Our first meeting
Ilya Sterin
response within the last 24 hours since starting the group. I guess
there are many developers in Michigan thirsty for such a knowledge
sharing medium.
It seems like many other states with a thriving developer communities
have some sort of an enterprise application and/or a design pattern
reading group. I think we need one here in Metro Detroit to keep
ourselves interested and the knowledge flowing.
I'd like to get everybody's input on how you'd like to proceed. My
initial intention was to have say a design pattern reading group that
can meet once a week and each week discuss in detail a design pattern
and it's reifications. We can apply these patterns in the context of
a real problem and find the best implementation of such a pattern. I
think starting with GoF design patterns and moving on to a narrower
scope of enterprise application patterns, TDD patterns, integration/
SOA patterns, etc... I think there are enough of design issues to
keep us going for a very long time. Also, we can learn these patterns
in the context of refactoring, as in my experience, this is the best
way to truly understand where a pattern should or should not be used.
There is a lot of pattern happy code out there, where a simpler
solution would of been cleaner and better. We'll debate various
problems and provide a best solution while ensuring we don't over or
under engineer.
We can also have say monthly meetings where we can volunteer to
present various technologies and discuss application architecture and
design using these technologies/frameworks. Hopefully we can even get
some visitors that can come by and present some topic.
This is our group and I plan on having votes on all presentations and
their priorities, as I don't want to overwhelm the group with material
that we're not particularly interested in. I think the lack of
participation is what killed the other groups.
So now is the time for input. Please reply with your suggestions/
comments.
Thanks.
Ilya Sterin
Ilya Sterin
received it, as this is my first time using google groups for group
communication management.
Thanks.
Ilya Sterin
Kirsten Henderson
Jim
entail everyone working specifically and exclusively on the design
issues I'm dealing with now : )
I second everything Kirsten said, and the concern about weekly-meetings
is valid. Personally, I'm all about a weekly meeting, especially with
all the ground we'll want to cover. I think we should give it a shot --
it keeps the momentum and, like Kirsten touched on, could breed
familiarity. We could fall back to a wider time-frame if the attendance
ceases to justify it, and/or consider publishing our
findings/presentation-slides/etc. online so if people need to miss a
meeting they won't feel discouraged ("too far behind") to come back.
Jim
Ilya Sterin
On 3/8/07, Kirsten Henderson <henders...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Ilya,
>
> I am very interested in your group. I am a member of the JUG and have given
> a presentation on JMX. I am a firm believer that giving a presentation
> benefits the presenter as much as the audience.
That's usually the case in most teaching environments. In good
Universities, the professor gets as much back as he/she gives. Same
should be true in any learning environment.
> I have some motivation
> issues with learning things as thoroughly as I would like and your group
> would give me incentive to learn some of those things I keep saying I need
> to learn but never get around to reading about.
Yeah, collaborative learning is always good. Besides the motivation,
you also get a better understanding, as you get to actually
participate, rather than just reading about it.
>
> Time is a big factor for people though. A weekly 'meeting' might prove to be
> too much of a commitment for people.
I don't disagree, but I think the folks that are really interested and
love software development/design, etc... would find an hour a week to
attend, especially if it's not too far. We can even do it on the
weekends if the group prefers.
> We barely get any turn out as it for
> the JUG meetings and those are once every few months.
That probably has a lot to do with momentum and the topics covered.
I'd argue that specific topics are not as interesting as when applied
to architecture/design as a whole. A presentation on JSF might not be
interesting to folks that don't use it or plan on it, but if it's
covered in the context of MVC and component based architectures, than
it becomes an attractive session, information from which can be
carried over to any software design.
> Maybe frequency would
> make us friends and we'd be more inclined to meet; not sure.
Absolutely, people are more inclined to meet with folks they feel
comfortable with, than a group of people they don't know.
>
> I like the approach of taking one design pattern for discussion each week
> (or bi-weekly or whatever interval you decide on).
>
> I also really like your approach about this being more about information
> sharing rather than networking. The founder of the Detroit JUG is more
> interested in networking than information sharing, which I found
> troublesome.
Not to talk about JUG and networking, but I've seen many people in my
profession that only care about from a financial perspective. Don't
get me wrong, I'm sure we're all out to make great money as
developers, but you also must enjoy it and strive to perfect the
skill.
> It is all about information sharing for me and motivating
> myself to learn.
>
> Please let me know if I can help you with this group. I don't want to step
> on toes but I know it can be overwhelming for one person to manage one of
> these groups as far as selecting information for discussion or getting
> others to present.
Absolutely. I don't plan on being the group's manager, I'd rather
have every participant involved in making all decisions. I plan on
granting all regulars manager role in the google group interface.
Again, this is a collaborative group and we should all contribute.
>
> Take care and I appreciate your initiative in starting this group!!!!
Great, I look forward to meeting you at our first meeting, hopefully very soon.
