Teams are cool, bosses less so. Welcome to dev co-op, where you have colleagues without the pointy-haired guy.
So, what is the difference between this site and the other developer forums?
Not much, except that we also meet in person once a month or so here in Tucson, and so the relationship is a little bit less anonymous. Instead of just answering one-off questions, our goal is to encourage each other with projects and do the things that co-workers normally do (well, the positive ones): review each other’s work, suggest approaches, help debug and unstick each other. Meetings can turn into active work sessions, and you’re encouraged to type while talking.
We sometimes also have informative presentations and group discussions on topics relevant to software development and information technology.
Several of our members also belong to the Tucson Computer Society, a remarkable organization of local computer users. TCS has been around since 1982, and has survived where a lot of users’ groups have not.
Our next meeting is not scheduled yet. We might take December off because many people tend to be busy right next to Christmas.
In an email conversation a co-op member said:
It was lots of fun. We had a very interesting visitor from Berkley.
FYI all – we were talking about “big data” a bit informally (and money/economics) so I hope you all saw this: http://xkcd.com/980. Good data visualization is a wonderful thing. 
Yes, we’ve been meeting monthly! But we haven’t been posting frequent updates on the website.
At our October 2011 meeting, we talked about several things, such as development practices at Apple and a forthcoming ARM-based single-board Linux computer available for $25-$35.
Liz and Francis took much better notes which are posted at the TCS website:
http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/2010-10-26/2010-10-26.htm She has screenshots!
Here’s my quick scratches:
Chris wrote SawSearch which is a proxy that keeps an index of all the pages you’ve browsed to and lets you search them locally on your computer by keyword, when you saw the page, filter by domain & date range.
Brendan demo’d http://Spoon.net lets you run any exe on Windows thru the plugin. So you can run any browser without installing it, productivity app, CAD. We determined that its a running as a normal executable, able to access files on your system. But, it is not using the system libs, the exes must be packaged w/own system libs.
Francis shared his experience teaching senior citizens and newbie users and the need for manuals with clear screen shots. Francis has several manuals posted at http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/meeting_notes.shtml , for example
http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/winhardsig/GIMP/edit_object.htm
The page has step by step notes on how to modify photos, no tech lingo, just has screenshots and which button to press. This is very helpful to older folks who want to get something done. Essentially this is the equivalent of Francis’ reading several books on Gimp, minus the lingo and concepts, boiled down to concrete instructions.
Another one tells how to build a free motion detector for your house using a webcam and free mashup services.
Golda made a quick stop at http://factual.com and http://evri.com about mashups
Check out Liz’ excellent and detailed Meeting Notes from 2010-09-28 here!
Hey all – here’s our google group we can use to chat between meetings
http://groups.google.com/group/devcoop
The thing about using a google group instead of a regular email list, is that members can adjust the frequency of messages they see, so you can post freely without worrying about bugging anyone.
Notes from the June meeting, a bit late:
– we had what was certainly the most entertaining ‘Hello, World’ program I have ever seen, in a python obfuscation demonstration
- an interesting discussion of handling noise in rapid, large scale data collection
- test system coverage with pros and cons of different .NET integrations (using a built-in form generator vs going a more straight coding route; as you might expect the latter is harder for beginners, but more flexible and scalable in the long run).
I neglected to take real-time notes and am writing this a few weeks later, so please feel free to edit the above! See you all soon
–Golda
Raw notes from Thursday May 29. These should not be considered authoritative on any subject! But might be useful especially if you were at the discussion and want to remember a particular point that was made.
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question: how would one get started developing for iPhone? (and for MacOS)
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I was thinking everyone should write a short intro blurb here explaining who they are – like just an informal introduction to the group. Then new members can read and get to know everyone more quickly. To kick that off, here’s my intro:
I am Dave Parizek. I helped found the co-op, although it was mostly Golda’s idea and she has been the driving force behind getting it going. I have a BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Science, an almost Master’s in the same. I have not really worked in wildlife management though. Instead, since college I have worked at running various small business endeavors. For the last 8 years, I have mostly been a stay home Dad. I am happily married to Julie and have two sons, Cooper and Nate. I am a self-taught, part-time programmer.
I love Macs, and love programming in Objective-C with the Cocoa frameworks. I am also into Drupal website development.
For the most part, I want to just raise my kids, explore cool computer topics, and build up my Land Rover enthusiast website.
You can learn more about me on my personal website, parizek.com.
Ok, folks, get with Golda for access to the site, or email me your intro and I’ll post it.