Tonight we are hosting an event in the mezzanine from 6-9 pm bringing awareness to a particular artist village in Ngecha, Kenya. The Seattle-based non-profit PAUSE: A Space for New Visions, does work with a collective of artists in Ngecha, Kenya and they'll be displaying particular pieces created by Kenyans throughout the cafe. Meredith Bauer, the co-founder and director of PAUSE, says of the event: “We hope to celebrate our partnership with the Kenyan artists and encourage the local community here to connect with the artists and each other through viewing, appreciating, and buying their art."

Below is a short video about the artist collective in Ngecha. Come out to the cafe today to view some of the art in person and learn how you can get involved. Wine and cheese will be provided.

The 8th annual Langston Hughes African American Film Festival gets under way here in Seattle's Central District. It's one of the only African American film festivals of its kind in the Pacific Northwest and this year, they're scheduled to show roughly 40 high quality independent films. Among this year's crop of feature-length films, shorts, and documentaries from all across the world, Karen Toering who organizes the LHAAFF says they're are 22 Seattle premiers, seven world premiers, and a record number of filmmakers that will be attendance throughout the nine day event which closes on May 8th.

Here's a word from the LHAAFF website about everything:

This festival screens provocative films from independent Black filmmakers and films about the African American experience. The festival features panel discussions, readings, matinee screenings for middle/high school youth and audience ‘talk-backs’ with filmmakers, industry professionals and community leaders.

The opening and closing nights of the festival are set to take place inside of the Quincy Jones Theater at Garfield High School (400 23rd Avenue, Seattle) from the and the rest of the films will be shown at Central Cinema (1411 21st Avenue, Seattle). That's something which is important to note for Cortona customers as the entire film festival is in walking distance of the cafe.

On opening night, the big highlight is the Seattle premier of KINYARAWANDA with guest filmmaker Alrick Brown in attendance. Here is a trailer of the powerful film about the Rawandan genocide:

Other highlights include the popular film I Will Follow returning to Seattle for the second time and local movie 23rd and Union by Seattle filmmaker Rafael Flores being shown as well. Check out the full festival line-up and support it if you can.

Following up on our announcement of a new web development class for entrepreneurs & open dev night that will start next Monday, Jan 17th 7pm at Cortona - the first tutorial for students to complete before they come can be found here:

This is the first of 23 tutorials that will be rolled out over 2011 to help introduce web development to entrepreneurs. These tutorials will be published about a week before the corresponding free in-person class that will be held at Cortona Cafe in Seattle, WA on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month starting at 7pm. If you're in the area, come on by any time during the year. If not, feel free to follow along online.

While there are a ton of tutorials out there on every topic we'll be introducing this year, our angle will be to stick with the "give me the general concepts" and "let's just get this rolling" essentials and allow you figure out the details on your own (we'll point you to resources & other tutorials out there). We'll be tailoring the class to high-school students who would call themselves reasonably "good with computers" but may have little to no programming experience. However, even if you are 80 years old with decades of programming experience, we're hoping these tutorials will still be helpful to spark an entrepreneurial spirit and/or bring you up to speed on HTML5, CSS3, Rails3, etc....

Click here to get started »

Students are encouraged to work on the tutorial before coming to the class. However, if you get stuck somewhere in the tutorial or aren't able to work on it - feel free to show up and a web developer from the community will be there to help you out.

Come enjoy dinner with neighbors and friends Sunday, January 30th at 3pm! We will be premiering a new entre at Cortona which will be piloted in the coming months. More importantly, this is an opportunity for residents and community members of our diverse community to get together over good food and conversation. “Sunday Dinner” is a free event in partnership with the Metro Seattle Sickle Cell Task Force and Clean Greens; there is a suggested donation of $5 for the entre.

Looking forward to seeing you there, and kids are welcome!

We are thrilled to announce the launch of a free web development class at Cortona taught by local web developers and geared toward High School students who are reasonably "good with computers" with little to no programming experience (It is, of course, open to anyone with a desire to learn). Our purpose in offering this class is to not only teach the basics of programming and how to build full-featured websites, but to spark a real interest in becoming an Internet entrepreneur - thinking how to build a useful site/service, increase web traffic, monetize it, create jobs, and be mindful of funding & exit strategies.

The format of the class will be as follows:

• It will begin at 7pm on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of the month at Cortona Cafe, starting Jan 17th and ending Dec 19th, 2011.
• ~7 days before the start of a class, homework/tutorials will be posted by the teacher (URL location TBA).
• The class itself will start with a short, 5-slide talk related to the homework.
• Right after the talk, "open community development night" starts where experienced developers can come work on their own projects along side beginners, helping them finish their homework (if it wasn't completed beforehand) and/or encourage them to blaze new trails with the concepts/tools introduced.
• With this format, students can jump into the class at any time during the year. They can work to get caught up, or just go the pace they are comfortable with while receiving one-on-one instruction.

The class will cover an introduction to the following:

• HTML (including new HTML5 features)
• CSS (including new CSS3 features)
• Javascript
• jQuery
• Ruby & Ruby on Rails (Object-Oriented Programing, Model-View-Controller paradigm, REST architecture, etc...)
• SQL (MySQL & SQLite Databases)
• Git (for version control)
• Test-Driven Development
• DNS, SSH, Unix Command Line, and Production Server Deployment
• Apache & Passenger
• Page Caching & Speed
• Scaling & Cloud Hosting Options
• Cron Tasks & Custom App Scripts
• Using APIs (Facebook, Twitter, & Google Maps)
• Business plans, funding sources, and exit strategies.
• and more....

From the very first class, students will have a working web application that will be expanded throughout the rest of the year. Space is limited to 15 per class and first priority is given to High School students - although anyone can follow the tutorials online. For questions, or if you are interested in helping teach some classes, email info@cortonacafe.com.

UPDATE - the homework tutorial for the first class can be found here.