What do you do when you can’t find just the right kind of shorts for guys, not too tight, not too baggy, made with quality material in NYC? If you’re John Coghlan, a Brooklyn, Dumbo-based surfer and entrepreneur, design your own uniquely Brooklyn shorts and run a Kickstarter project. John is also a co-founder of Dumbo Startup Lab.

Here’s his story: “When I was packing for my honeymoon in the Maldives, I wanted some new boardshorts and couldn’t find anything that was functional, stylish and locally-made. While I wound up settling for the ‘moon, I recently decided to get to work crafting awesome boardshorts that are made in NYC.”

What makes them great:

• Timeless cut: not booty cutters, not baggy. Just a great fit that will look great on any guy with any body type
• Functional: Super comfortable fabric, big pockets to stash your stuff and a drawstring waist let you wear them anywhere.
• Colors: Classic colors that don’t scream “I’m going to the beach”.
• Made in NYC: This is our favorite. The shorts will be cut, sewn and finished by NYC artisans.

If you’re planning on going to the beach this summer, you’ll want to check out his project, Brooklyn Surf Shorts. Pledge ends on June 7, 2013.

In this month’s Bower Hill Society event, they are teaming up with Greenhook Ginsmiths to celebrate the opening of the summer season in Dumbo, Brooklyn. They were featured in this month’s New York Magazine as a social club to join.

They will be serving gin fizzes, boozy treats from Prohibition Cupcakes, and other bites and drinks.

Thursday, May 23, 2013. Doors open at 6:30pm
Bower Hill Society
45 Main Street, #406, Brooklyn, NY 11201

On May 30th Digital DUMBO’s dd:IMPACT conference, “Groundswell: The Next Wave of Content,” will descend on DUMBO (RSVP: ddimpactmay2013.eventbrite.com).

Inspired by the rise of self, enabled by the development of social media platforms leading to the creation of new ecosystems, networks, and participatory media, “Groundswell: The Next Wave of Content” will be a half-day discussion exploring how the most successful companies and brands in the world are using digital content and platforms to spark movements and increase their bottom lines.

Digital DUMBO (www.digitaldumbo.com) has assembled a top tier list of new media companies, platforms, and brands to participate. Panelists represent The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Reddit, VICE, The Onion, MINI USA, Digg, Pulse, Hyperallergic, Artsy, NowThis News, Narratively, and more. The conference will conclude with a cocktail reception hosted by MICK (formerly DJ Mick Boogie) at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn.

The conference will take place at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, a neighborhood that is now home to over one hundred of New York City’s most creative digital agencies and start-ups.

Pensa, a Dumbo-based strategic design consultancy (20 Jay Street) designed the first Street Charge prototype and installed it at the Pearl Street Triangle this week. Street Charge is a solar powered USB charger built into the Dumbo BID’s umbrellas. It’s one of those only-in-Dumbo type of installations, with Dumbo being the first neighborhood to offer wifi access on the streets and with many startups in the neighborhood, but Pensa believes there is an opportunity for any neighborhood to create a place to recharge and make use of an unused space for urbanites to charge their mobile device.

Each charger stores enough power to operate for 15 hours when the sun is not out (we tested them successfully with today’s rainy weather). According to an article in New York Daily News, “More stations will be added if there’s demand for them, said DUMBO Improvement District executive director Alexandria Sica.”

Bring your own USB cables and work outdoors while you use the free DUMBO Wifi and charge up your phones.

(Photos courtesy of Pensa)

1) Event Title: Solr In Practice: Customizing Search Rankings
When: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 @ 6:45 PM
Where: Huge BK, 45 Main St. Suite 220 Brooklyn, NY 11201
Description:
This Huge Tech meetup event is meant to give a hands-on demonstration of advanced Solr search features. The goal is to motivate attendees to dig deep into the feature and integrate it into their own websites. The session will focus on using external data for ranking results and will be followed by a series of guest lightning talks by professionals who use Solr on popular websites.This meetup is targeted to those who are already familiar with the basics of Solr, but even beginner search coders are encouraged to attend.

Agenda:

• Customizing Solr Rankings with External Data, presented by Kristian Rickert and Toufique Harun from Huge
• Large-Scale Performance Monitoring for Solr, ElasticSearch, HBase & Friends, presented by Otis Gospodneti?, author of Lucene in Action.
• Lightning Talks By:
  • The Ladders – Techniques to Improve Relevancy. Presented by Laura Kang and Peter Pathirana
  • Shutterstock – Presented by Neil Hooey
• Q&A

For more information please visit solrtutorials.com

To RSVP please visit meetup.com/HUGE-Tech-Events/events/69135012/

2) Event Title: Behind the Scenes with the New York Times Company R&D Venture Group
When: Thursday, July 19, 2012 @ 6:45 PM
Where: Huge BK, 45 Main St. Suite 220 Brooklyn, NY 11201
Description:
In 2006, The New York Times Company was one of the first media companies to introduce a research and development department. This year, they announced a new addition, called R&D Ventures, and two products the team is taking to market: CascadeTM and RicochetTM.

