Welcome and intro

[Steve Dalton]

Hi All

The group seems to have a bit of a critical mass now so I'll start! I was holding back from introducing myself until there was a few on the list.

My name is Steve Dalton - I live on the Gold Coast and I've been using Java for about 10 years, I've probably been using in it in anger with JEE for about the last 6. I also do PHP (when I'm forced to), RubyOnRails and recently some Groovy/Grails. I am from the UK, and have worked in London, Sydney, Brisbane and now the Gold Coast.

I currently contract with Lee Butts, Rob Nielsen and Tuxta (Steve Tucker) at Allotz.com - but also have my own consulting company that I've been running since coming to Oz.

Anyway - I really started this group to try and build a bit of a network with Java people in the local area - as through my job-hunting and recruiting I've noticed it's really hard to find good Java people on the coast. I know you are around (and some of you probably commute or have commuted to Bris), but the Gold Coast has a very "fractured" IT community and I find it really hard to connect with good people. I hope you will also find this list useful in some way - not just for recruiting/job hunting but also for collaboration and sharing ideas/questions. 

Another reason for hunting out Java people is that there seems to be a real vacuum of (for want of a better work) "Enterprise" developers here - a lot of the PHP coders I come across are self taught hackers, and the dotnet people.... welll they're dotnet people :) I find the Java people are more open minded, don't mind forking off into other languages when there is a better fit and have much more of a focus on quality and testing. These are the kind of people I like to work with, hope you do too.

Anyway - now there is a core group of people, I have turned on moderation for new members... I find this a better way of weeding out spammers than moderating memberships, as it's often hard to spot the spammers until they post. Me, Lee and Warwick Hunter are currently Admins so can attend to any moderation requests - so please tell people you know that subscribe to be patient with their 1st post.

Anyway - I'll hand it over to you, feel free to introduce yourselves, but you don't have to. I am on linkedin at http://linkedin.com/in/dalton if anyone wants to connect on there (there are a couple of Gold Coast groups I am in on there) there is also the site http://itgoldcoast.org that we started which has a list of a few Gold Coast groups.

Regards

Steve

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I did have a signature, but the dog ate it.

google:steve.dalton | skype:spidieman | msn: m...@steve.dalts.net | yahoo:daltonsp | aol: spidie100 | twitter: @spidie | mynetfone:09203861

[warwickhunter]

Hello everyone, my name is Warwick Hunter. I have been using Java on
and off for the
last 10 years. I am currently working in J2EE and J2ME on Linux and
mobile phones.

I am working with a bunch of smart people at Promptu Systems, nestled
in the
construction chaos at Robina Town Centre.

Warwick