Mercury Cafe Closes!
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2010-02-23 17:37The bikegeeks have now outlived another coffee shop. First Westgate and now our most recent home, the Mercury Cafe.
The Mercury Cafe was a well-loved haunt for not just the bikegeeks, but lots of groups in the bike community. The Chicago Critical Mass art show was held there for a few years running and various other community events took advantage of their copious meeting space, yummy food, and free wi-fi.
The following is on the front page of the Mercury Cafe Website: (provided for historical sake)
IT IS TRUE --- MERCURY CAFE IS CLOSING IT'S DOORS BY OCTOBER 4TH.
THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT. UNFORTUNATELY THE ECONOMIC TIMES PROVED TO BE A BIT TOO MUCH.
I was glad we could provide a space where different groups could meet each other. It was nice to see that everyone from books clubs to knitting clubs to Muslim/Jewish open mic to feminist meet ups could find the place comfortable enough for themselves.
Alas... We'll miss you Mercury Cafe.
bikegeeks and Break The Gridlock sites no longer part of Westgate
Submitted by bikegeek_admin on Mon, 2009-07-27 15:18Both this site and the Break The Gridlock site are now no longer part of the Westgate system of shared logins. This was done to allow the sites to be updated independently of the rest of the Westgate sites. Both sites have now been updated to Drupal v6.
Weekly meetings curtailed
Submitted by bikegeek_admin on Mon, 2009-07-27 13:43Because of the amount of bikegeek work that has been going on outside of the Monday meetings, we'll be curtailing the "weekly" part of the meeting plan. Meetings will still happen, but on an irregular schedule.
Please contact us if you want to come on by and we'll let you know if someone was planning on being there and, if not, see if we can arrange something.
Westgate sites updated / Westgate development available
Submitted by todd on Mon, 2009-02-16 00:44All the Westgate sites have (finally) been updated to the most recent version of Drupal 4.7. For a long time they were stuck on Drupal 4.7.5, a very old version. At the same time, the sites have been broken up from the old monolithic Drupal installation to the installation-per-site technique that has become a recognized best practice.
Bikegeeks migrated off whip
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2009-01-27 15:43At last night's meeting, the Westgate sites were moved off our old production server, whip.bikegeeks.org. A moment of silence and some beer-poured-on-the-ground for this old work-horse of a machine....
As of today, all bikegeeks sites are now running DreamHost with the exception of the West Town Bikes site which is running on a host owned by bikegeek Paul. DreamHost provides this account for free because of Break The Gridlock's looming 501c3 status.
Current Westgate Sites
Submitted by todd on Mon, 2008-11-24 08:47Sorry for not have been keeping this up (don't even know if anyone reads it); but big updates coming soon.
Current westgate sites:
autoshowshutdown
bikegeeks
bikeuic
breakthegridlock
chicagocriticalmass
cyclingsisters
foreverfreeandclear
stolen
westtownbikes
workingbikes
Meeting notes from 7/21 meeting
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2008-07-22 17:57Last night's meeting was all about Bike Winter. The content rewrite team met to discuss final content layout changes and potential new geek Frank showed up to discuss a new BW theme with me/tod and thestevenlane. I can feel the chill of Bike Winter even thru the July heat!
Meeting notes from 7/14 meeting
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2008-07-22 17:56Haven't been churning these out as regularly anymore.
The 7/14 meeting was all about Ding Your Bell. thestevenlane and I busted out a new site. Steve took the logo that Brenden from Kunesh Design had worked up for us and tweaked it for an upcoming meeting w/ SRAM. I/tod updated the content and launched a new site on a non-Westgate/Drupal 5 platform.
It has been decided that no new Westgate sites will be launched until the Drupal 4.7 -> 5.0 conversion is complete.
Meeting notes from 6/23 meeting
Submitted by todd on Wed, 2008-06-25 09:19Last Monday's meeting ended up being another discussion about the new, upcoming Bike Winter website. We discussed plans for the site and the layout structure of the site's content. We made some plans about a new theme (thestevenlane is going to take a crack at it) and made some discussions about the actual content.
Meeting notes from 6/16 meeting
Submitted by todd on Fri, 2008-06-20 09:38Last monday's meeting was billed as a Bike Winter round table and we spent the bulk of the evening talking about planned updates to the site. We set up a brand new, non-Westgate site as a dumping ground for content created on the site re-engineering.
We also did some Ding Your Bell planning.
Generally a good meeting.
Meeting notes from 6/2 meeting
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2008-06-03 06:30After a week off for Memorial Day, the bikegeeks met for their first of the monthly 'planning meetings'. These are normally held on the Monday before the monthly Critical Mass ride.
We had good attendance at last night's meeting where we went over the list of 'to dos' and talked about how best to attack it. We decided on what we'd work on next and discussed some of the technical points of Drupal.
After the meeting we adjourned to the Chipp Inn for fermented malt beverages.
5/19 regular meeting canceled.
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2008-05-13 14:29Due to some group scheduling conflicts, the May 19th meeting is canceled. The next scheduled meeting is the monthly planning meeting, so we'll see everyone then.
-- tod
Planning Meetings
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2008-05-13 14:28On the Monday before the month's Critical Mass ride, bikegeek bikegeek meetings will be considered Planning Meetings.
These meetings will be used to facilitate new members into the group, give group consideration to new initiatives, and to generally have round-table discussions that benefit from a larger attendance. bikegeek members who cannot attend regular weekly meetings are encouraged to make it to these planning meetings.
Meeting Notes from 5/12/2008 meeting and general catch up.
Submitted by todd on Tue, 2008-05-13 13:25Hola Amigos, I know it's been a long time since I've rapped with ya, but....
While we haven't had well attended meetings lately, we haven't been completely idle. Work has progressed on keeping the CCM site current and foundations have been laid for other sites. Work is in progress towards moving the Westgate system to Drupal 5 (which itself will facilitate all sorts of other improvements).
Watch this space for exciting news regarding a few new and a few old projects on which work is starting to again happen.
-tod
Meeting Notes from 1/14/2008 meeting
Submitted by todd on Thu, 2008-01-17 12:24At last Monday's meeting, it was just thestevenlane and me/tod. We didn't do any computer work, choosing to survey some of our existing sites and evaluate immediate love needs in the context of upcoming events -- mainly the BTG Show and Tell event and the Auto Show Shutdown on Feb 8th and 9th respectively. We planned our attack and made concrete lists of TO-DOs.
