Cleveland Web Standards Association
Published 16 years, 10 months pastLadies and gentlemen, the Cleveland Web Standards Association. Specifically, its brand-new web site, courtesy a small band of association members who worked together to design and develop it. It’s a lovely little semantic number, chock full of microformats and member content aggregators.
In case you hadn’t heard about the CWSA yet and are wondering what the group is like, allow me to quote the About page:
The CWSA is an organization grounded on the premise of sharing information in a relaxed atmosphere. We hold monthly gatherings that include presentations on best practices in web development. The gatherings are open to any person interested in web design/development, no matter what their current skill level is.
This isn’t just a social club, though. We’re not just sharing our skills with each other, but are also working to use those skills in the service of helping others. I don’t want to steal any thunder, so if you want to find out the details, you’ll just have to come find out for yourself.
We’ll be having our next meeting in a week, 5 February 2008, in our usual space at Tri-C (and many thanks to the college for giving us a home!). This is definitely a meeting to make, because the topic will be the current and future direction of the association, including deciding the topics on which we want to have presentations and figuring out how best to use the raw talent and enthusiasm of the group for maximal good. If you’re in the area, you should absolutely come check things out. If you know someone in the area, kindly pass the word on to them.
Comments (18)
I’d surely be there if there wasn’t that distance of 6617.79km between ME and THERE. ;)
Will you record future meetings and release the video later on or will you even stream the event live? Any of the above would be fantastic! I’d really love to see what’s going on there!
I initially thought this was just like the Refresh movement, but noticed you link to Refrsh Cleveland as well. Looks like it’s more of a formal, teaching group, than the more social side. I’m a member of the Multipack; a group like Refresh, based in Birmingham, UK. We’ve been going over two solid years now, and are looking to branch out into more formal education capacities – hopefully soon!
The screening of the Helvetica movie is a great idea. Did you have to get any special permission to screen this ‘publically’ ?
@Tobias
We do have plans to record and document future events. We don’t have live streaming at the moment, but we will record and post online – as well as the presenters usually post their slides, information, and resources.
Like trovster, this seems very similar to the idea behind a Refresh. How do you see the two groups co-existing?
My initial thought is that it would mean that people would have to ultimately choose which to attend because of the time commitment. For example, if you only go out once a month, having two events a month (1 for CWSA, 1 for Refresh) means a person has to decide which to go to.
I’m probably just not seeing the bigger picture here. :) (not that it matters, I’m not in Cleveland, just curious)
@Jonathan
I’m not sure what David Mead has in store for Refresh Cleveland. He’s been doing a great job at spreading the word of web standards on the site though.
As for the CWSA, there was a real need for something like this in Cleveland. When we started the meetup, none of us really had any idea that it would grow into what it is today. With each meeting we realized that we could do a lot of good in the area if we took the initiative and organized ourselves into something more than just a simple meetup.
As for co-existing, I don’t think that will pose a problem. David is also a member of the CWSA so I’m sure whatever he organizes will be complimentary to what we are doing. :)
Nice, but I wouldn’t call it “chock full” of microformats (on the home page, at least) what about hCard for the organisation, and the event’s venue? What about hAtom for the new items?
@Andy
Good call on the lack of hCard for the organization and venue. We’ll get that corrected soon.
@Andy
The current site is completely static – it is another step in our building process. Next up will be a custom backend to manage everything we need to manage. Once this is in place, we will implement hAtom (and use it to render our atom feeds).
Thanks for the heads up on the other microformats as well.
@Jonathan
As Brad already mentioned, we’re all super happy fun pals with the same goal in mind: promoting modern web development in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.
A rising tide lifts all boats. Anything Refresh Cleveland does indirectly (or even directly) promotes our goals, and vice versa. But maybe when the weather warms up here we can have a water balloon fight or something to determine who gets to be Captain.
Water balloon fight? Hell no. We”re goin” for paintball!
I haven’t had the pleasure of joining you guys yet, but since I live 3 miles from campus, I’ll be there.
Eric, be prepared. I’ve been trying to contact you and take you out for a huge steak for about a year now… I might just have to try harder next week :)
The meetings seem to be familiar compared with the meetings we organize here in The Netherlands with Fronteers. Do you only organize meetings? Or do you have further plans to spread the word about web standards?
@Eric thanks for the mention on the CWSA!
@Snook, as mentioned the main Refresh dude is a member of the CWSA, so I believe the relationship is mutually beneficial. Plus, David Mead is one hell of a guy.
@Arjan we plan to rule the world someday, but we had to take baby steps, first. ;)
The group started out as a social thing, but morphed into a group of people who wish to network, instruct & learn, as well as spread the word about the beauty of standards. We’re currently in the process of figuring out the best way for us to do that, given our current resources.
@Eric, Thanks for the post G. Much appreciated. Of course all the congrats go out to the team that worked on this for us.
@Everyone else, I’m not sure about the setup of a lot of the organizations like ours. We’ve begun billing ourselves as Professionals with Personality though, because we’d like to really maintain the social aspects of our group, as well as the professional. The next gathering will likely have several announcements in this direction. So stay tuned:).
@Jonathon, We started to get RefreshCleveland back up and running around the same time that Joe & the guys were breathing life back into the CWSA (via meetup.com), so we made the decision to keep Refresh more online for the time being.
@Bridget, thx
@Eric, CO2 cannisters @ dawn it is Sir :-)
Doh! This is tonight. I have been hoping to drive up to one of these events from Pittsburgh one of these days. Hopefully there may be a weekend event in the future, or something that I can try to take a day off to make it up to.
I run the local Refresh Pittsburgh group, and have been wanting to start some dialogs with some of the other groups in other towns, and Cleveland is on my list!
I had the pleasure of joining these guys for the first time last week. What an experience. I cannot wait to be more involved in the future.
I realize the web site is a work in progress, but a contact page would be a nice touch. Otherwise, I have to
complaincomment here about the lack of print css.