The First Meetup

WHITE PAPER
Zach solved the White paper dilemma. We had heard a lot about white papers, but weren't really sure what they were all about. Thanks wikipedia.

Since the early 1990s, the term "white paper" has also come to refer to documents used by businesses as a marketing or sales tool. For example, many white papers today reveal the benefits of particular technologies and products.

These types of white papers are almost always marketing communications documents designed to promote a specific company's solutions or products. As a marketing tool, it is important to note that these papers will always highlight information favourable to the company authorizing or sponsoring the paper. Such white papers are often used to generate sales leads, establish thought leadership, make a business case, or to educate customers.

There are three primary types of commercial white papers:

1. Business-benefits: Focuses on making a business case to executives
2. Technical: Helps influencers (like engineers) to understand how a concept or technology works
3. Hybrid: Combines high-level business focus and technical details into a single paper

DESIGN
Mikey made some sweet designs to promote the next meet-up. Peep them in the previous post

FLASHMIDI - Steven and JJ
They worked with flashMidi.

There a few ways to get MIDI in, but we didn't get it figured out. It possible needs a server, but we're still looking into it.

RED 5 - Kevin and Sager
Our journey started as many new to the Red 5 server. With the infamous Getting Started with the Red 5 Server Tutorial. And...

We got red 5 to give us a basic connection. WOOT! We're still not entirely sure what that means, but it's pretty cool. We connected to the midiDemo in the webapps folder, but we're still unclear on how to interpret the MIDI device. All we can really say is that it's connected.

Things got rolling with a MidiTest, but unfortunately it fell short. We referenced code from http://julapy.com/ and it felt like we were making progress, but the output list of our devices didn't show :(

We also came across Jason Grden and tried a few more things, but tonight wasn't our night.

We did find this neat nugget of information. It's a table outlining MIDI Status http://www.harmony-central.com/MIDI/Doc/table1.html

STUMBLING BLOCK - MIDI / JAVA NOT SUPPORTED ON MAC
There might be a stumbling block with reading MIDI though a java app, Kevin and Steven found this article Although we installed it, crossed our fingers nothing really happened, but were still researching proper responses.

Although I feel like we're knocking on the door we're going to circle the wagons and experiment with a few more things. Walking in blind is a little tough, but I thought we did really well.

The highlight of the night was Steven showed off GlovePie, which is a way to use a wii controller on the desktop. All you need is a wii controller, wireless sensor bar, GlovePie and you can impress your friends. Ohh and don't forget the bluetooth.

Thanks again to all who participated. I'll see you at the next Grid meetup.