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 are intended to be active work sessions, and you’re encouraged to type while talking.
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 meetings are:
- Thursday July 29th 2010, 6-7:45PM in the Martha Cooper Library meeting room. Location
1377 N. Catalina Avenue, 85712, 594-5315
- TUESday August 24th 2010, 6-7:45PM in a Joel D. Valdez Main Library meeting room- Santa Rita Room (2nd floor). Location
101 N. Stone Ave., 85701, 594-5500
- TUESday September 28th 2010, 6-7:45PM in a Himmel Library meeting room. Location
1035 N Treat Ave., 85716, 594-5305
- TUESday October 26th 2010, 6-7:45PM in a Himmel Library meeting room. Location
1035 N Treat Ave., 85716, 594-5305
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)
Read the rest of this entry »
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.
At Martha Cooper Library in a meeting room.
We have the Santa Rita meeting room at the Main Library next Wed Apr 28th 2010, from 6PM – 7:45PM.
that’s about the summary as I recall it – Francis took some photos and posted notes to
http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/2010-03-31/2010-03-31.htm
Thanks all – and feel free to post links and details here. See you next month!
At the last meeting, there was interesting discussion about the benefits of SDD drives (speed!). For Mac users, I just came across this article, thought I ‘d share:
http://www.macworld.com/article/145572/2010/01/ssd_macbook_pro.html
nothing earth shattering, just mildly interesting
-dave
Our next meetings are scheduled for
- Thurs Feb 25 6PM-7:45PM at the Martha Cooper library on Catalina
and
- Wed Mar 31 6PM-7:45PM at Himmel library
We’ll have short presentations on using Mashup APIs and/or Google code toolkit, then take turns with the mike to show our stuff to each other.
All are welcome, there is no charge to attend. Many of our members also belong to the Tucson Computer Society and Francis usually posts information about them to the TCS website, but you don’t have to be a member of anything to come.
(Prefer assembling components to inheritance when possible – a good design patterns rule)
Several people showed up, introduced themselves and talked about their interests and projects.
So, a decent start!
Kick-off Unmeeting : Wed. Jan 27 6:30-8 PM
@ Himmel Library Meeting Room
See printable flyer
Bring your ideas and projects in progress!
Agenda:
– Brief introductions and some info on collaboration tools
– Working time while we help each other with ideas and projects. Jumpstart, brainstorm, troubleshoot, check out and give feedback.
The Co-op is non-denominational: Perl, Java, PHP, Javascript, CSS/HTML, tool users and others all welcome.
For more information see http://tucson.devcoop.org or contact Golda at gvelez17@gmail.com * 440-1420. Affiliated with the Tucson Computer Society Developers’ SIG : http://aztcs.org/sigs/.