For more than eleven years, XMission has proudly sponsored the Utah Arts Festival. This year’s festival kicks off today at Library Square (June 23-26) with XMission once again presenting the popular Sponsor Patio.

Our advanced hosting division, Stackable, now hosts the Utah Arts Festival website (designed by our good friends over at Third Sun Productions). If you require festival information, ticket information, or want to make a donation, their beautiful site has everything you need.

For the first time, our 400 S. window display features Utah Arts Festival graphics as well as digital art by local artists. Stop by (or drive by) and check out our colorful windows on your way to and from the festival!

XMission also provides free wireless access to the Salt Lake Main Library and Library Plaza. If you need to get out of the heat to check your email or update Facebook, we now have a very robust connection for you to use.

Enjoy the 2011 Utah Arts Festival!

It’s science fair season in Utah schools and XMission is again sponsoring the Salt Lake Valley Science & Engineering Fair on March 22-25 at the University of Utah. Each year, the Fair features the best young Utah scientists in grades 5 to 12. Students present their experiments and compete for a chance to represent Utah at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair.

Local companies, including XMission, support the Fair by volunteering, donating needed funds, providing door prizes, and offering scholarships and grants. Last year, five Grand Award-winning seniors received $80,000 scholarships from Westminster College. Each year, our own Pete Ashdown judges the Fair and awards students the XMission Technology Award (including a fancy Newton’s Cradle) for best use of technology and the Internet.

Students who want to take their discoveries online may be interested in the Google Global Science Fair. Google accepts entries from any full-time students, ages 13 to 18. Students can submit entries starting from now until April 4. Prizes include National Geographic Expeditions and Google scholarships.

Your kids’ scary experiments in the fridge could pay off big! Good luck to all of the young scientists out there.

The Pride festival is this weekend and those who count themselves among the gay, or the gay friendly are getting excited.  The tents and fencing around the City/County building festival grounds started going up a few days ago and friends are already making plans to celebrate.  Its been nothing but Pride weekend event advertising on Facebook for the last 2 weeks and the local a(A)lternative press have been running ads for all sorts of ancillary parties, club nights and events for a month.  And while there are many unofficial events, the festival proper has a deep schedule of things to see and do throughout the weekend.

I’ve heard from some people that the Salt Lake Pride is one of the biggest in the country.  Having never been to one outside of the state of Utah I wouldn’t know.  What I do know is that we have an amazing gay community in this city, and one that has been reflected here at XMission stretching back nearly to the dawn of the company in 1993.  I’d like to thank Pete Ashdown for cultivating such an accepting and diverse workplace at XMission (a ‘proud’ sponsor of Pride!), and I’d like to thank my gay coworkers and friends – Harley, Roger, Matt, Jeff, Chris and Mikey especially – for making Salt Lake City a much more vibrant place to work and live!

I have to admit, I wasn’t always a fan of soccer (football!).  Growing up I wasn’t the most in shape kid in the neighborhood so when my parents signed me up for a local city league it was like torture.  I dreaded practice and I hated games… all that running!  Later I played indoor soccer, but our teams weren’t ever very good (probably because I sucked) and so soccer never clicked with me.  Based on these early experiences I carried a passive indifference to the sport with me all the way through my twenties.

Years later while working here at XMission, I had seen several of my coworkers crowded around the big screen in the break room avidly watching various European matches of teams I’d never heard of and considered them with bewilderment.   I’m also pretty sure I openly mocked them for their dedication to the sport on a few occasions.  But then something happened.  I found out XMission was sponsoring the newly formed Real Salt Lake team.  Part of the package included tickets to every home game that were up for grabs for those employees who were interested.  As it turned out, the diehards here already had seasons which decreased the ratio of employees to tickets down to a manageable level.  Never one to turn down a free anything (I previously had spent several boring Sundays watching Buzz games while we were sponsoring that team.  Never underestimate the entertainment value of cheering on the first base coach when the action of Triple A baseball fails to impress!) I signed up for a couple of games.

Because I had no clue about the rules of the MLS, I brought along a friend who had played and enjoyed way more soccer than I had and was glad to come along and babysit me through my first live match.  I honestly didn’t think I was going to enjoy it, outside of the ‘hey its something to do on a Saturday afternoon’, but by the end of the first half I was hooked.  I started to see why this sport was so addictive.  I won’t bore you with the interim details but by the end of that season I was watching away games at bars, following other teams and I had even gone so far as to purchase the Sega game ‘Football Manager‘ so I could get my fix during the week between games.

Even though now I was enjoying soccer I still hadn’t gotten into the European leagues, and the concept of callups, national teams U-21 and U-17 was still a foreign (cough) concept to me.  Feeling the World Cup buzz though, I decided to sign up for FoxSoccer.tv to start to educate myself on the teams and players the US National team would be facing in South Africa this June.  One of the first matches I decided to watch was a Semi-Final (I think) UEFA Champions League game between Manchester United and Bayern München.  Manchester United dominated in the first half, scoring three times to Bayern München’s single goal.  After the half though Bayern was a team on a mission.  Tightly focused, they turned the momentum of the game around and kept Manchester on the defense for the rest of the game.  Although they were pressing the attack they only converted that momentum into a single goal and at the buzzer the score was Manchester United 3, Bayern München 2.

