It was great to see everyone in the run up for Maker Faire.  So many new faces as this meetup, we should have more of them!

I did change the name of the club to "The Eugene Nonfiction Book Club." Membership's growing steadily, so I'm confident that this is becoming a sustainable book club. The first meeting is this Wednesday.  The Switchboard was very helpful in getting the word out. Thank you!

We had many times the number of tech judges this year.  It was awesome.

We received some great candidates for this position.

IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. How I reached a level of LinkedIn mastery where someone now even refers me to her network as 'The LinkedIn Guru.' Over 5 years ago, I was spending tireless hours learning to use LinkedIn to network for jobs when I was in graduate school. I'm a firm believer that the more we teach things to others, the more we learn. We not only feel great, but we help others achieve a similar goal we want for ourselves.  So I decided to apply my innate abilities of teaching and educating; helping people brand themselves on LinkedIn and optimize their own profile to help them network and find a new job.  During that time, I was very fortunate through my own research and networking to collaborate and learn from the top LinkedIn 'Influencers,' ambassadors, and staff (such as J.T. O'Donnell, Alyssa Sittig, and Dr. Marla Gottschalk) on how to optimize LinkedIn for networking and career development. I learned more about how the site worked and what the best "tricks and tips" were. Through consistent learning and service to others, I became seen by people as a "LinkedIn expert." In 2016, I was selected by LinkedIn as an industry expert on their Pro Finder feature. I've been featured on sites such as Recruiter.com, WorkitDaily, and KTLA Channel 5 morning news as a Career and LinkedIn Branding expert. To date, I have been able to help out thousands of people optimize their professional brand and profile on LinkedIn to help them grow their network, find a better job, and grow their business. I work primarily with: A) Ambitious women who already have a successful business and want to learn how to specifically use LinkedIn to expand their business. Also independent contractors (male or female) (Real estate agents, Career Coaches, Speakers, Consultants) B) High level or "C" level business professionals looking to make a transition into a different career or industry. 

I'd made some good progress on this project, yet felt it would take a while to complete working by myself. I mentioned this to Mark and as if by magic a couple volunteers appeared to help me. Thank you, Mark. We had a brief meeting then immediately setup a Trello board to facilitate coordination and track the project's progress. Some new ideas came up in the discussion. I'm grateful that this community Switchboard exists. It does work! 

got two responses.  hired one and waiting to see if they can deliver.

The Eugene Switchboard is a great. In this case, the main benefit of this post is that I focused my thoughts more and made some progress on how to frame things. I think writing helps for that. It's also sparked a couple conversations that resulted in some useful feedback. As a result of the sort of thinking I did here, I was able to improve my profile on a job board resulting in an interview with a company I would consider a good place to work. 

I found a taker for the legos.

The community has a very inclusive feel to it compared to other job boards and people have been pretty responsive. I'm surprised that it is so popular and look forward to interacting on switchboard more in the future. 

Thank you EugeneTech Switchboard.  Our post was successful and we found perfect developers for the grant and for possible future work! 

Some folks were able to attend the show that would not normally be interested or able. More diversity at tech events in important.

The proposals came in quickly after posting on the switchboard. Most of them from Facebook. We made our decision by the end of the week and now have a nice list of WordPress devs to call on for projects.

Josh's talk was interesting and exciting and filled with robots.

We had a great time. Lot's of people, and co-meetup with the #TechTuesday group

A good group of on-campus and on-line students have signed up for the iOS app development class and there's still room for more!

I really love the fact it is targeted to local developer community and Mark's invovlement was absolutely positive. I think this will be great community resource for a long time.

From Matt Sayre "..., local tech companies came out big time to support STEM in Eugene schools. This article sums up the outcome. Thank you for your support in getting the word out. http://registerguard.com/rg/news/local/33461428-75/community-rallied-to-raise-money-needed-for-school-space-science-project.html.csp "

This worked out great!  Ryan offered to help and Jase jumped in and started doing stuff.  We used the Slack channel to share assets and ideas.  An hour or two later we were done, cards ordered and we should have them in a week.  Jade's work was great and we used original logo assets from Courtney.  Go team!

Everyone loves the Week in Tech.

TAD Talks was a sold-out success.  Next stop the Hult Center.

Thanks to all that support this project

The campaign has funded!

Had more than a few people interested - timing was an issue for some. As a result today I posted an ASK to hone in on the best time for meetings. Meetings every other week is the plan and the goal is to focus on developing ideas to help businesses reach customers inside and outside the Eugene / Lane County area. Several conference rooms are available. We may move the meetings around to accommodate both the Eugene / Springfield businesses. Perhaps include occasional meetings in Corvallis and Cottage Grove too.

Many thanks to Matt Clippinger of Sirius Computer Solutions for sharing his insights into how the changes at Microsoft will affect the way we use SharePoint. The Eugene SharePoint User Group meeting was well attended and very informative.