Archive for July, 2009
Wall Construction and General Meeting
Posted by Slepp in Events, Membership, News, Space on July 23rd, 2009
We’re starting on the construction of the walls for the new space on Friday evening at 6pm. We already have all the timber and we’ve started rearranging the overhead power and lights to accommodate the walls. Now, we just need some help to physically build the walls. Friday will mostly be framing and cutting, Saturday at 9am we’ll start the drywalling and finishing. If you can make it Friday at 6pm and/or Saturday on or after 9am, that would be great.
Also, we’ll be having July’s monthly membership general meeting on Thursday, July 30th at 6pm at the space (hopefully we’ll have some walls up by then). We’ll be covering membership dues, the budget, space planning and projects already on the go or in planning. We should have lots of space so hopefully we can see most of the 63 members out next Thursday to join in the meeting.
With that, have a good afternoon and hope to see everyone over the weekend! (Bring some tools if you like, we don’t have enough for everyone)
The space is ours! Open House Friday
Yes, you’ve probably mostly heard by now, but we have signed the lease for the proposed space. On Tuesday morning, Rob, Eric, Graham and Stephen went to the landlord and signed the lease for the ENTS space. We now are the proud lessees of 3700 square feet of space to use as we see fit and to grow the community even further. We’d like to say the landlord has been extremely accomodating to our rapid growth and how we operate. They have been strong supporters of our group and helped us in many ways to get this space at a price that works for us. The landlord has also agreed to let us keep a large number of items, such as desks, tables, and various pieces of equipment to quickly furnish the space. If you run into Bruce at the space, be sure to say thanks!
We’re already picking up the Microsoft Surface from the City of Edmonton Thursday morning, we’re deciding the final layout plans for the primary walls, and have begun the cleaning of the space. There’s a lot to do, but so far, we have already made a lot of progress on preparing the space for general consumption. If you’re interested in helping with construction or planning, let us know. We’d be glad to have the help, member or not.
ThinkTel Communications has agreed to donate 4 phones lines for the space to work with for operations and learning of phone system operation, two parties have agreed to donate Internet connections on their way within the next week, we’re investigating leads on building materials for the space development, and we’ve raised some money from the members in the form of donations to help with all these things. We’ve also had offers of furniture, equipment and gadgets to fill the space already. To those which we’ve replied ‘not just yet’, well, now you can bring it by and we can put it somewhere.
If you’re a member, now is a great time to join in the building and development of the physical space, to shape it into ways you want to see it used. If you’re not a member, there’s no better time than now to sign up and get your ideas placed into the space development.
To introduce everyone to the space, members or the general public, we’re holding two general events. The main event will be Friday evening at 6pm at suite 201, 10575 114 Street NW. It is just north of the Safeway in Oliver Square. There are so far no set plans for what we’ll be doing Friday, but if you can make it out and take a gander at the space and talk with the members and directors, we’d be glad to have you out. On Thursday, you can come out and see the space, and again talk to directors and other members. Hopefully everyone will have a chance in the next two days to take a look. If you really want to take a look, but the evenings don’t work, let us know and we may be able to arrange a time during the day to take people through.
So, to finish off, thanks to everyone for all of their assistance, time, energy and thoughts on making ENTS grow from a small discussion into a 59 member strong group of Edmonton’s technical community. We’re glad to see everyone that has joined and like to hear all your ideas. Now that we have our physical space, we can make all those ideas become realities.
As always, you can call us at 780-701-9400 (ENTS main line), message us on Twitter @ENTS, or email us.
See you Friday or Thursday night! The public and members are all welcome.
Meeting and Wing Night Tuesday, July 7th, 7pm
Well, it’s that time again. We’re going to be hosting another general meeting and gathering at the Elephant and Castle downtown at 7pm on Tuesday, July 7th (You can find it on our http://ev.ents.ca/ calendar). Everyone’s welcome, members and non-members alike. We’ll cover all the new developments within the Society involving the City of Edmonton and our proposed space.
If you have an interest in technology and want to get together with like minded people, this is the place to be. Once again, Rob will be funding some free wings for everyone who attends.
We have the room booked from 6pm onwards, so you can show up early if you prefer or have nothing else to do. The official start will be 7pm, however. If you’ve signed up online to be an ENTS member, you can bring your $20 application fee with you.
If you want to RSVP, you can do so with the Facebook event or by letting us know on Twitter @ENTS.
Working with the City of Edmonton
This week has seen exciting developments within the Edmonton New Technology Society. After the City of Edmonton IT Open House, the CIO of the City of Edmonton, Chris Moore, invited ENTS to discuss future plans on partnering with the city to advance the city’s open initiatives and further growth within the technical community. The city has also offered to loan us some equipment and resources to provide some interesting projects right out of the gates that everyone could participate in (things including a Microsoft Surface, photos of us playing with it are on http://d.ents.ca/).
Eric, Rob, Chris and Stephen and a Microsoft Surface
Our membership count is up to 45 total members signed on with the Society. From a sustainability standpoint, we’re almost there. The City of Edmonton would like to see us attain more members to ensure our future growth and sustainability. If you haven’t joined yet, now would be a great time! If we can reach our membership target of 60 members in the next two weeks, we can quickly proceed with the lease signing, wall building and begin our partnership with the City of Edmonton. We would like to start the first events later this month or early August and the more members we have signed on, the easier it will be to accomplish our goals. We’ve already requested the lease documents from the landlord of the space we’ve been talking about for weeks.
The City of Edmonton is looking to have ENTS host some exciting events within the Edmonton technical community. More details will be forthcoming as we fill in the details with Chris. (By the way, if you want to see what’s happening with Edmonton’s IT infrastructure, follow Chris on Twitter).
Also this week, Matt talked to Twitter and obtained the username ENTS, instead of ENTSca that we had been using. We’re quite pleased with Twitter’s support on it (the previous user hadn’t used it in over two years and had 3 followers) and we’ll be moving all the communications to the new username tonight. So, please go ahead and follow ENTS on Twitter.
The road ahead is looking very interesting for the Edmonton New Technology Society, with many projects and public interest from non-profits and corporations alike. The best part is the City of Edmonton is committed to supporting us in our core goals of social collaboration and innovation within Edmonton, and we’re very glad to have the support of the city in our endeavours.
If you have any questions about the society, our goals, our projects or want to join, don’t hesitate to contact us through the forums or the website, or you can call the directors at 780-701-9400.
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