Florida Creatives, CoworkingOrlando and Orlando Ruby Users Group

March 6, 2007

This is actual a repost from my Orlando Sentinel Colonialtown Blog, I figured I share this one here as well

One of the nifty things of living this close to downtown is the close gathering of different individuals. I have noticed that the spectrum of people living, not just in Colonialtown but in close proximatey of Downtown, is quite broad. You can see it in the businesses, bars and restaurants. Having grown up in a small town I love the ability to meet up with new perspectives, ages and new people. I talked earlier about a couple of groups I am involved with but have also found a few more. Here they are below.
Florida Creatives
This is a growing community of creative types, largely occupying the downtown Orlando area. More of a networking and sharing group, they exist as a pod-cast and a blog but have happy hour meet-ups for social time. “Entrepreneurs, filmmakers, thespians, bloggers and podcasters, artists, designers, architects” and any one else on the creative side of things make for a pretty diverse group to share some social time with. Add in a look at mentoring and collaboration you have pretty unique community goodness as well. Their stated goal:

The eventual goal of this group is to hold an annual “un-conference” where the community gets together to learn from each other, though there is no commitment to attend. This event exists simply for us to get together and be social.

Other adventures from this or connected are:
the CoworkingOrlando initiative.
CoworkingOrlando is a way to find a space for a community of creative professionals to maintain a low cost space and encourage growth of the community.
Orlando Ruby Users Group
Now for this one is specific for getting your geek on. From their goals:

The Orlando Ruby Users Group was formed in January 2006, to provide a club for many purposes:

* To learn together how to better program in ruby
* To provide a place for developers to meet friends and network
* To keep programming fun

They have an upcoming event about Ruby on Rails geared toward managers looking at RoR and developers looking to learn it. Plus dinner is free.
While these aren’t necessarily community groups, the idea of extended communities in work and socially bring together our neighborhoods. They also provide the chance for shared experience and new ideas to be found for old problems.
If you know of any more (non-profit or collaborative only please), please drop a comment below and I will be sure to gather them up for another post.

Posted in sites that rock, technojunk