I went to the Web414 meeting last night up at MSOE. I heard about the group at Barcamp Madison last March (They were a sponsor of the event and had a large presence there) and this was the first chance that I got to attend one of the meetings. The group has the feel of a Barcamp with a very relaxed and participatory feel to it. The presentations are very informal and you are encouraged to participate in open discussions before, during and after the presentations.

There were 2 topics covered and I learned a lot during each presentation:

iStockPhoto - Mike Rohde introduced a resource for web developers and web masters to get photos for use on their web sites at a very low cost.  He also demonstrated how he has used the stock photos on a number of customer sites.   

Ruby on Rails - Tim Bailen gave an overview and demo of Ruby on Rails. This was a nice introduction to Rails that showed some of the power of the convention versus configuration philosophy of the rails framework. This was the first time that I saw RadRails in action, which is an IDE for Rails.

If you are interested in web technologies or web design I would encourage you to attend a future meeting. I volunteered to give an introduction to Silverlight and the Expression tools at a future meeting - but not the June 14th meeting. I already have a commitment that night. 🙁