Ilya
Ilya Sterin
>
> I can't think of a better approach for getting started that doesn't
> entail everyone working specifically and exclusively on the design
> issues I'm dealing with now : )
Yeah, same here:-) But seriously, I think resolving real world issues
in the context of refactoring and patterns would give us a better
understanding of the design. I can't tell you how many people I met
that claim they know good OO design and patterns, but most only read
about it and it's relatively hard to design to a patterns that you
haven't seen various reifications for in different contexts. Though
most of use master only the patterns that we at one point or another
utilized in our designs, where their usage were pretty obvious. I'd
also argue that when first learning patterns, we tend to want to use
them and over engineer the solution, which would probably benefit from
a simpler design. Though I think collaboration is the best
environment for such.
>
> I second everything Kirsten said, and the concern about weekly-meetings
> is valid. Personally, I'm all about a weekly meeting, especially with
> all the ground we'll want to cover. I think we should give it a shot --
> it keeps the momentum and, like Kirsten touched on, could breed
> familiarity.
Absolutely. I think that people that love software engineering and
make it a priority, will show up. Even if it's just 5 of us, it'll
create a good collaborative environment.
> We could fall back to a wider time-frame if the attendance
> ceases to justify it, and/or consider publishing our
> findings/presentation-slides/etc. online so if people need to miss a
> meeting they won't feel discouraged ("too far behind") to come back.
Absolutely.
I look forward to meeting you soon.
Ilya
Ilya Sterin
issues, I guess:-)
Ilya
David Evennou
I agree with all of the input so far:) I live in the Holly area and work in
Fenton, the meeting place might be a long drive for me, of course depending
on the location. I was a member in a local study group a couple of years ago
for the On-Line J2EE Passion Course by Sang Shin of Sun Microsystems. We met
every Saturday in AnnArbor at the WCC and that worked out real well. We also
had a few "Chat" meetings during the week for extra help, catch-up time,
etc. We brought our laptops to the meetings and had a good time as well:) I
was just starting with Linux at the time, good thing we had some Linux folks
in the group. Even though it was OT, I was pleased to get help on getting
Linux installed:) I must admit that I have little knowledge about OO Design
and Patterns, but want to learn it:)
Anyway, I know Saturday is very difficult for many folks with all the
activities and such. For me, Wednesday's are not good, but Thursday is the
best night for me.
There are a couple of thoughts on the meeting time. Some folks do not want
to go out after they get home, so around 6 PM is good for them. Others like
to get dinner first, then start the meeting around 7 to 7:30 PM.
Suggestions?
Thanks,
David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ilya Sterin" <ste...@gmail.com>
To: <metro-de...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 4:08 PM
Subject: [metro-detroit-ead] Re: Our first meeting
>
Ilya Sterin
has skating). Otherwise, any weekday is good too, except Thursday
evening.
Ilya Sterin
Kirsten Henderson
I would prefer a weekday and I am definitely one of those that doesn't want to go out after I get home, so I would prefer a 6 p.m. weeknight meeting time. I work in Troy and would be coming from work. My experience with the JUG makes me think you might get a better turnout if people are in 'work' mode still which means they come directly from work rather than having the meetings later at night or on the weekends.
Kirsten
david
Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings are not good for me.
I think possibly switching between two different locations may be a
good idea. This may help members who have problems with the distance
of one particular location.
I also think having a scheduled online meeting or chat is a good
idea. That could be held weekly.
David
> > >> >> Ilya Sterin- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Ilya Sterin
we have these meetings. The day is still tentative, since I'm
awaiting other responses.
The online chat/meeting is a good idea as well. Should we use IRC or
some other collaborative tech? Jabber, etc...?
Ilya
David Evennou (Data Masters, Inc.)
I have only used Yahoo Messenger before, but I think any chat mechanism will
work OK. Also, maybe we can from time to time use a web conference to do a
demo.
Should we get a demographics poll?
Can you list some highlights that the other OO groups are doing?
Thanks,
David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ilya Sterin" <ste...@gmail.com>
To: "Metro Detroit Enterprise Application Developers"
Ilya Sterin
compatible and I can use iChat or some other Jabber Mac native
software with it. Yahoo message is also available on a Mac, but I'm
not too impressed with it's interface nor stability.
I think IRC is still a pretty good choice for such discussions.
Ilya
Ilya Sterin
Should we meet next Wednesday? That should give us enough time to plan, etc...
I'll post a separate thread about the meeting to get everyone's attention.
Ilya
On 3/14/07, David McK <dav...@gmail.com> wrote:
> IIya,
>
> It looks like there are at least 4 or 5 of us that are pretty excited
> about the group. Do you think if would be a good idea for the 4 of
> us to meet informally first and try to brainstorm, organize for the
> first meetings? Maybe at a coffee shop or something?
>
> Does that make sense?
>
> Let me know your thoughts.
>
> David
>
> On Mar 6, 11:58 pm, "Ilya Sterin" <ster...@gmail.com> wrote: