Since our regularly scheduled meeting fell on the day after Mardi Gras, we decided to move it up a week and have a Mardi Gras event. We will gather as normal at LaunchPad at 6:00 PM and eventually head up the block to St. Charles to watch the parade. So come out and nerd up Mardi Gras with the group. If anyone is interested in bringing refreshments, you can post them in the comments below.
Meetup.com
As promised, here are the slides from Calliope Digital’s iPhone Development Quick Start presentation. That was our largest meeting yet and great start for 2010.
Since it was requested, these are the notes from our December meeting.
2010
This was just a quick attempt to figure out the groups ideas and goals for the future. Any more ideas can be posted in the comments.
- Where is the group going?
- Presentation ideas
Upcoming Events
- NO Learning – Structured learning from individuals and their expertise
- Test Driven Development – Workshop by and for local developers
- Ted Neward coming to GNO .NET users group on January 12th
SXSW Trip
- New Orleans and LA grassroots group travels to SXSW festival in Austin, TX
- Share New Orleans opportunities at national and global event
- March 12-16, 2010
- Open to anyone to attend or volunteer to organize
- Trip is partially funded through sponsorship
- We hope to get a good representation of software developers and technical talent from NO
- See the list below for a project connected to the trip.
Projects
We still aim to make community projects a major part of gnocode. So far we have found that good projects are hard to find. There are a couple in the works:
- Resource Directory
- Directory for local business and organizations to find local technical talent.
- Technology: .NET
- Project manger has been chosen and begun. If you are interested in contributing post a comment or get in touch with us directly.
- NOLA Showcase
- Website to showcase New Orleans’ software development firms and innovation
- Target alpha deadline is for the March 2010 SXSW trip;
- Project Manager: Looking for a volunteer
- iPhone Mystery Project
- It’s a mystery
- (Ok…a hint. It’s for a non-profit you will recognize.)
That’s it for now. See you in 2010!
Our first ‘Hash Table’ event is coming up on November 18,2009 and our topic is ‘The Cloud’. As a quick reminder, Hash Table is our special meeting type where we pick a controversial or interesting topic in software development and meet at a local restaurant or bar and “hash it out.” The goal is not to come to a final answer, but to learn from each other’s expertise.
I would try and say a little bit more about our topic “The Cloud” and cloud computing, but it’s ambiguity is one of reasons it is our topic. There are a number of angles to discuss and I have listed a few below. The meeting will probably go best if we have at least a few people pick a aspect of the topic and read up on it a little more and give us their opinion at the meeting.
Potential Topics:
- What defines cloud computer
- Reliability
- Cost
- Security
- Privacy
- Desktop application replacement
- Portability/vendor-lock-in
- Usability (for user applications)
- Ease of use (from system admin perspective)
- Real world scalability
If you have any good links, other topic ideas or would like to volunteer to summarize one of them for the group, please post in the comments.
Finally, please sign up and RSVP on the Meetup group to help us plan properly plan for the event.
UPDATE: Location Confirmed: Jazmine Cafe
P.S. This is not a sponsored event and is instead of our normal meeting.
Our October meeting is on the twenty-first at Launch Pad as usual.
We are going to modify the meetup format based on some feedback from the last meeting. The first fifteen minutes will be the usual food and announcements. The presentation will then start promptly at 6:15 and last, at most, thirty minutes with the following fifteen minutes reserved for discussion on the presentation’s topic. (More on that in a moment.) That should have the formal part of the meeting wrapped up at 7:00 PM. We still have LP until 8:00 PM, so we are going to officially adjourn, but leave the space open to informal socializing, continued refreshments, flamewars…I mean debates of technical merit. This extra time will also be used for service projects for those interested.
Our topic for the meeting is jQuery by our very own Matt Tritico. In addition to his presentation, we want to hear from you and how you use jQuery. If you have some sample code or a project that uses jQuery please share it with us. Also, if you are new to jQuery or JavaScript please come with lots of questions about why and how you would use jQuery.
