After last night's meeting, a few of us were chatting over beer and wings about getting together to discuss programming in a generalized manner. More to share knowledge and thoughts about common issues and methods/routines used in coding. It was then brought up that this would make a good topic for a special interest group (SIG).
So, I'm proposing a monthly meeting be held that will be programming specific, but language agnostic (no preference for any given language). I know of at least three of us who are interested, and if these three are the only ones interested, then I'd be willing to host a meeting at my place, or maybe at my office (will have to check with management first, of course). If you would be interested, please respond to the list so we all know how much interest there is. If there is a great deal of interest, then we'll have to find some place to host the meeting - maybe Nexus if they're willing? I would picture the first few meetings to be very informal, and cover a number of topics in a general manner. However, as interest grows, I think we would need to do presentations on a specific topic, then open the floor for free discussion. Maybe plan on two hour meetings - an hour for the presentation, and an hour to talk freely about coding. Some of the topics that were hinted at last night would be along the lines of the following: 1) Error handling methods - pros and cons 2) Good database design, maybe for different database platforms 3) Project Management - how do you properly plan a project, and ensure you'll meet the milestones and deadlines. 4) XML, XSLT, and XML DTDs 5) How to recognize troublesome clients and/or a project going bad, and how to deal with them. As well, I'd like to see presentations on specific languages like Ruby, or Lisp, and also presentations on specific types of coding - like artificial intelligence, graphics programming, and common business logic. The presentations should try to cover open source topics, or put a different way "proprietary languages and systems should be avoided if possible". However, we all work with at least some proprietary software, so I'd doubt we'd be able to avoid this entirely. And finally, I'd like to propose that the SIG meetings be held a week prior to the monthly CLUG meeting, but not on a Wednesday - maybe a tuesday or thurday evening? or during the day on the weekend? This way, a quick summary can be given at the regular CLUG meeting about what's going on with the SIG, and maybe highlight issues/solutions that were discussed. The end result would be that EVERYONE in CLUG would benefit - even those who don't write software. So, I'm looking for all who are insterested, and any comments/concerns about the idea. Shawn _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
