Back in October 2005, four like-minded web developers from around The Midlands met for a Saturday afternoon drink in a Walsall pub to discuss all things Web. Who’d've thunk four years on that small group of people would have become a growing friendly community who meet every month and hold regular events to discuss hot topics with industry leaders?

I could never have expected such a great outcome from that email I sent back in 2005, when I discovered I wasn’t the only enthusiastic web developer in Walsall and invited Paul and Jon for a beer to see what they do and whether they wanted to make the social event a regular occurrence. After throwing around a few ideas, we came up with the name Multipack, partly a cheeky play on the already established BritPack as well as suggesting the diversity of the group’s skills in multimedia.

(Hat tip to Paul for remembering the suggestive M to indicate the link with the Midlands).

What better way to celebrate the fourth birthday than to coincide it with the 4th Multipack Presents event, this time focussing on “Rich Internet Appliations” (RIA).

It’s sure to be a clash of the titans as heavyweight HTML5 “doctor” Bruce Lawson opens the proceedings with his recent research and development in HTML5 while Silverlight evangelist Nick Harewood takes us through his latest work with the Microsoft plugin and how it can compete in a competitive market against a heavily-biassed audience.

We’ll be meeting, as ever, in  The Old Crown in Digbeth from 2pm for some lunch and drinks before moving on to One Black Bear’s offices in Fazeley Studios at 4pm for the main event.

I (foolishly) promised to bring birthday cake to the event so be sure to join us for a few drinks, good conversation and a slice of Si Pie.

Multipack Presents: Being Green is the second in the series of Multipack Presents events, happening this coming Saturday back at the sexy offices of One Black Bear.

After the first extremely successful event concentrating on Emerging Standards featuring some interesting insights into HTML5, ARIA and other emerging standards, this time around we focus on how we can use the Web to make the world greener.

We have lined up some great talks from local eco pioneers:

• David Harte has been responsible for a lot of work in the Act On CO2 campaign in Birmingham and will be showing us how he and the team have been using the Internet to gauge CO2 emissions.
• James Robertson will also be talking to us about how he set up the Birmingham Freecycle group using online resources and how he made it one of the most successful groups in the World.
• Paul Lloyd will be lifting the lid on his latest project to make conferences more eco-friendly as well as intentions for other green issues around the Web.

Being Green will commence at nearby watering hole The Old Crown Pub at 2pm, giving all attendees a chance to socialise and mingle before the presentations kick off at One Black Bear’s Fazeley Studios from 4pm.

Campaign Monitor have also come up trumps yet again and kindly contributed towards the event’s refreshments.

Rather than going for the typical pizza and brand name beers, we will practise what we preach and only source local produce. Don’t be alarmed though as there should be some fine local beers available as well as locally farmed munchies.

The kind people at Moo have also offered us an exclusive discount for the event on their eco-friendly MiniCards - only available to attendees.

If you’re interested in attending, be sure to let us know on Upcoming so we know who to expect and, more importantly, how much beer and food we need. It should be a good one and certainly get you thinking more about being green.

The Formula One calendar commences in Sydney, Australia next week. If you already knew that, chances are you’ll be quite interested the latest addition to the KickOff series of sports calendar web apps…

F1 Calendar is a quick way to check Formula One race times and dates for the entire season, either on the website or directly from your own calendar application.

Similarly to the previous KickOff services (which include Six Nations Kickoff, Euro Kickoff and World Cup Kickoff), all the dates and times can be downloaded straight to Outlook, iCal or even your iPhone - basically any software or mobile device that can recognise the industry standard ICS file format.

Not only can you download the race times but - if you’re software or hardware allows - you can subscribe to the remote calendar file which will automatically update as and when any changes are made to the schedule.

F1 Calendar also introduced full support for world time zones, changing all the times to your local settings. It also remembers your recent selections so you can go straight to the upcoming times quickly and easily.

Not only that but we’ve also allowed a level of customisation to your calendars: you can even decide whether to include just the race times or the qualifying rounds as well.

Working with Andy Higgs this time round - an amazingly talented web designer & developer - we approached the project with a relatively simple design, targetting the typical demographic who are interested in Formula 1. By incorporating the existing grey and red image associated with racing, it established a familiar look for the intended audience.

Focussing on the core functionality as getting the data quickly and easily, the most prominent feature was the Download and Subscribe functionality. We didn’t want to isolate the users who just wanted an online reference though so the schedule list had to be present and simple to understand. Each event focussed on the actual race but the user could easily drill down to qualifying times by clicking on the event title.

It was great to collaborate with Andy on this project as it was the first time we had worked together since meeting at The Multipack several years ago. Andy was a joy to work with, showing huge enthusiasm for the topic and real initiative throughout the development process. No doubt I shall work with him again on future projects.

If you like F1 Calendar and find it useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Delicious or any other social network you’re on.

There is also a dedicated @f1cal Twitter account so feel free to follow us for updates or send us any suggestions.

During the January Multipack meeting, we discussed the idea of putting on a formal event, ideally presenting a hot topic to raise interest outside of the ‘pack.

Matt had planned to give a brief overview of his work with web accessibility in the emerging standard ARIA but, due to lack of appropriate facilities, this was made quite difficult.

Throughout the afternoon, there were also quite a few discussions going on about what Multipacker Bruce Lawson had been doing with HTML5 so it seemed like a good idea to invite Bruce to a future meeting for a more intimate discussion about his work.

Thankfully, Trev had already initiated a dialogue with Bruce and Stuart Langridge - another West Midlands based pioneer in the world of the Web - about attending a future Multipack meeting to do just this.

With sponsorship already secured for the next event from the awesome guys at Campaign Monitor (who do a marvellous job of hosting our monthly newsletter as well if you’re not already subscribed), it made sense to introduce a new format Multipack event for the February gathering.

After a few days of organising, Paul dabbling away to create a neat promotional graphic and Trev tapping into the Upcoming API to manage the content on our website, Multipack Presents was launched.

Multipack Presents: Emerging Standards will be hosted at the brand-spanking new offices of our good friends at One Black Bear in Birmingham City Centre (very easy to get to) on Saturday 21st February 2009.

The event will be starting from 2pm at nearby watering hole The Old Crown Pub to give you a chance to have a few drinks and mingle with the Multipack before moving on to the OBB offices at 4pm to commence the talks.

It should be a fantastic afternoon and evening with pizza and beer supplied by event sponsors Campaign Monitor and plenty to discuss during the event. After all the talks are out the way, there will be an open discussion panel with the presenters and, no doubt, further alcohol consumption in the usual Multipack haunts around Birmingham.

If you’re keen to learn more about emerging standards in the Web such as HTML5 and ARIA, I highly recommend you make your way to the event. It is an open invite so don’t think its just for the regulars. We’d love to see some new faces from far and wide. Just do us a favour and add your name to the Upcoming attendance list so we know how much beer to get.