By almost all standards gnocode had a great first meeting on Wednesday. The meetings success has made its way around the grapevine a bit and we continue to hear positive feedback. I summarize the group to anyone who asks with one word: “enthusiasm”. Everyone that attended the meeting was energized to learn from each other and build a community. The most surprising aspect of the meeting is the eagerness of our member to take what we learn and know and give back to the community. The very next morning we had people contacting us with ideas for our projects, so look for more on that to come soon. We still have some floating items from the meeting, so lets get to them.
Meeting Time – The most important thing we need to figure out is when can we do it again. I setup a Google Calendar to help us pick a standing monthly day to have our meeting. Send me your e-mail address and I will add you to the calendar, or just let me know what days look bad. The calendar is using September as a “standard” month, so just say you can’t do the “second thursday” instead of the the tenth. (If there is a better way to use Google Calendar please let me know)
Webspace – If we are going to build a software community we should probably use some software to do it. Here’s a page to list and discuss how we connect online.
Talk Topics – It looks like we have both of our talks for September. Matt Tritico will present on jQuery and Dennis Daniels will introduce us to Sugar on a Stick. We have a few more talks lined up and we hope to be driven by presentations from our members. Let us know what topics you can present or interest you.
Projects – There’s a lot of energy behind this idea. Here is a page to make project suggestions for now.
Finally, here are the slides about what the group is from the first meeting.
Our first meeting is less than a week away. We didn’t want to plan too much since its the first meeting. Instead we want to learn more about our members and what your interests and ideas for the group are. However, the last thing we want is another go-around-the-room-and-tell-us-about-yourself. So, we are going to mix it up a bit. A few of us have put our heads together and come up with a few contests for the first event. Yes they involve participation, but they are contests and that means there are prizes (from an excellent source). So, here they are:
- Alpha Geek – Prove to the group that you know what you are talking about. Tell a story, share a fact, only communicate in binary for the whole meeting. Your call.
- Nerd Ware – For this one you need to bring the nerdiest or geekiest thing you can find in your home or office. (Anything with NCC-1701 is a good staring point)
- Buzzword Bingo – Who doesn’t love a good game of Buzzword bingo? So, while each person is proving their Alpha Geekness or sharing their Nerd Wares the rest of us will be play bingo. Only there is a catch. You have to make your own board using these buzzwords. Just make a five by five board with each square filled with a word from the list. Yes, all squares must me unique and the of course center is free.
- BONUS Code Competition – Sure you could just write a Buzzword Bingo card by hand. But we are a software development group, so there’s a special prize for whoever codes up a generator with the least amount of code.
See you on Wednesday.
P.S. Please don’t forget to RSVP for the Meetup group or at least tweet us @gnocode that you are coming.
Friday was a good day for gnocode. We confirmed our meeting location at Launchpad and got a few seconds of air time on Launchpad TV.
We did move the first meeting to the Wednesday the 19th of August. If you’re part of the Meetup group you should get an e-mail updated. Launchpad has generously said we can make it our permanent home, so hopefully we can standardize on the third Wednesday of the month.
It sounds like there is a good buzz out there for our group, so keep spreading the word. If you have any suggestions or ideas, please post them in the comments.
We’ll see you in August.
Well, gnocode is officially live. The announcement yesterday at BarCampNOLA stirred the attention of at least a few people. After hearing a few of the talks, I think we are going to have a solid group.
One thing that did come up is the inclusion of people from the system and network side. I think it’s very important to get people from all sides of software development into gnocode. There’s a place for everyone: coders, designers, architects, engineers, testers, sysadmins and even managers.
On a final note, I think we will have to move the first launch date. I’m going ask around more today, so check back here and/or the Meetup group for an update.
Off to BarCampNOLA day two.
We intend to publicly launch gnocode during BarCampNOLA 2009 at LaunchPadNOLA.
Our first meeting is tentatively August 12th, 2009. Signup at http://www.meetup.com/gnocode/