Join Huge and the NYT R&D Lab’s Director of Product Strategy and Business Development, Amy Hyde, to discuss the development, strategy, usage and future of these products, and how they affect both the technology and journalism industries.

Cascade is a data visualization tool that helps analyze the structures of content sharing on Twitter. The tool visualizes how media assets spread throughout Twitter, allowing users to see the development of a shared news-related conversation, the connection between readers and publishers, and the most dominant sharers and contributors to the conversation.

Ricochet is a social media marketing platform for brands to select articles from multiple premium publishers that relate to the brands’ messages. They can then bind their ad creative to the article and share in their owned media channels using a unique URL. The Ricochet platform can become a key component of any brand’s content marketing strategy.

To RSVP please visit meetup.com/Huge-Digital-Strategy-Events/events/71741482/

Event Title: Startup Demo Night
When: Thursday, June 21st, 2012 @ 6:45 PM
Where: Huge BK, 45 Main St. Suite 220 Brooklyn, NY 11201

Join Huge as they host the second Startup Demo Night, featuring three promising products focused on transforming the way we engage with digital content:

• InArticle analyzes new articles for key phrases, quotations and sentiment, creating slick visualization that help users better comprehend the data.
• Stipple is a cloud service for online images that permanently connects them to their owners, so they can share information, media and commerce through them.
• SpokenLayer gather written articles rom the Web, transforms them into narrated audio and make them available for listening anytime, anywhere.

All three speakers will present their apps, followed by a Q&A session moderated by a panel of user experience, technology and visual design experts.

Tweet about this event using hashtag #HugeUX

To RSVP please visit http://www.meetup.com/Huge-UX-Events/events/67849402/

The Technology of Content: June NY Content Meetup
Wednesday, June 20, 7-9pm
RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/NYContent/events/65238732/

With the ever-changing technological world and the consistently growing desire for great content, how do we ensure proper workflow, efficient distribution and success in content development? Mike Nizza of The Daily, Molly Byrnes of Phase2 Development & Beth McCabe of Digitas will guide us through successful tech and ops techniques in this month’s NY Content Meetup brought to you by Bklynhaus.com with special thanks to Loosecubes.com (Congrats to Loosecubes on fundraising!). 3 speakers. 10 minute presentations. Free drinks. 06/20, 7-9 in DUMBO

Meetup organized by BKLYNhaus:
BKLYNhaus is the source for creative talent. We represent a network of top creative and digital professionals dedicated to producing great work. Online and digital media are fast paced industries that are constantly changing and evolving. It can be tough to keep up. We live and breath this world, because we love it. BKLYNhaus is the company we always wanted to work for. We have a strong focus on innovation, leadership and development and as such are active participants in the industry both as students and educators.

Nerds LOVE Bitcoin. It’s technologically and cryptographically fascinating.

But is it actually a currency? Kenneth Bromberg, lead programmer of Bloomberg’s foreign exchange platform, will explain what actually makes something a “currency”, why Bitcoin doesn’t fit that definition, and why it therefore doesn’t trade on the global currency exchanges.

Go here to sign up: meetup.com/BK-Tech-Talks/events/55386052

meetup.com/BK-Tech-Talks
Location: Etsy Labs, 55 Washington Street, Ste 712 , Brooklyn, NY
Monday, May 14, 2012, 7:00 PM

Creative Week NY, a celebration of creativity in advertising, design, digital media and all the arts that feed and touch those disciplines is taking place in Dumbo Brooklyn this week. There will be thought leadership events at Galapagos Art Space, GE’s live hologram experience (free and open to the public!) on Water Street, the Celebrate Brooklyn Creative Week Digital DUMBO Party hosted by HUGE, and the One Club’s unConference all day Thursday at 111 Front Street.

Several agency partners and firms based in Dumbo are presenting at events during Creative Week include:

• Big Spaceship
• Breakfast
• DDB (Spike)
• Domani Studios
• HUGE
• The JAR Group

We hear the GE hologram experience, THROTTLE UP at 56 Water Street is something you can’t miss (11am-9pm – free and open to the public, May 7-11).

See program of events for the full schedule of events. To attend, go to creativeweeknyc.com/attend. The Dumbo BID is a partner organization.

When: Thursday, May 3rd 2012, 7:00 PM
Where: Huge BK, 45 Main St. Suite 220 Brooklyn, NY 11201

Description:
Combining inspiration with e-commerce, New York-based startup Svpply has created the ultimate social shopping experience. It allows people from all over the world to efficiently browse through more than 1 million products, curate their own pages and buy products right then and there.

Join Huge as they host a Design Meetup with the brains behind Svpply to discuss everything from actionable discovery to e-commerce experiences on tablets and the upcoming Svpply iPad app.

To RSVP please visit http://www.meetup.com/Huge-Design-Events/events/62434132/