Reston CocoaHeads Ending

[Jeff]

We've decided to officially close the Reston CocoaHeads group. The
group been meeting very infrequently and we frankly haven't had a lot
of interest in participation and especially in presenting. Perhaps
we'll start things up again in the future if there's a compelling
interest. Thank you to everyone who's presented and participated in
the past. I greatly appreciate your efforts.

[Ken Collins]

FYI, for those in the area looking at Cocoa for iPhone work. I just found out recently that the Pragmatic Studio is coming to Reston again in March. Not a substitution for a solid local user group, but some might find it interesting.

http://pragmaticstudio.com/iphone/locations#reston


- Ken

[Jose Vazquez]

Hi guys,

I'm really sorry to hear this. You guys have done a great job in the past putting these on. I know it's a lot of effort. The interesting thing is, we do have an active community.  The real problem is we do not have enough presentation material.

Earlier in the summer I had a chance to attend the Boston CocoaHeads meeting. Their meeting is about 2 hours long and then they all walk over to eat a late dinner together. The day I was there, they had an presentation that lasted almost an hour with a lot of Q&A. After that we all just had a group conversation. Some one would bring up a topic and people would give their input. I was later told that they frequently don't have _ANY_ presentation, and just have the group discussion. 

Keep in mind that, while we do have several active developers in the area, Boston has many more established players. Even so, they still have a problem coming up with a steady stream of presenters. I believe, that only the Bay Area CocoaHeads has enough people to have a steady stream of formal presentations. 

I understand that you guys are disappointed, but I still think it is possible to have a regular CocoaHeads meeting. Even if there are few formal presentations, I have a feeling we will always have plenty to talk about. NSCoder Night is held every week and we never run out of things to talk about. We also have had a few things we wanted to present but perhaps are not "formal" presentations. 

I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here... Maybe we could try having one more meeting if nothing else, just to discuss the future of the group. Most people that complain about NSCoder Night DC cite that they can't meet every week, and that they would prefer a Virginia location. You guys have both. Just an idea...

later,

Jose

[bok...@gmail.com]

Stay a virtual group and occasionally meet for dinner/have a code jam.  When the Prague studios are in town, I bet it would be easy to convince the instructors to come out fir a presentation.

Reach out to apple too... If nothing else, the group could have a friendly relationship with the local Apple store...