gnocode

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:

1. 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.
2. 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)
3. 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.
4. 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.