I dropped the ball last week on upcoming events, but I have a great list for you this week, feel free to suggest other area events in the comment area.

Cold Start Happy Hour (Free)

Monday, April 19, 2010 from 7pm to 9pm

Start practicing your elevator pitch, for the second Cold Start Happy Hour, we’re meeting in The Happy Gnome’s back patio in St. Paul.

We want to hear about the projects you’re working on, share with you what we’ve been working on, and both leave with new local projects to evangelize.

The Happy Gnome
498 Selby Ave
Saint Paul, MN 55102

http://coldstart.eventbrite.com/

Bootstrappers Breakfast

Join Other Entrepreneurs Who
Eat Problems For Breakfast.

* Compare Notes
* Exchange Ideas
* Learn from Others’ Mistakes
* Brainstorm with Peers
* Find Partners
* Small Group Atmosphere
* Serious Conversation

Bootstrappers Breakfasts® are for founders of early stage technology startups. It is a chance to compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers. These breakfasts were designed for entrepreneurs to share ideas and leverage thoughts with other folks who are serious about growing their business.

Our focus is on issues for growing a business, not on VC fundraising. We promote the bootstrap business model.

http://www.bootstrappersbreakfast.com/
http://www.meetup.com/Bootstrappers-Breakfast-Minneapolis/

MIMA Event: CATFOA 2010: HASHEM BAJWA, (DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL STRATEGY, DROGA5) (Free)

Monday, April 19, 2010
Doors at 5:00 p.m. Event starts at 6:00 p.m.

Welcome to the third installment of the third year of Conversations About The Future Of Advertising, co-sponsored by MCAD+MIMA.

Fine Line Music Cafe
318 First Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55401

http://www.mima.org/mimaevts/

Twin Cities Silverlight Group (Free)

Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight – Don’t Make Any Assumptions
4/20/2010 12:00 – 1:30 pm

At MIX10 there were a number of announcements and a lot of buzz around Windows Phone 7 and one of its development platforms, Silverlight. While it is undoubtedly tempting to download the CTP bits and start coding, it would be wise to take a step back and come to an understanding of the differences between developing in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 and developing for traditional (i.e. browser hosted) Silverlight applications.In this session we’ll examine the differences and similarities between the two platforms as well as some other gotchas that come along with developing for Windows Phone 7.

Meeting will be held at the Microsoft Office. 8300 Norman Center Dr., Suite 950, Bloomington, MN 55437

http://www.tcslug.com/

Minnesota Visual Studio User Group

3rd Wed of Every Month @ 5pm

A walkthrough of some the the exciting new features of .NET 4.0.

Microsoft
8300 Norman Center Dr., Suite 950 Bloomington, MN 55437

http://www.vstsmn.com/

Become a LinkedIn Expert – Jobseeker Edition ($99 – $119)

Weekly Event – Every Thursday: 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM (CT)

Maybe you’ve received an e-mail with this message in the Subject line.

Did you ask, “what’s a LinkedIn” or did you just blindly sign up and accept the invitation?

Regardless of which road you took, you need to learn more about the latest trend in job search, social networking. In this presentation you’ll discover what the LinkedIn buzz is all about and how you can leverage this powerful tool to that new job – even in today’s challenging economy.

400 Hwy 169 S
Suite 100 (outside entrance on north side)
Minneapolis, MN 55426

http://linkedinexpertjobseeker.eventbrite.com/

I’ve decided that at the beginning of each week I will post about some of the upcoming local web design/development, startups and other technology  events happening in Minnesota/Minneapolis area. My goal is to focus on events for that particular week (this week is an exception).

If you know of any other web related events, please let me know so I can add it to the list.

Minneapolis CrowdPitch – (Free)

This event will bring entrepreneurs, innovators, mentors, support providers, and investors together in an informal and energetic setting.

Think ´America Idol´ — selected entrepreneurs will have 4 minutes to pitch their company to both a panel of experts & a live audience, followed immediately by a 3-minute Q&A session with the panel.

A free networking lunch will follow the formal pitch…

Monday April 12, 2010 from 11:30AM – 1:30PM

Hilton Minneapolis/Bloomington
3900 American Blvd West
Bloomington MN 55437

Learn more…

MinneWebCon 2010 – ($200)

MinneWebCon 2010 (web • twitter • facebook) is less than three weeks away! Join Minnov8 (we’re the media group covering the event) and hundreds of your fellow netizens at this fantastic get-together focused on next generation internet, web and social media creation and delivery…

April 12, 2010

Continuing Education and Conference Center, University of Minnesota
1890 Buford Avenue
St. Paul MN 55108

Learn more…

MN Lean Startup Group – (Free)

We are excited to announce that Lisa Foote of MixMobi will be the guest speaker for our April meetup. Lisa Foote co-founded http://mixmobi.com, Software as a Service that allows clients to create offers and promotions that work on any web-capable mobile phone, in 2009…

