Attracting a younger crowd to user group meetings

We had a discussion at the office this afternoon that centered around how to attract a younger group of people to the computer user group meetings.  We got several suggestions out of this, but are looking for more ideas.

First of all, WHY do we want to attract a younger crowd?  Well, the average age of the groups (Ann Arbor Computer Society, Ann Arbor Dot Net Developer Group, Ann Arbor Java User Group, Michigan Python User Group) is … well … "experienced". We could all benefit from a younger perspective, and the groups could use an infusion of new members.  Makes sense to tap the untapped market. Winston Tsang tells me that the Ruby User Group is pretty young, and that's interesting.  What are they doing differently, except that it's Ruby?  Well, for one thing, the meeting is held on campus.  That's interesting, because I initially shyed away from AACS when meetings were held on campus because I thought that it was a student group (it wasn't).   I wonder if that would make a difference?

The programming has been pretty "hip" in recent years, and diverse.  AADND has been focusing on .NET content, which has left AACS to mainly do "other than .NET".  That makes sense.

This month's AACS topic is Domain Specific Languages in Ruby.  I think that might attract a younger crowd but I'm not sure.  We'll see.  Oh yes, and AACS provides free pizza to all attendees, as well.

If you know anyone under the age of 30 that isn't in the habit of attending the user group meetings, can you reach out and explain what they are?  Let them know that if they are looking for a job, want to learn more about the industry and/or the Ann Arbor area, or simply want to hang out with other techies for the night, the user groups are a good way to accomplish that.  The meeting is at 6 pm.

Hopefully we'll have a big crowd on Wednesday for Joe's talk.  And if you can't make it on Wednesday (ahem, or even if you can!), Thursday's MichiPUG (Python user group) meeting will be great as well.  The Thursday meeting is at 7 pm.
 

Both meetings will be at SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200, Ann Arbor. 

 

Joe O’Brien at AACS on Wednesday

Joe O'Brien, of the Columbus Ruby Brigade and EdgeCase, will be in Ann Arbor this week.  He's presenting a talk at the Ann Arbor Computer Society – "Domain Specific Languages: Molding Ruby".  A summary appears below.

"Ever wondered what all the fuss is about when it comes to DSL's and Ruby? It seems to be all we hear about. This talk will peel away the onion and look at what it is about Ruby that makes it the perfect candidate for creating your own languages. I will show you, through examples, how you can create your own languages without the need for compilers and parsers. We will also cover some real world examples in areas of Banking and Medicine where DSL's have been applied."

Joe spoke at AACS about a year ago, and I was lucky enough to attend.  His talks are always interesting.  If you can attend, I definitely recommend it.

Location: SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 4810-4

Time: 6:00 pm

Date: Wednesday, February 6

AACS members are free and open to the public.  Supporting memberships are available ($20/year), but not required.

 

Snow day: lightning talks canceled

We're canceling lightning talks for today.  The roads weren't too bad coming in, but I did get stuck trying to go up a hill (had to back down).

Working at a coffee shop this morning, I really appreciate having an office.  The light was dim, the chairs were uncomfortable, and the internet wasn't working (OK, so the MAIN problem is that the internet wasn't working).  I headed off to the library, where I knew I couldn't use my cell phone but I could at least send email, only to find that they don't open until noon on Fridays.  D'oh.  I had forgotten that.  So I slowly drove to the office and will leave early this afternoon, since sleet is in the forecast as well.
 

We'll see all of you in two weeks.

 

Installing Scala plugin for Eclipse 3.3

I don't recall having a problem installing the Scala plugin on my old (Windows) laptop, but I got a new one and started migrating things over this week.  In order to get the Scala plugin to install, I had to install the Eclipse plugin development environment. I was happy to have found this blog post, which explained what to do to get around the error ("org.eclipse.pde.runtime is missing").  So I guess I must have either had 3.2 installed on that machine (it's been upgraded to 3.3 now), or I had a more complete install. All's well now, whew!
 

Lightning Talks tomorrow 2/1/08 … weather permitting

The weather forecast is for lots of snow, but if the forecast is wrong, then we'll have lightning talks.

Nate (our intern) is planning to talk about what he's learned about Google checkout.  I had him doing a research project for event registration.  He coded up a PHP script to manage it, and checked in the code.  I can't wait to hear his talk.

Chris is planning to talk about a project he did using XNA.

I don't know who else will be there, but I'll continue with another segment on Scala.  Bill will certainly do something.

Lightning talks are free and open to the public.  So if the weather is decent, we'll go from 3-5 pm.  See you there.

 

C# Jam early bird deadline is tomorrow …

Bruce Eckel has put together another Jam event for the Ann Arbor area.  This one is on C#, and will feature authors Jamie King (who is co-authoring a book with Bruce on C#) and Bill Wagner (who is working on "More Effective C#" as a follow-on to his previous 2 C# books). 

Here's "What is a Jam" from Bruce's registration page:

 

A software jam is a lab-based workshop experience, where you can:

  • Decide if you want to work on your own projects or work on the supplied programming exercises.

  • Work alone or in a group.

  • Set your own pace, so that you can "go deep" in areas that are important to you.

  • Get guidance from an instructor, as needed.

Although the format is different than what you may be used to, we've found that people seem to learn a lot more than they do in traditional seminars.

