On April 6th, beginning at 6p, our local Geeks will get to listen to the sci-fi stylings of Five Year Mission, a new band from Indianapolis whose goal is to release an original song for every episode of the TV series Star Trek. 5YM will be performing some of the songs at our gathering at Max’s Place. RSVP to reserve a spot in the crowd.

Indy band Five Year Mission will play at the next Geek Dinner

I had the pleasure of meeting the band members and hanging around a practice last month. While waiting for everyone to arrive, their conversation focused on Buffy mythos, so I’m sure they’ll fit right in with the local Geeks. I got a copy of their “Year One” album and put it on shuffle-repeat for the past few weeks. Make sure you bring some cash to buy a copy. Their “Year Two” CD—which won’t be released until next November—contains music from a number of popular ST:TOS episodes and is a great iteration on what they did with the first album.

An interview with Five Year Mission

SociaLens, a local social media consultancy I am actively helping to build, will sponsor the event. In addition to paying for the band, we will also be providing some free pizza. We’ll briefly mention an upcoming community-wide activity SociaLens is planning for the week leading up to TEDx Bloomington in May, something that will benefit from Geek participation. The 5YM set will segue into the regular Wednesday open mike night at Max’s, so feel free to extend your stay a bit longer to hear other locals perform.

To help deal with the logistics involved, we need to have a good idea of who is attending. We have space at Max’s for 60-80 people. Please RSVP to let us know that you are coming.

That can change.

Source: Rob Cottingham’s Noise to Signal comic.

Established a month ago by Pat Coyle—a tech-and-business savvy evangelist and current Indianapolis Colts Executive Director of Digital Business—Smaller Indiana is an example of steps taken by locals to change the perception of the region as merely industrial and farm country. This Ning community is an effort to leverage network technology for local gain. Members range in age and background, coming from all corners of the state to connect and collaborate on how to paint a more accurate picture of the Midwest as a tech center. Smaller Indiana is filled with valuable human resources and ideas.

One of the discussions gaining some traction on Smaller Indiana is hosting a regional blogger unconference. I will be one of the organizers spending the morning of Saturday, February 16, chatting about how to make this possible. It has been great to see Bloomington become more active as an online content producer. My list of local bloggers continues to grow, and the number of Bloomington twitterers is exploding (thanks to a healthy early adoption rate among Informatics students). I am editing the BlogNetNews channel for Bloomington (or will, the moment I get some post-Startup Weekend time) and will be trying to encourage some new bloggers this weekend.

While Indiana is not likely to sprout a new Google in the short-term, the future is necessarily built off of the communities with which we engage today. To that end, I invite and encourage readers with interests in information technology and design to start the process by joining local organizations, including any of the following:

• Smaller Indiana—in particular, look for groups like the School of Informatics, Blog-for-All, and the Hoosier Twitosphere
• UXnet—Bloomington has its own blog and will be looking to organize some user experience activities in 2008
• Bloomington Geek Dinners—organized by Ben Fulton of Envisage, this is an every-six-weeks-or-so gathering of local technologists to talk shop over food.
• Bloomingpedia—Mark Krenz of Suso.org started a very successful community wiki for Bloomington with almost 3,000 articles created. He is trying to do the same for the state of Indiana.
• Bloomington Startup Weekend—We have exceeded our goal, expect more press, and are just 16 spots shy of our capacity of 100. If you want to attend, please buy your ticket now.