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/.
Some possible business uses of the coop:
o Marketing, funding, contract work
o Should we have a section of the site for teams to form and bid on contracts?
o Feel free to post resumes, websites and sample work here
o Possibility of forming a group on Guru.com or Elance.com
o Possibility of going after work from NY /SF areas where wages are higher than Tucson
o What are members’ VC experiences? We can also review each other business plans as well as code.
o Revenue models: clients, ad-supported, broad vs narrow user base, vertical markets, simplicity vs barrier to entry for competitors
Just a quick list of tools we may want to use for collaboration:
o Google docs
o Wikis – Drupal can act as a wiki, or we can install Twiki
(need to install the wikitools module)
o GitHub, SourceForge.net , code.Google.com
o Local version control : svn, git
(should we set up a local repository?)
o Bug/issue tracker: bugzilla, eventum, others
o Project planning : Mingle, OpenProject, others
o Chat! Should we have chat hours where we’d try and be available for collaboration in addition to in person meetings?
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.