The quick and dirty discription of a a Jelly is an every-so-often casual coworking session. Which is basically a group of various devs, designers and freelancers getting together and working from the same locaton in a collaborative model. Anyone is welcome to come, bring a laptop, and work alongside other creative, fun people.  See workatjelly.com and this blog post for more background on the history and background of jellys. Go here for Birmingham Jelly info.

This week our friends over at Sparkbox Coworking have invited us to have a jelly at their facility on Friday. There will be snacks and refreshments at the Jelly. For more info check out the facebook event. It doesn’t matter who you work for, or what you do, if you think that working with smart and friendly people would benefit. Then join our facebook group or come to one of our meetings.

The event again brought together community leaders from throughout the southeast for a day of networking and brainstorming with other community leaders. 20+ user groups (listed here) were represented this year including people from Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Greenville-Spartanburg, and Augusta.

So what is the reason behind this event you ask? Well many tech community groups face similar challenges such as “Where can we meet?” “How to get Sponsors”, and “How to maintain and Grow membership” So why not get those groups together to share solutions and best practices with each other to help better the tech community as a whole? Well that is just what we did.

Since the goal was to make connections and share ideas/best-practices we started with a game like last year. Everyone was encouraged to sit next to someone they didn’t know and each lunch while we worked on the game, and afterwards the group with the most correct answers got prizes.

The event itself was run like a traditional “unconference”, and the schedule was not fixed. So after lunch and the * activity we started by soliciting topics from the leaders, and setting up breakout sessions to discuss each of the topics. After each hour of breakouts, each group gave a summary to the others of their conclusions, salient points and next steps.

The main breakout topics this time included “Alternative Meeting Formats”,  “Incorporating and Non-Profit Formation”,  “Cross Group Interactions”, and “Member Motivation, Participation, and Continuous interaction”.  We put notes and summaries of the conversations on the wiki to make sure the information is accessible to others. You can click on the topics above to get to the notes. We are still working on adding notes for some sessions.

After the event we enjoyed a catered dinner and then finished it off with some XBOX gaming (Halo: Reach and Rock Band), and some good old-fashioned socializing over beer.

I really enjoyed the event again this year and it always helps to see user groups from all over have the same issues we do. We heard a lot good ideas and learned from all sorts of various situations others have had. Hopefully we will be able to keep this group engaged and make the User Groups in the Southeast second to none.

Along the way I’ve tried to help with a lot of events that also helped grow the community such as: Barcamp, Wordcamp, Alabama LugFest, and other events. And I have met lots of great people, lots of characters, and been continuously impressed with the caliber of people in the Metro Area. While many people are pessimistic about the area I believe we have the pieces to build a vibrant and prosperous creative community in the area. And I want to do everything I can to help the city see the possibilites.

Last year I was lucky enough to get to attend a few Ignite events in cities I traveled to due to work and it got me thinking. I had been previously exposed the the quick talk format through “lightning talks” at events like OSCON and I thought it was an easy yet powerful format. So I started to think since there are so many cool groups, conferences, organizations, and people in Birmingham that that it would be awesome to have a night once every few months where we can all get together and share all of those ideas that are burning inside us – technology, art, communications, or whatever the topic. Since most of the events I have been involved with have been very tech heavy , this would provide an opportunity to get a wider audience and hopefully get them excited about the City/Metro Area again.

The goal was for Ignite Birmingham to be a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea, concept, or passion — and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. It is about democratizing the tech discussion, sharing ideas, and their free exchange . So in essence Ignite Birmingham was started to spark a discussion. These discussions will hopefully help the area grow and prosper by making a closer creative community. So let’s get out there and spark a discussion, share an idea, and help each other out!