March Meeting – Open Spaces

Last month we did lightning talks and the response was really positive - so much so that most of you want to see them done every 3 months!  Cool.

When we first put the group together we talked about different formats for the nights and ways we could avoid things getting stale.  Lightning talks was one of those options and that proved to work really well.  In addition to that a number of you also wanted to see some open spaces nights (similar to how the Seattle alt.net conference is run).  With this in mind we're going to make this month’s meeting an open space meeting.

For more information on what this involves check out the wikipedia entry on the subject.

So, what I need from you are some ideas for subjects – topics or practices you would like to see discussed or tools that you'd like to see demoed or talked about.  So get your thinking caps on and let us know by adding a comment to this post.

We’ll put a poll on the site next week to help us work out which topics are the more popular ones so we can save a bit of time on the night.

JAOO User Group Night

If you're interested in a tech evening with a couple of good speakers, you might want to check out the JAOO user group night on March 17. It is $15 to attend, and located in Darling Harbour, from 5-8pm. The main page for the evening doesn't seem to have info on the talks but a printed flyer had a bit more information. The talks are:

• Erik Doernenburg on "Taking TDD to the Next Level"
• Joel Pobar on "F#"

I've worked with Erik a number of times and seen him speak last year at JAOO. He is both very sharp and experienced - I suspect his talk will contain some real gems. I've also enjoyed a session given by Joel Pobar on F# at TechEd. So, although this is the first evening session JAOO has ever run in Sydney, I think it has the scope to be quite interesting and worth attending.

UPDATE: The JAOO site now has information about the talks. We've also been offered a $5 discount if we have 5+ people coming to the event, so feel free to comment if you plan to come (we'll be given a discount code to use when signing up).

UPDATE 2: Free tickets available for tomorrow night! Contact me for the code.