Blog style entries never really worked. I hope that having everything together in just a few pages on a site makes it easier for people who want to turn up.

I hope that it floats up higher in Google Rankings as well. This will also make it easier for people who want to turn up.

And on we go to the next monthly meeting which is on January the 18th at 7pm. We’ll try the usual venue of The George Inn, 77 Borough High Street. SE1 1NH.

Please make sure that you’re subscribed the proper calendar. I think the update of MobileMe Calendar killed the old link. So, you can subscribe to the calendar using this link. I think the alarms are pushed as well, so don’t be surprised if you get a reminder 3 days before.

You can also keep up to date by following the NSCoder Night Category.

If it’s your first time, contact me about getting my mobile number so you can find us if it isn’t obvious where/who we are. Or, DM the Twitter account.

See you in a couple of weeks.

The December meeting is on the 14th (second Tuesday) rather than the 21st (third tuesday). This will be at the usual place, although we may have to move if it gets too crowded. If you don’t already have my phone number this would be a good time to ask me for it. I’d like to be able to put it up publicly, but there are too many idiots in the world.

So – Friday night, October 22 at 6:30 at the usual place and we’ll do some crystal ball gazing together.

Download the Keynote presentation (1.1 Mb)

Download the Slides as a PDF file (1.7 Mb)

And this week Alex Blewitt (@alblue) will be talking about DVCS and Git. Yes, that’s right; someone else is going to be talking about Git.

So come along for the usual collection (array or set, your choice) of chat, food, drink and learning. Nourishment for body and mind. And me telling you how you should always work on a private branch and that commit messages should be written in the present tense.

Where: The George Inn, Borough High Street
When: 6:30 pm onwards

Probably the last NSCoder Night of the summer started outside in the courtyard. A group got together for food at Pizza Hut beforehand and a couple more went to the Bunch of Grapes a little later on. It pays to watch the Twitter feeds to see what pre-meeting arrangements are being made.

After the usual chat outside we moved in to the Old Bar for Richard’s talk on Test Driven Development (sorry I spoke over you, Richard) which went well and generated some interesting discussion. Richard has made his slides availables here.
Next month’s talk is going to be about Git and distributed version control (not by me) and we may also have another talk lined up for the following month. If you have an idea for a talk you would like to give, please get in touch with me.

Our evenings don’t usually follow the norm of people all sat down and coding. I suppose that’s because of the choice of venue, but who would turn up for an evening in Starbucks?

I’ve got a couple of volunteers lined up for the next couple of meetings, but I thought it would be a good idea to put some draft ground rules down.

For Presenters:

Keep talks short and focussed. 15-20 minutes should be enough time. Think of it as being an initiator of the discussion that might follow.

Forget about any audio-video support. We are in a pub, where there are other people around. A few slides on your laptop or iPad is the most you have to work with. If you do a slideshow I’ll happily host the slides or post a link back to where you have them.

Don’t be offended if not everyone listens to your presentation, or scuttle off during it. Some people are just not interested in the topic, or are having a more interesting discussion somewhere else. The talks are not the point of the evening, just something that happens during the evening.

Be prepared to expand upon and explain your ideas further if someone asks.

For Listeners:

Don’t feel you have to listen to the talk if you don’t want to, but please don’t have a conversation over it. If you start listening and decide to bail, do so in the least disruptive way possible.

Ask questions, make comments, ask for help with related code. The presentations are necessarily short, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep talking about the topic.

If you feel you have something to talk about, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

Upcoming Talks:

August – Richard Buckle on Test Driven Development
September – Alex Blewitt on Git/DVCS

If anyone has any amendments to propose for these rules or have subjects for talks, please let me know. See you on August 17th.

After spending the evening in the Old Bar which was mostly empty we thought we’d try and have the next meeting there as well. Far more space and quiet enough to hear everybody. This could have been because people had gone elsewhere to watch the football or were sitting on the benches outside to enjoy the clement weather. The downside was that the food wasn’t as good.

So, for next month, we’ll try and have the meeting at the George Inn and see how it copes with a larger group of people, and for those who turn up early they can go to the Bunch of Grapes for food. There is no point in trying to arrange dinner afterwards because people have got trains to catch.

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The other idea I had was to gather on the embankment outside the London Assembly building. But the weather reports say it might be windy.

This is just a temporary location for a week.