.) geeky. Just register here.

Congrats to Jack Templin, who appears on the front page of the current Providence Business News with coverage of the Information Technology & Digital Media Center that he’s pulling together:

... the center would operate on a membership model and seek to become a physical, cultural and virtual nexus for the entire sector, said Providence Geeks co-founder Jack Templin, who is consulting on the project.

In addition to providing space for several companies that show potential to grow substantially, the center would provide meeting space and offer workshops, training and other programming for everyone in the sector, Templin said.