There’s a lot going on around New Orleans right now, so I thought a short update was in order.

Next Meeting: Version Control

Our next meeting is on June 16th is about various version control tools. We’re still looking to enlist a people who can give a quick tour of Mercurial, Git or Subversion. If you are interested please fill out the presentation form.

TechEd

The Microsoft TechEd conference is coming to town next week. If you can’t make it to the conference itself, there are events around the city that might interest some of you.

Sunday Night:

• Party w/ Palermo (Pretty much Dev party)
• The Krewe (Meet & Greet)

Tues Night:

• AvePoint
• DoubleTake Software

Wednesday Night:

• GNOSPUG Kick Off

GumboLabs iPhone class

GumboLabs is hosting sessions of the Standford iPhone development classes now through August. They’ve only viewed a couple of episode, so it should be pretty easy to catch up.
http://www.gumbolabs.org/2010/05/06/iphone-app-development-study-group/

BarCampNOLA, July 17th and 18th

The time is upon us once again for BarCampNOLA. Our local BarCamp has become a fixture of the New Orleans tech scene and it sounds like it won’t let us down this year. Gnocode was announced at last year’s BarCamp, so it holds a special place in our history. I would like to find a way for gnocode to have a good presence at BarCamp this year. Anyone have any ideas?

Also, and probably more importantly, one of our founding members, Matt Tritico, is responsible for BarCamp each year. He’s pulled it off twice but he’s looking for some help. If you are interested in helping him organize BarCamp, or you have an idea for it just make a note when you sign-up.

Oil Spill

Obviously everyone knows about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There was a good deal of discussion about it at Net2NO on Tuesday night, which got me thinking about ways we, as developers, could help. There are already apps out there, like OilReporter for the iPhone, but I’m sure there are other opportunities for us to help since we are so close and directly affected. If you have any ideas please share them with the group via our Google Group.

Blight project

At our last meeting there was good discussion about developing a web app to assist the community and blight. Anyone interested in helping out is encouraged to also go to Google Group and continue the conversation.

Want to Help?

Gnocode has grown a huge amount since it started last year and I know there is plenty more to do. I’m officially putting the word out for an co-organizer. So, if you have ideas for gnocode’s future or just want to help out, give me a shout.

See you all later this month.

Before the presentation last night we discussed many of upcoming events and happenings in the city.

Our Size – This weekend we hit a major milestone and had over 100 users on our Meetup group.  That’s a really important marker. I’m not sure people would have told you there are 100 software developers in town, let alone that many who would join a group. Thanks to for everyone’s commitment and  please keep spreading the word.

Google Groups – I setup a couple of Google Groups to help us broaden our communication tools for within the group. The first is the general gnocode group to let people share information, ideas or whatever. Its for the group, so its up to you. The second is gnocode-projects for our community service projects. We are finally getting some good ones in, so join in if you are interested. Finally there is gnocode-jobs. A number of people come to our group looking for jobs or have oppurtunities. If you are looking or know of anything feel free to send it to this list.

Upcoming Talks – We have a number of people looking to give talks but we are always looking for more. Anyone out there interested in being part of a panel on version control, specifically the new technologies like Git or Mercurial?

PHP Developer group – It has been a long time coming, but Ralph Schindler officially announced a PHP developer group in New Orleans.

LaunchPad TV – Our venue host, LaunchPad, does a weekly web show focusing on entrepreneurship, technology and culture around the city. I am presently doing a monthly segment to interview local software/technology companies about their business and technologies. If your company is interested in participating, please let us know. The segment is also intended to introduce and teach people about new and emerging technologies. If you are interested in doing a screencast on a new technology or application let me know via Twitter or the comments.

NOLA Fiber – As I have mentioned in previous e-mail there is a local initiative to get Google to bring its Fiber for Communities to New Orleans. We believe we have a very interesting story and opportunity here in New Orleans. If you would like to help please join the Google Group or visit the website. We are also very interested in doing mapping application as supporting information for our application. This is a great opportunity to show off our communities talents. You can find out more at http://www.nolafiber.com.

Entrepreneur Week – The Idea Village is hosting a series of events and sessions around entrepreneurship. There will be a number of high profile technology companies–salesforce.com, Google and Cisco–there to share insight and information. Cisco will help people prepare their pitch for the $250,000 Cisco I-prize.

That’s it for now. Until next month!

Meetup.com

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.