NSCoder 2012

[Brian Webster]

Hi all,

As you probably noticed, NSCoder hit a bit of a lull starting around
Thanksgiving time, but I'd like to get our weekly meetings started up
again!

I'd also be interested in hearing opinions on ways to improve things
to make it easier and/or more pleasant to attend. I think nobody is
particularly thrilled with our current meeting place, Paradise Bakery,
as it's pretty crappy with regard to coffee, wifi, and noise. So, I'd
like to take a look at some alternatives that might serve us better
for meetings.

Location is of course the central contention point, and it's hard to
pick a single place that works great for everybody, given how spread
out the Phoenix metro area is. Given that we have people potentially
wanting to come from Scottsdale, Mesa, Gilbert, and Phoenix (at the
very least), it seems that that general region around where Tempe
Marketplace is, kind of where Mesa, Tempe, and Scottsdale all
converge, is probably the best area to look in.

I did a little looking around on Yelp, and found a handful of
locations (links below) that were a) around that general central area,
b) had decent reviews, and c) appear to have decent wifi, at least as
far as can be told from the reviews. I've never been to any of these
places personally, so I was wondering if anybody on the list was
familiar with any of them and had a positive/negative impression?

http://www.yelp.com/biz/gold-bar-espresso-tempe
http://www.yelp.com/biz/xtreme-bean-coffee-company-tempe
http://www.yelp.com/biz/echo-coffee-scottsdale
http://www.yelp.com/biz/cartel-coffee-lab-scottsdale
http://www.yelp.com/biz/cup-o-karma-mesa-2

We can also discuss things like perhaps changing the time one
direction or the other to help avoid rush hour, or finding a place
that's open past 9:00 to help increase the ratio of meeting vs.
driving time. We'll keep this week's meeting at Paradise Bakery
(tomorrow at 7:00 PM), and we can discuss locations and such there,
and of course here on the list as well.

--
Brian Webster
bewe...@gmail.com