What do you want for the Holidays? Eco-friendly legislation? Better schools? Subsidies for open source software? At the December 6th Providence Geeks Dinner, CitzenSpeak founder and Providence Geek Jo Lee will present their free email advocacy service for grassroots organizations.

Inspired by MoveOn email campaigns, CitizenSpeak offers a free way to let a lot of people tell someone that they’re mad as hell. By doing so, CitizenSpeak has enabled civic activists across the country to educate representatives about local and national issues, promote causes and build their lists. Recently listed in the FloraFox as a recommended online tool for social change, CitizenSpeak and its developer, George Hotelling have won a number of prestigious awards, including the Tides Foundation award for the best open source software in the public space, and a Webby honoree award. The code that runs CitizenSpeak is available as a free module on Drupal.

Holiday Bonus: Jim Willis will talk about how CitizenSpeak can take advantage of the webservice API’s offered by the RI Secretary of State’s office.

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

Wednesday, December 6, 2006, 5:30pm – 9pm+
AS220
115 Empire Street, Providence, RI

Providence Geeks, which first emerged in 2006, will be holding our last Geek Dinner of the year on December 6th. It promises to be a great one.

To reflect the spirit of the holidays, we’re going to switch things up a bit this month, and feature a “dotorg.” Providence-based CitizenSpeak founder Jo Lee will be presenting their award-winning, open source e-advocacy tools. (See follow-on post for details.)

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’ feed (see florafox) 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:

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• 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.
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• 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.
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• Food and beverages are for sale at the adjoining Taqueria Pacifica and bar.
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• There is WiFi so bring your connected device of choice.
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• We have AS220’s performance space from 5:30pm to approximately 7pm. After that the geekery moves to AS220’s adjoining cafe.
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Business Week has chosen Providence-based Amie Street founders, Elliot Breece, Joshua Boltuch, and Elias Roman (l to r), as finalists in its second annual Best Entrepreneurs Under 25.

Show your local love by voting for the guys here.

“Facebook: Past, Present, and Future”

Jon Warman ‘05 and Leah Pearlman ‘04, Facebook

Thursday, November 9, 2006 at 5:00 P.M.

Lubrano Conference Room (CIT 4th Floor)

Details Here

Appropriately, the Ocean State is home to a flotilla (subtle, huh?) of marine technology companies. For the first time this Wednesday, November 8th, Providence Geeks will featuring such a company: Providence-based FarSounder. (For details and to RSVP, go here.)

FarSounder has a unique solution to the basic navigational question: How deep is the water in front of me?

FarSounder’s FS-3 sonars are award winning true 3-D navigation sonar systems used on commercial and private ships for obstacle avoidance and shallow water navigation. This patented technology generates a 3-dimensional image of the sea floor and in-water objects ahead of the vessel at navigationally significant ranges with a single ping in real-time.

FarSounder engineers Matthew Coolidge and Evan Lapisky will be presenting FarSounder’s 3D forward looking technology. They will
demo and discuss both the hardware and software components of the system.