I have to agree.  I've attended several Jam events and found them to be great learning experiences.  Bruce is going to come if attendance warrants an assistant.  Jamie and Bill are the experts (but, of course, Bruce is no slouch either).

If you're planning to attend, sign up by tomorrow or miss the early bird deadline.  http://www.mindviewinc.com/Conferences/CSharp3Jam/Index.php

 

Bruce Eckel blogs about CodeMash …

Bruce Eckel blogged about CodeMash and the reward of community-based conferences.   I'm glad that he and many others have reported a positive experience at CodeMash.  It really does make all of the work in organizing such an event seem more worthwhile.  I have to admit that about a month before the event, it's easy to sit back and think, "Sheesh! Maybe we should have some professionals do this instead!".  But, when it comes down to it, I think that developers know what other developers want to see in a conference and if we strive for that, the conference will continue to be successful.  As Bruce pointed out, for CodeMash, it's not about making a profit.  In fact, having the added stress of HAVING to make a profit would be unthinkable.  Heck, we're stressed just trying to make sure that we don't lose our shirts and we're thrilled that the community has embraced the conference!  And, it's a conference that *I* want to attend, and the people that I know want to attend. So yeah, it's worth it.

Coincidentally, just today I ran across a post on the Java Posse google group from a Posse listener who missed CodeMash and was hoping that there was another event coming up with the same talks and same speakers.  I'm sorry (and pleased, at the same time!) to say, "Nope!  It's a one of a kind event."  He promises that we'll see him at CodeMash in '09.  Cool.

PyCon registration is open

PyCon will be held in Chicago from March 14-16 (with tutorials on the 13th and sprints afterward).  Registration is now open at http://us.pycon.org/2008/registration/new/

The tutorials and sessions both look great, and there are also lightning talks and open spaces.   I'm even hoping to lure my scientist husband into attendance.  He has looked at Python about a year ago and liked it.  He's not a programmer, but he did some programming in Pascal in college and briefly looked at C++ a few years ago.  He said that Python was the most understandable of the languages he has seen.  This seems to be a common reaction from scientists, and so I'm hoping that he will go and learn more.  He may even end up using it at work someday!

It's great having a conference like this in the Midwest, and I have already signed up.   I seem to recall that the conference filled up last year (in Dallas).  I didn't want to miss out.
 

So what IS Scala?

The question a lot of people have been asking lately is "What is Scala and why do I care?".  The short and sweet answer is that Scala is an object-oriented/functional hybrid that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).  This is interesting because it can harness the full power of the JVM, including bringing in Java libraries.

And you care because concurrency is hard to get right.  It's hard in Java and it's hard in C# (I hope you got to see Brian Goetz's talk at CodeMash).  It's hard because writing multithreaded programs with our current programming model is hard.  Deadlock is hard to detect and hard to protect against.  Until now, we've been shielded a bit from the dangers that lurk by single processor machines.  We were writing multithreaded programs that might be interrupted, but often weren't.  But now, you can't really even buy a single processor machine.  It's compelling to take full advantage of the hardware that you have just bought, and all of those little mistakes that you made previously in multithreaded programs may bite you as well.

So we had better figure this thing out.  Erlang's good for concurrency but most people aren't really adept at programming in a purely functional language.  And we have reaped benefits from object-oriented programming, so it's interesting to combine the two in such a way that we can use the functional programming aspects to gain better concurrency without walking away from the productivity gains that we have made with object-oriented programming.

If you still care, check back in.  I'll pump out some Scala blog posts in the upcoming weeks, conveying what I have learned about the language and how I feel about it.  I like it but I'm not jumping to Scala for anything other than personal interest right now.  This is a stage of investigation.  It may well turn out to be a language that I want to use for development, but I'm not committing to it yet.  Even Brian Goetz agrees that Scala and F# may not be "the" answer but may be a stepping stone along the path to more multiparadigm languages [CodeMash quote].  If you are anxious to get started, read the Artima article, "First Steps to Scala" and listen to podcasts with Scala creator Martin Odersky on Software Engineering Radio and on The Java Posse. If you're still hanging on, then definitely buy and read the "Scala Programming Language" book. 

 

Brian Goetz Captures the Essence of CodeMash

The whole idea behind CodeMash is to get people to learn something about languages, platforms, etc. that they don't typically use for programming, to "free their minds".  I was thrilled to hear Brian Goetz express that sentiment in such a positive manner, in his interview with Chris Woodruff on the CodeMash podcast.  Here's the quote:

"If you're able to program effectively in multiple languages, the space of designs that you can imagine is correspondingly greater, and knowing something about another language makes you a better programmer in the language that you are programming with because there are concepts and idioms that you may be able to borrow from.  And so, I think it's a really exciting time because languages are interesting again and it's not a completely dead end activity to learn a new language that may not be popular yet."   He also said that he came to CodeMash because "this conference embraces the diversity in programming languages, unlike other conferences that are focused on Java or focused on .NET".

Earlier in the interview, they had been discussing the interest in new languages such as F# and Scala, and Brian mentioned how thrilled he is that we have exited from the "dark age" where people programmed in only one language and didn't really delve into others.  Brian explained that he doesn't necessarily believe that either F# or Scala is the "solution" to the concurrency problem, but that they may lead to other developments in hybrid languages that ultimately make their way into mainstream programming.  That is definitely a reasonable consideration.