None of us has been immune to the news of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that has dumped nearly 200,000 gallons of oil each day into our waters.  Officials are saying that this could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history, which happened in 1989 when a Exxon Valdez tanker leaked 11 million gallons in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.  Locals complained all day long of a think oily smell in the air, many calling for air quality testing and even cases of nausea or headaches.

The question on everybody’s mind is: How will this problem get fixed? How will we clean our waters?  Make sure our air is breathable?  What the long terms affects will be? Luckily we have help in the form of scientists, the federal government, BP, and other local organizations to step in.  First responders have several tech tools at their disposable to clean up this massive oil spill.

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Our 9th podcast kicks up with a couple of new tech user groups that are popping up around the city.  We got a chance to talk to the Mayor’s transition team about how they are going to move forward in regards to technology.  Liz talks about the Drew Brees Madden Curse and our advice column comes with with tips for some good Wordpress plug-ins.

Within the past year and a half, New Orleans has seen a boom of technology groups converge upon the city. These groups are usually grassroots organizations with a very decentralized structure centered around a particular type of technology.  There is a group for programmers, a group for podcasters, and even a MAC user group.  Now we can add NOLA PHP, a group focused on the popular open source language Hypertext Preprocessor or PHP.

PHP is a favorite amongst the web development and web programming community because it’s an open source language that can be coupled with MySQL databases to create powerful applications.  Many enterprise level business applications utilize PHP to run their web apps.  NOLA PHP, created by organizer Ralph Schindler wants other organizations to see the benefits of using PHP and engage local developers who currently use or want to learn more about the language.

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The economy is slowly making its way back to being a healthy organism and jobs are a top propriety.  In New Orleans, IT jobs can be hard to come by but a local tech firm, Geocent is expanding and needs IT professionals to help with its growth.  The company focuses on information technology systems for government and commercial customers.   Most of their portfolio includes services in enterprise content management, RFID, mobile development, and geospatial info systems.

Geocent is looking for IT pros in Mississippi, South Carolina, and New Orleans.  A quick glance at their careers page lists fourteen technology jobs in New Orleans and eight in Baton Rouge.  The jobs range from .Net developers, Java developers, Windows admins, and even senior business consultants.  Their benefits include, flex time, training and certification opportunities, a flexible PTO plan of 200 hours (25 days), 401k savings plan with employer match, employee ownership phantom unit plan, as well as, health, dental, vision and life insurance.

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With five issues already under their belt, Invade NOLA is looking to continue it’s bi-weekly digital magazine that looks at the world from a different set of eyes.  Created by Justin Shiels and a set of talented writers, Invade NOLA discusses arts, sex, diversity, activism and growing up in a very honest way.  You can feel the passion in each writers column and relate to the subject matters on a personal level.  Now the magazine is asking for your support and when they say support, they mean money.

Mr. Shiels would like the digital magazine to continue to spur a new movement within the New Orleans creative industry.  “Lets be honest, most media for millennials is carbon copy reality TV, full of whiny obnoxious teens.We have to believe that the millennial generation has the power to change the world in a positive way, here in New Orleans there is a strong community of intelligent thinkers who challenge the status quo.” he says.  Citizen journalism has become an active part of local media in New Orleans. With sources such as Humid Beings (Community Commons and Publishing platform), IntheKnowla (Hyper Local User Generated Media), and The Lens (Investigative news and journalism from New Orleans);  Invade NOLA brings another media outlet to help breath new life into our culture by pushing creative boundaries and taking the news into other arenas.

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The NOLA Tech crew is reporting live from SXSWi in Austin, TX. Please excuse us for the background noise as we were reporting from the Louisiana booth on the trade show floor.

Show Summary

• Robert X. Fogarty of Dear New Orleans
• Girl Gamer.com
• Chris Pirillo
• Austin Marks, GNO Inc.

The New Orleans tech scene is no stranger to grass root groups forming around a particular interest.  There have been several shoot off organizations which cater to local developers, Mac users, and even hackers.  The beauty of our tech ecosystem is that each focuses on a specific topic and doesn’t overlap the other.  A new group will emerge this Thursday that adds another layer to our community bringing together podcasters and video producers.  The New Orleans New Media Club will showcase producers of web audio and video content so they can share ideas on how to improve their work and how they can help cross-promote each other’s work.  They also hope to become a resource for newcomers interested in starting out in podcasting, video blogging, and web series development.