John Beynon

Website launched to bring together the Guildford web community

We’ve launched a new website for Web Meet Guildford, aka WMG today, webmeetguildford.co.uk to serve as a directory of anyone involved with the web in and around Guildford and also for notifying the community of future events that we will be holding.

Built using the tool we love, Ruby on Rails we’ve incorporated sign up via Devise and Omniauth for Twitter authentication and the Twitter gem for retrieving Tweets. Agencies signing up are geocoded from their postcode using the Google Geocoding service, the rest of their details are then populated by magic.

The site is delivered via Heroku using a range of addons from New Relic for server and front end performance monitoring, Hoptoad, Logging to Memcached thrown in for good measure.

WMG Screenshot

Working with the Twitter API can certainly be fun, for instance did you know that a Twitter user has two unique identifiers? Their REST API uses one of these IDs and the search API uses another, it’s been an ‘accepted’ issue now since December 2008! Also, dealing with hash tags has it’s own pit falls since they are a free for all. The #WMG tag we use is used elsewhere so we simply can’t just show any tweet using the hashtag #wmg so we have to make sure that we only show #wmg tweets from our members.

We plan on adding additional functionality in coming months – so if you’re involved with the web in and around Guildford make sure you come and join to keep up to date with the goings on and hopefully we’ll see you at the next event confirmed now for June 23rd from 6pm (3 Pigeons, top of Guildford high street) and let us know if you’ve got any ideas on how we can further develop the site.

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Tags: event, guildford, surrey, beer, launch, wmg

Paul Sturgess

Web Meet Guildford Spring Edition

Wow so it’s already been 2 months since our last meet up. The sunshine is here and we’re well overdue a good catch up and a refreshing drink or two.

Please do come along this Thursday, March 31st. As usual we’ll be a running a tab behind the bar upstairs, from 6pm, in the 3 Pigeon’s pub on Guildford High Street.

The turnout at our first two events has certainly exceeded our expectations. It really has been great to meet and socialise with such a wide range of web professionals in the local area. Thanks to everyone that’s come along and made it a success.

As always we’d love to see some new faces though. So if you haven’t been before please come and introduce yourself.

You can let us know if you’ll be dropping in by leaving a comment here or on Twitter via @kyanmedia

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Tags: guildford, wmg

Paul Sturgess

Web Meet Guildford is back

After the resounding success of the first Web Meet Guildford (WMG) we’re excited to announce that we’ll be hosting another meetup later this month.

So if you make websites and you live or work in the Guildford area, please do join us in the 3 Pigeon’s pub on Guildford High Street for a drink on the 27th January from 6pm.

People at WMG 01

As per last time, we have hired out the upstairs of the pub and will have a tab behind the bar to start the evening off.

The turnout back in November was excellent and with the fresh new year and renewed enthusiasm after the Christmas break we’re already looking forward to meeting everyone.

Please spread the word and you can let us know if you’ll be popping along by leaving a comment here on our blog or on Twitter via @kyanmedia.

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Tags: twitter, guildford, meetup, wmg

Paul Sturgess

Web Meet Guildford is live

Last night saw the launch of the first Web Meet Guildford (WMG) held at the 3 Pigeon’s pub in Guildford and judging by the turnout, the general atmosphere and the positive reaction from Twitter I think we can consider the evening an outright success.

It was refreshing to see a real mixture of web professionals in attendance. From developers and designers to SEO gurus, project managers and social media experts.

We’ll certainly be organising another one; we’ll announce details of it here on our blog and on our Twitter account @kyanmedia.

Thanks to everyone that came along and we look forward to seeing you all at the next one.

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Tags: twitter, guildford, meetup, wmg

Paul Sturgess

Web Meet Guildford, join us for a drink

It’s been over a year now since we moved to Guildford and we’re really feeling settled in our new home on the High Street. We’ve got our artwork on the walls, an arcade machine setup and we’ve even hosted a live gig. However, one thing we haven’t done yet is meet our fellow web designing neighbours.

We figure there must be quite a few ‘like minded’ agencies and freelancers around that we have a lot in common with. This got us thinking, wouldn’t it be great for the Guildford web community to meet, mix, and socialise in a relaxed and informal setting, i.e. lets all have a drink down the pub.

So we announce the first…

Web Meet Guildford

If you make websites and you live and/or work in the Guildford area we’d love for you to join us at 6pm on Thursday 4th November for a cheeky after work drink in the 3 Pigeon’s pub on Guildford High Street.

We’ve reserved the upstairs area and will have a tab behind the bar to get the evening rolling.

Please let us know if you’re interested, even if you can’t make this date. Leave a comment or contact us on Twitter @kyanmedia. Feel free to spread the word and we look forward to meeting you.

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Tags: guildford, meetup, beer, wmg