How do we improve RefreshColombo ?

[Hasanga]

Hi,

I know this has been a long discussed topic after meetups but let's
talk about it.

What do you think are the improvements we can make? What will take us
to next step?




Regards,
<Has />

[Nazly]

Sure. We can talk about it.

There is a serious need of
* Volunteers who can drive Refresh
* Funds / Sponsors

Lets discuss after the meetup.

Nazly

Sent from Gmail for Android

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[Asanka]

Well, I don't know if I wasn't clear on my previous thread "Sponsoring Refreshments" - see last post - I'm happy to sponsor if you can let me know of the details :-)

I couldn't attend the last two sessions, but I've been following the discussion.

Also - in terms of volunteers who can drive Refresh - what are the expected tasks?

Cheers

Asanka

PS. probably these should be discussed over at Twitter - activity on this group is minimal at best of times

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 4:14:45 PM UTC+5:30, Nazly wrote:

Sure. We can talk about it.

There is a serious need of
* Volunteers who can drive Refresh
* Funds / Sponsors

Lets discuss after the meetup.

Nazly

Sent from Gmail for Android

[Hasanga]

Hi,

Thanks Asanka for your willingness. I will try to get you more info in
regards.

While I agree that we need sponsors / funds / volunteers we also need
to improve the gains by attending the meetup. Nobody will want to
attend if they can not gain anything from it. It's harsh but the
reality.

My suggestions are below;

1) Improve the quality of the presentations
This is vital to any meetup and this is one of the key factors
which decides how many people will turn up. Most of the times comment
I was getting is "That was good but what is there for me? That was
very childish I don't wanna come again" These are real comments. While
this may not apply for everybody it applies to majority. So how do we
do improve?
- Invite recognized people among the community like professors /
CEO's / CTO's etc.
- Invite companies for presentations (may be a 1 session dedicated
for a company)
- Invite people with new ideas (not-re-inventing the wheel) for
sessions and filter the session proposals
- Invite other related group organizers/members for sessions

2) Increase gains of attending
More people will turn up if there are more gains. While we may
want to push curtain gains which we think are best, there are other
gains which I think people are looking for. It may be new career
opportunities, getting to know big players or promote their services.
How do we do this?
- By inviting companies to present we will open doors for people
who are interested for new career opportunities ( E.g. - Hey! WSO2 is
presenting today! and they got this BIG e-bay thingy also. I will go
there coz I really like what they do and I like to join with them! )
- By inviting companies we will also open doors for companies to
hunt best talent in town. So it's a Win-Win-Win

3) Update the website regularly
I often see the web site is getting updated 3-4 days before the
meetup day that's also only about the session topics. This is bad. How
do we improve?
- Get a group blogging system in place (e.g. WPMU) and let users
open blogs and write blog posts. If you want control let them go
through a approval before publishing.
- Running out of blog posts? Have a lead board and badges. Share
badges on to FB, twitter also announce at the meetup!
- Get someone to update the site with latest related News.
- Ask people to submit news for publishing (i-report)

The other advantage of having a updated site is that it can then be
turned in to a fund source for getting more funds.

4) Call for PRESS!!
We are doing a great job so far. Why not call the press? We can
simply ask press to write about refresh Colombo. Get featured on News
papers, magazines etc. How?
- I'm sure there are enough people already which can help us who
already attend the meetup. Call for action!
- Introduce those who helps in the meetups and get them publicity
( payback :-) )


I can go on. However the key to improve this meetup is to throw the
ball to the field and let the people play. I mean a meetup of this
nature is not something you need to work hard. Community it self will
fund it and keep it moving as long as there is a cup to win. You just
need to have the whistle to control the game and avoid fouls.

These are my ideas. I'm open to friendly criticism and discussion :-)


Having said that I truly appreciate all the people behind this effort.
This is an amazing effort so far! Specially the achievements that you
all have made and the contribution to the community has been by far
great! Keep it up!


Cheeers!


<Has />
@hasanga

[Ravindranath Akila]

If you need a session on Android, I can conduct one (or bring someone better :-) ), also on a few web related technologies (I come from a Java background) Portals(Portlets), Cloud Computing(Intro only) is to name a few.