And this is where things got weird.  Manchester United walked off the field with their heads down, dejected, frustrated and upset, while Bayern München was dancing in the field and participating in group cheers with the small section of away fans that had taken up residence in the upper stadium.  Had I misjudged which team was which the entire match?  I felt a little embarrassed, even though nobody could even have been aware of my confusion.  Why was the winning team sad and the losing team obviously celebrating a grand victory?  I decided to check out the uniform patches and sure enough they matched up.  I was reading the score correctly.  Clearly more research was required.

I headed over to the ufea.com site and started poking around.  After a couple of minutes I found this page http://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/matches/index.html which contained a sidebar explaining the rules of the tournament.  As it turns out, the matches were decided by most goals scored in a 2 game set.  Apparently Bayern had scored more goals in their previous meeting and had come out on top, even with the loss.  Suddenly I understood:  I was in unexplored territory, the rules of the MLS completely failing to prepare for the new world of international soccer (football!) that lay before me.

The final match in the UEFA Champions League tournament is this Saturday 5-19-2010 at 12:30 MST and you can bet I will be watching it live.  The soccer bug has bitten again.  The World Cup is coming up quick and I will be taking in as many games as I can.  You might even see me at a pub cheering for the US National team, or simply enjoying a high-caliber game of the worlds most popular sport.  I’ll be the guy in the jersey having a blast.

I recall setting up KRCL as non-profit account with XMission back in 1997. Back then their needs were small but quickly grew. Today, XMission sponsors the KRCL live radio streams and we appreciate the benefits they bring to Utah.

My first memories of KRCL involve listening to a midnight punk show on the weekend. While the rest of the airwaves played remnants of disco or predictable classic rock, KRCL broke new ground and changed my world. I am thankful that KRCL is still here to break new ground.

Happy Birthday. May you have many more.

John Webster

KRCL 90.9FM **** http://krcl.org/listenlive.htm

Ignite Salt Lake 2 (visit their website)
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
6:00 – 10:00 pm
Admission is Free

Brewvies Cinema Pub
(21+, Must Show ID)
677 South 200 West
Salt Lake City, Utah

In partnership with Utah Free Media, XMission will sponsor a live video broadcast from the event. You can access the broadcast at www.utahfm.org

Grant Sperry from XMission will present on Thursday, so please come and clap loudly for him!

The Library is located at 210 East 400 South in Salt Lake City. This class begins at 2 p.m. and usually lasts until 4 p.m.

Our instructor, Kyle Waters, will provide some info about how the web works and then dive into creation of basic and dynamic pages. You’ll leave with a great foundation for your future web developments (or at least, experiments).

Please visit the Salt Lake Public Library Website for registration information.

We offer other library classes on the second Wednesday afternoon of every month. Generally these classes are beginner-level, but we are always looking for intermediate and advanced instructors if you want to teach.  We hope to see you soon!

With screens and party locations for all festivals in Park City and downtown Salt Lake City, you are sure to find something to do this week.

Festivals:

Sundance Film Festival The grandest of the festivals, Sundance pulls in Hollywood elite for swank parties and some pre-release films.

Slamdance Film Festival This is likely the most true to form of the “Indie” Film Festivals. XMission is a proud sponsor of this festival.

XDance Film Festival All you need in action sport films! I’ve watched many of these films myself.

While you are experiencing the glitter and glam of the cinema elite, be sure to check out the free XMission wireless on Salt Lake’s Main Street and at the Treasure Mountain Inn located at the top of Park City’s Historic Main Street.

If you happen to use Twitter, here are just a folks talking about the events in PC and SLC:  @Slamdance @SlugMag @SlashFilm @Rejects @FirstShowing @ErikDavis @EricDSnider @XDance

Have a great week and thanks for visiting!

Their mission is to become the voice of social media technology — whether it be for business or personal use — in the Salt Lake area. Their goals are to expand media literacy, provide educational opportunities and promote ethical standards.

I believe this will be a great addition to the local scene and plan on attending. XMission is donating some schwag bags with goodies for the raffle.

Tonight is their first meeting:
Thursday, January 15, 2009 @   5:00 pm

117 West 400 South (@The Summit Group)  map

This is an organizational meeting/mixer networking event with an open invite. The group encourages you to invite anyone you know in the SLC area to attend. As they like to say, “Everyone is welcome!”

You can learn more about this group on their website: http://www.smcslc.org.

They are also active on Facebook , Twitter, and on LinkedIn.

Check them out and say “Hello” when you see me there tonight.

See you soon!

Tonight is the first-ever Ignite SLC event at the Leonardo. There will be some great talks, a paper airplane Olympics and a whole lot of fun. I hope you’ll join us.