RefreshBCS

Things have been crazy lately folks. With BarCampTX, SXSWi and an expansion of The Creative Space, we haven’t had time to give the deserved attention to RefreshBCS. But that’s about to change! We have two speakers lined up which will be formally announced when we find the space to host. If ANYONE has a presentation or presenter in mind, please let us know. RefreshBCS is about the community and their interests. Thanks for your time and stay tuned for future updates!

- Roby Fitzhenry

Date: Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Time: 7:00PM
Location: Caffe Capri (website)

Kelsey Ruger, of PopLabs, will be presenting “Rewinding the Clock: reawakening your childhood creativity”. Here’s a brief run-down:

Has your clock stopped? That’s a question we all ought to be asking ourselves – because sometimes the clock has stopped and we don’t know it. Most of us don’t remember the moment when as a child we discovered passion. This passion is about discovery – and discovery with all it’s freshness and excitement is the foundation of creativity.

Children have a natural tendency for discovery. They don’t have to be taught to ask questions, be creative, or think unconventionally. It just happens that way. It takes a lifetime of experience and education to take away what was given to us at birth. We race through our careers often never recognizing that creativity is as important to business as DNA is to evolution.

Explore how professional in all fields can apply creative and visual thinking skills to their work as well as why people ignore the talents that made them naturally creative as children. He will discuss the myths that people hold about creativity, why they exist and how you can overcome them.

Kelsey was recently involved with the “Got Social Media?” conference in Houston and will be presenting at South by Southwest in just a couple of weeks. You may have met him at BarCampTexas, which was hosted just across the street from Caffe Capri in Downtown Bryan.

Games and resources

Game – Befudium
Game – Pictionary
Game – Taboo
Game – Buzzwords
Game – Cranium
Game – Pop 5
Game – ThinkCube
Game – Visual Eyes
Game – Stare
Get Unstuck and Get Going
The Inner Vision Deck
KnowBrainer Toolkit
Ideo Card Deck
Think Pak
Free The Genie
Creative Whack Pack

Books

Thinking Visually: Business Applications of 14 Core Diagrams
ThinkerToy
Innovative Whackpack
Cracking Creativity
Creative Ball of Whacks
A Whack on the Side of the head
Beyond Words
Visual Thinking: Tools for mapping ideas
A Picture’s Worth 1,000 Words: A Workbook for Visual Communications
Mapping Inner Space: Learning and Teaching Visual Mapping
The Story Factor
The Art of Storytelling: Easy Steps to Presenting an Unforgettable Story
Cambridge Idioms Dictionary
Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms
Webster’s New World American Idioms Handbook
Personal Brilliance

Web Sites

Visual Thinking Tools
The Doodle Association Game
Visual Thinking Art
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
The Power of Visual Thinking
Visual Thinking on Answers.com
Visual Language on Answers.com
Visual Thesaurus
Global Ideas Bank
Innovation Tools
Creative Thinking

Refresh Austin will be co-hosting a kickass party with Phizzpop at South by Southwest Interactive. This will be the major party on Monday evening (March 10^th), so I highly recommend you add the event to your Upcoming calendar, and let your friends know so they can come join them for free drinks, cool technology and great company.

Sorry to miss Happy Hour, but here’s all I wanted to say:
http://producten.hema.nl/
There’s your New Years inspiration for a good look at flash and how it talks to the host browser by its javascript api. A little auto-scrolling happening and more! Cheers.

When: January 23rd, 7PM
Where: Margarita Rocks

Now that the holiday season is over and the Christmas lights are removed (or at least not on) we’re going to be getting into the swing of things again. This month we will be having a nice happy hour to ring in the new year. We hope to see you there!

What is a BarCamp?
BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Did we mention BarCampTexas is free?

BarCampTexas will be held at the FIBERTOWN campus in downtown Bryan/College Station. Centrally located between Austin, Houston, and Dallas, Bryan is a budding technology hub. BarCampTexas will be held on the last weekend in January (26/27).

BarCamp topics range from advice on starting a technology business, developing software with cutting edge technologies, and anything else passionate, technology oriented people love.

Everyone is encouraged to participate and present. You can find a list of planned presentations on the BarCampTexas wiki or just show up and present.

To find directions, hotel accommodations, etc. visit the BarCampTexas.com website.

Our Sponsors
Linux Journal *** FIBERTOWN *** Research Valley Partnership

Here are the notes taken at Ed Schipul’s talk. The URL to his actual slides are included in this document; I have URLs to all of the references he threw out during his talk (mostly books — I point to the Amazon entries for each).Notes on the Ed Schipul talk at RefreshBCS (MS Word format)

BIBA will be having a media kick-off event noon, Monday, Oct. 29^th in front of Carnegie Library in Downtown Bryan.

I myself am a board member that proudly serves to promote locally owned business. Buy Brazos, a website devoted to educating the public on shopping local and promoting locally-owned businesses, is growing rapidly with new members. Please take a second to review your local business options and keep them in mind on any future purchases. Look for a fancy pants redesign in the near future. THANKS!