Thank you

Refresh Teesside is stronger than ever and is growing at a pace that we never believed it would. The feedback so far has been amazing and it would seem that everyone who has attended an event has gone away and spread the word!

The number of people attending the events has been steady which is unheard of for events like this. Each month we are reaching more and more people and the enthusiasm is growing.

Last month we contacted you to ask you to share the news about the Refresh events, and you did it! The coverage over the last month has been amazing. Thanks to your support we have managed to secure the venue for the foreseeable future. Not only this, but we have managed to secure a sponsor for the next three months which will enable us to offer free food at the next three months at the very least.

New event format

This month we hope that we are going to see a slight change in the format of the events.

6 – 6.30pm : Registration
6.30pm : Welcome & announcements
6.30 – 7pm : Networking
7 – 7.30pm : Member spotlight *NEW*
7.30 – 8pm : Food
8pm : Prize draw
8 – 9pm : Networking

This new format will see each monthly event focussing on a member of Refresh Teesside. This is open to anyone who has attended an event in the past. The time can be spent teaching, sharing knowledge, advertising, highlighting a service they offer or anything else like this.

Prize draw and goodies

So far we have had a prize draw every month which has seen prizes including t-shirts from GitHub and Brightbook, bottles of Champagne from Sharpe Recruitment, key-toppers from Waze, stickers and all sorts of other goodies. Hopefully we can keep this going! Any contributions or ideas would be welcome.

Wifi access

For future events we aim to supply free wifi so we encourage you to bring laptops and make the most of it. Live coverage from the event really helps with the buzz of Refresh Teesside and we can show others what they are missing by not attending.

Future ideas/development

We just wanted to mention a couple of things looking into the future. We want Refresh Teesside to branch out. We are in discussion with a couple of members about running a workshop event which will see a number of beginners workshops running at the same time possibly in the same location. So far I am talking to people about running workshops on Codeigniter, Ruby on Rails and jQuery. We are also very keen on running a ‘Hack Day’ which will see us all getting together over a set time period to produce a new website for a charity from scratch. More to be discussed at a later date… please get in touch with your ideas.

Signup to the May event now! Wednesday 9th May 2012

We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday!