And We're Away!!

Wow!  What a great turnout tonight for the Sydney ALT.NET group!  We had around 35 in attendance and lots of interaction during the presentations which was fantastic, plus a few of the guys were live tweeting during the night.

In fact, we had so many discussions and conversations during the sessions that we ran a fair bit over time.  It was probably the only downside to the evening and I sincerely apologise for it and for the rush job in the rhino mocks session.  I'm very conscious that people take private time out for these nights so I don't like running over.  That said we did learn a lot about the group and the dynamics tonight so I'm sure we'll improve next time around.

News

Here's the links for the items mentioned during the news section.

• ALT.NET Mailing List - Link
• ALT.NET Wiki - Link
• VSTS Database Edition now available for MSDN Subscription/Software Assurance customers - Link
• JQuery to be included in ASP.NET MVC & Visual Studio - Link
• DevSta Competition - Link
• Clone Detective - Link (screen shot)
• VS Snippet Designer - Link
• Cobra programming language - Link
• Cosmos OS - Open Source C# OS project - Link

If you find out about anything interesting this month, remember to bring it up during at news time during the next meeting.

Twitter Hashtag

For the twitter users out there, the official hashtag is now #altnetsyd.  You can follow this on twitter using this link and subscribe to an RSS feed from there if you wish.

What's Next?

We had a retrospective for the evening to see what went well or not so well, and to get some suggestions going forward.  Here's what came up, in order of popularity:

• NHibernate
• Dev practices - SOLID
• Castle Windsor
• Open spaces meeting
• Lightning talks session
• BDD/DDD
• OSS alternatives to TFS
• TDD
• F#
• WPF
• Agile & Scrum session
• RESTful architecture

So we'll be having a presentation on NHibernate at the next meeting, and maybe one other subject.  Given the discussion levels we had tonight, I'm wondering if trying to get through 2 sessions in a night is asking too much? What do you think?

Looking forward to next month now!

One week to go! Are you coming?

Our first meeting occurs next week. Not long to go now!

To help us with organising the logistics (i.e. food, etc) we'd like to know if you are coming or not, so if you are planning on being there (and we hope you are!) can you please do one of the following:

• sign up to the September event on Facebook,
• leave a comment on this blog entry
• send a tweet to http://twitter.com/rbanks54
• contact either myself or James Crisp

Continue to spread the word that the group is starting, and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Sydney ALT.NET on Facebook

The Sydney ALT.NET user group now has a group on Facebook, as well as a home on this blog.  So now you have a way to get to know your fellow ALT.NET'ters outside of just the meetings (don't let that scare you too much!)

Head on over to http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26531372700 to join.

September 30th - What's going to happen?

We now have our content organised for our first ALT.NET meeting on September 30.

Here's the draft agenda for the night:

6:00 pm - Meet & Greet time and then Kick Off!

6:30 pm - "Ruby, Rails and IronRuby from a .NET perspective".  Presented by James Crisp

7:00 pm - Munchies & Drinkies

7:30 pm - "Mocking with Rhino Mocks 3.5". Presented by Richard Banks.

8:00 pm - Wrap up & go home.

During the night we'll be looking for your input on what you want to see during future sessions so bring your ideas along.

Sydney ALT.NET First Meeting will be September 30th

I'm happy to let you know that we now have some details for where and when the ALT.NET user group meetings will be.

We will be meeting on the last Tuesday of every month at the Thoughtworks offices in Sydney.  Many thanks go to Thoughtworks for letting us make use of their facilities. Their generosity is greatly appreciated.

Where:

• Level 8, 51 Pitt Street
  Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
  [Map]

When:

• Tuesday, September 30th
  6pm - 8pm

What:

• Welcome & Latest Happenings
• Presentation 1 (30 mins)
• Break for food & socialising
• Presentation 2 (30 mins)

We'll have the 2 presentations finalised in the next few days, however if you've got anything you'd like to see discussed, please bring your ideas along.

We look forward to seeing you there and please spread the word!

Welcome to the Sydney ALT.NET Group

Welcome to the home of the Sydney ALT.NET group.

For those of you who don't what ALT.NET is all about here's a simple definition that defines the sort of person who might be considered "alt":

• You’re the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way.
• You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc.
• You’re not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc.
• You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It’s the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles

We're currently organising our first meeting and will post updates here on the site as they become available. If you're interested in coming along or would like to suggest a date and time or some content you'd like to see then either subscribe to the site feed or leave a comment.

You can also catch up with myself (Richard Banks) or James Crisp during Tech.Ed this week if you just want to have a chat.