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 from 7:00PM – 9:00PM

Refactr Offices
11 Fourth Street NE
Minneapolis MN 55413

Learn more…

UIE Web App Masters Tour – ($895)

Join us for two days chock full of the latest thinking about building awesome web-based applications from our team of world-renowned experts. An event loaded with inspirational ideas and actionable insights for just $895…

Tuesday April 27, 2010 at 8:00AM – April 28, 2010 at 5:AM

Radisson Plaza Hotel
35 South Seventh Street
Minneapolis MN 55402

Learn more…

TextureArchive.com was one of the first major projects I created with a good friend a few years ago now, we have seen decent success and our ZBrush Brushes have been a huge hit with the ZBrush Community. Interestingly enough we have more people downloading our brushes than we do our textures but both have been pretty successful.

We have recently started collecting feature ideas for the next version of TextureArchive, we have let the site get stagnate over the years and we really want to rejuvenate the site again into a thriving Digital Art community.

I decided to open up discussions with you to help us understand what kind of features you would like to see on the new site, we are open to anything but won’t guarantee anything either. We are building the site from the ground up, completely new backend, completely new frontend, everything is new. We are looking for any ideas you may have that you haven’t found on other digital art websites, what do YOU want to see and use?

Do you have a LinkedIn account?
We have created a group over here: LinkedIn – TextureArchive Group where we are also collecting ideas, we’d love to have you join up as well.

We are also on Facebook: Click here

Looking forward to your feedback!

Finally a new blog design and beginning of an exciting journey!

During the past few months I have been taking any spare time I have and putting some time into designing a new blog design so that I could get rid of the basic template I was using before. This new design and implementation is the first time that I have really done a custom Wordpress customization, typically I modify existing themes to fit my needs.

I am not completely done with implementing my design quite yet, there are a few things I need to fix and few issues to resolve but they will get worked out as time allows. As someone who works primarily with .NET and rarely with PHP it was a very different experience and challenge but rewarding at the same time. Working with Wordpress this first time around felt very clumsy and awkward, I’m not sure if it’s just the way Wordpress is setup or what. How about using some sort of template system instead of having to basically recreate the UI for each type of page (Post, Search, Page, etc.) or the fact that not all opening and closing tags can always be in the same file, that’s horrible for trying to debug layout issues.

A bunch of little quirky things like that made learning Wordpress a challenge, however I’m optimistic that it will continue to get easier to work with and I have barely scratched the surface of the real power to the Wordpress architecture.

Now that I am finally happy with the way my blog looks I can really begin to dive into writing articles and providing resources that are useful to everyone in the design field, hope you will keep an eye on what there is to come.

Headline Photo: While spending a weekend up in Duluth MN and the North Shore with my wife and friends we hiked on several trails, this shot looked particularly interesting to me, I am quite happy with how it turned out.

Cheers
Zebb.

We are happy to announce that today we have opened the doors to property managers interested in listing their property on our new site:
http://www.SuperiorApts.com

If you own or manage an Apartment, Bed & Breakfast, Condo, Duplex or Townhouse we encourage you to visit our site and sign up to be notified as a “Property Manager”, from there we will send you an email with a link providing additional information on listing your properties with us. Or you can simply send us a Direct Message on our twitter account over here:
http://twitter.com/SuperiorApts and we’ll get you the link.

Our primary goal right now is getting managers to list their properties so that when we open the site to the public we will have listings available to search for. Please spread the word to as many property managers as possible, the more we have the sooner we can open up the public beta.

Pricing & Promotions

• Each new property listing will receive 60 days absolutely free!
• If you purchase at least 30 additional days you will be entered in to win one of five ZuneHDs we are giving away (Limited to first 1000 managers to list at least one paid listing)
• For each day you purchase we will give you another half day free (up to 365 days free), so if you buy 50 days you would get an additional 25 days free, if you bought 730 days you would get an additional 365 days free.
• We charge just $1 per day, per listing. You can purchase anywhere from 30 days up to 730 days.

Note: All start and end dates for any listing you add will be adjusted according to the official public launch day which has yet to be determined.

Some Features

• Full Manager Details
• Management Name
• Logo
• Contact Information
• Website
• Description
• Link to Twitter, FriendFeed & Facebook Accounts
• Displayed on your Property Listing
• Displays all your Properties in Listing
• Quick Contact Request in Listing
• Full Property Details
• Full Description
• Contact Information
• Website
• Office Hours
• Up to 50 Photos per Listing
• Add 5 Photosynths
• Add Floor plans with Images
• Apartment Amenities
• Community Amenities
• Pet Information
• Parking Information
• Local Neighborhood Information
• Interactive Map
• Easily create Craigslist Ads

Thank you

We would like to thank you for evaluating our services and hope you will take advantage of our 60 day free listing promotion.

We are excited and look forward to working with you.

Thank you,
Micah