Thanks,
R. A.

[Saptha Wanniarachchi]

Hi Guys!

Its good we started topic on this, I really appreciated and agree that Refresh is doing a great work and its the best thing happen in town, I was there ever since refresh started but I used to select events after going trough the agenda, my point is we need to be more concern and balance on the topics we pick , Please don't take me wrong or no complain what you guys been doing but some months most of the topics looks the same and some are really limited to some domains. going forward we need to add some value to the event by picking up random topics under common subject such as

• Business Application
• Enterprise Solutions 
  
• WEB Apps
• Coding
• Mobile

its just open for discussion, plus we can open forum to large vendors to promote thier products not only by promoting demo , we may demand them to explain the concept behind the topic and then showcase the solution example : if some company request to show case CRM application we may ask them to first hour they need to explain the concept behind the CRM and educate our users on the generic information.

My personal opinion is its always have to balance with business apps + generic IT topics . refresh is doing great with generic it topics whats missing is the business sections, I guess that's where Hasanga and myself can do something to help.

[Aloka Gunasekara]

Certainly agree with Saptha and I think we managed to make the variety happen to a certain extent during the past few Refresh meetups. However, there's a lot to be done, especially since now that sponsors are forthcoming to make things happen at Refresh Colombo. 

Nazly told me a real neat idea that he wants to progress on. What he wants to do is set up several small committees to take things forward. Say for example, Hasanga and Saptha can be a committee which looks into enterprise applications. So essentially, all correspondence/work regarding that specific vertical is handled by that committee. This is just an example. We need several of these committees to take care of their specific verticals. 

From the beginning, Refresh had been plagued by the dearth of good presenters. One of the major problems had been that there weren't many people that we could approach to do a presentation. Even some of the presenters who contacted us through the contact form on the website didn't have good enough topics for us to consider. If we can set up these committees, it would be a great way to find better persenters while preserving variety. 

Another thing as Hasanga rightly mentioned is that we need more interaction at the website. I would like the website to be far more interactive and user friendly. What we see at the moment is spikes during the time we have Refresh and pretty much nothing else during all the other days. I would like to see far better interaction at the website or even at the Facebook Page. So any ideas are welcome. We should get cracking on it real soon. 

We're seeing a lot more interest from VCs and people of such calibre on Refresh which is pretty good. I think we have to reach out to people out there who wants to do some good apps/ bring good concepts in. We're seeing a lot of interest on Refresh but what we wanted to at Refresh initially was to bring together people so they can collaborate to do some nice work. The interactive session we did with Chim and Chandika was one of the results of that drive. Think we better organize something like that sometime soon again. 

I would like to see more ideas being shared here. I hope we all can find some free time to get things going for Refresh. :)

[Sharanyan Sharma]

Guys,

is't good for SEO/SM Peoples ? i mean is there anyone going to discuss about SEO or Social Media topics?

Thanks,
Sharma

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 4:06:39 PM UTC+5:30, Hasanga wrote:

[Nazly]

We had SEO/SM topics during our recent meetups.. Not this month though..
Keep in touch..
www.RefreshColombo.org

Nazly

Sent from Gmail for Android

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[Shiran Sanjeewa]

What are the July topics going to be?

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 4:06:39 PM UTC+5:30, Hasanga wrote:

[Nazly]

Not yet finalized.. Will be updated on refreshcolombo.org soon.. Keep in touch with our twitterstream..

Nazly

Sent from Gmail for Android

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[Shiran Sanjeewa]

Brilliant, Thanks Nazly

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 4:06:39 PM UTC+5:30, Hasanga wrote:

[Zia Sulaiman]

What is refresh colombo?????????

[ahmedmuhs]

Ado dont act like a baby, your coming all the way here and you dont know the meaning of referesh colombo, the name alone explains the whole thing. What were your english O/L results

On Tuesday, September 18, 2012 12:40:41 PM UTC+5:30, Zia Sulaiman wrote:

What is refresh colombo?????????

[Zia Sulaiman]

So u know the meaning?????????????

[ahmedmuhs]

if i dont knwo do u think i wud call u a baby!! use ur brains men, seriously wat were ur O/L results ah??