Season’s Greetings from Coast Nerds

It's that time of year again when we should stop and reflect on the year that was. This year saw the launch of "Nerds of a feather" or "Coast Nerds" as it has become more affectionately known. Back in August we had our first meeting to discuss our goals for the community. Since then we have had three monthly meetings with excellent presentations from local IT professionals.

• September - Scrum in Wonderland
• October - The GIPA Project
• November - Test Driven Development - A Testing Journey

We would like to thank all the presenters for their very insightful presentations. Also we would like to thank all those who attended for providing useful feedback and informative discussion. Our primary goal has been to learn from one another and I think we have certainly achieved that.

No Meeting in December
As discussed at the last meeting we will not be holding a meet-up event in December due to its close proximity to Christmas and people's vacation time.

What's Next?
We are aiming to be bigger and better next year. To do that we need to reflect on our journey so far and work out what we can do better. Hmm... sounds like it's time for a retrospective.
So we ask...

• What are we doing well?
• What can we do better?
• What actions should we take?

Think about these questions. Write down your answers. Respond to the google group. We will meet up on Tuesday 18th January to discuss these. On that noe we would like to get an idea who will be attending in January considering that it may still be vacation time for some.

Until then, Merry Christmas!

(photo source: pixelperfectdigital)

What's the business model of the Coast Nerds Group

As coders it's easy to focus on technology.  There are so many awesome new products coming out every month it's hard not to be overwhelmed at all the opportunities.

But what's most important - for this community group as well as for clients of our IT developments - is providing business value*.

So let me put this on the agenda for the early 2011 meet-ups.  What's the value we're trying to create?

Lucky for you I don't usually just fire off random rhetorical questions with no answers.  I want to offer you a framework, which if you apply to Coast Nerds will also provide you with a great tool for understanding customer and client motivations.

Check out the Wikipedia article on Business Model Canvas, the related Slideshare files and for those of you willing to fork out a few buck the book.  I've tested this model as well as several alternatives and I have to say I think it's easy to use, comprehensive and leads to great innovative ideas.

* Or community value in the case of government and not for profits.

Presentation deck from November's TDD talk

Here's the original Powerpoint (2007/2010) slide deck, as a file download
or here:

Let's Talk

A forum (Latin, "marketplace"; pl. fora) was the public space in the middle of a Roman city.

In addition to its standard function as a marketplace, a forum was a gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, et cetera. Wikipedia

Thanks to Tony we now have an online forum setup to discuss past/future presentations and all things nerdly. Check it out.

Presentation deck from October's GIPA talk

Gipaa presentation-tues
View more presentations from chamberspaul.

Here is the presentation from the October GIPA talk.

(Embedded presentation removed because it was too large and locking-up the site. Use the above link instead).

November meet-up: Test Driven Development

The November CoastNerds event is going to be held on Tuesday 16th. It will cover Test Driven Development.

Test Driven Development is one of the more challenging of the agile practices. But it makes a lot of sense. Stephen Covey’s book from the 80’s said “Start with the end in mind” and that’s exactly how you should approach software development.

TDD can help you become more agile in your system architecture and faster in deploying new features and can give you better performance. But it comes with an up front cost. You have to invest in a new way of thinking about your work, change the way you actually code and type more lines.

Come along to the November CoastNerds meet-up at the Erina Centre.

Here is some reading on the topic;

• Methods and tools - Improving Application Quality Using Test-Driven Development
• Wikipedia - TDD
• Slideshare - TDD tutorial
• Better Projects Blog - Scrum Reading List

GIPA talk next Tuesday

Only one week to go to the next meet-up.  Come along and bring your IT friends.

Tuesday 19th October, 6pm

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Next talk is on the GIPA project; the technology and the results of a Gosford Council software application development.  Short turnaround, working on an existing platform, managing stakeholder expectations... .  Come along and hear the story.

(Do you want to come along and host a talk? If so let us know.)

Here Comes the Scrum

Here Comes the Scrum, Here Comes the Scrum,
and I say it's all right....


Just like those immortal lyrics from George Harrison, the wise words from Scott and Shannon's "Scrum in Wonderland" presentation should live on forever. Therefore we have uploaded the slide deck to slideshare and you can access it here http://www.slideshare.net/sjmarsh/scrum-in-wonderland?from=share_email

The night was a great opportunity for learning from one another and sharing ideas. Thank you to all those who attended and for your positive feedback. We look forward to the October Meeting and the presentation from Darren and Paul from Gosford City Council.

Scrum in Wonderland

View more presentations from sjmarsh.

Next meet-up 19th October

The next meetup event is going to be at

Tuesday 19th October, 6pm

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Case Study on the Government and Information Public Access (GIPA) project

Presented by Darren and Paul from Gosford City Council

A case study on Gosford City council’s Government Information Public Access project. The project involved Council’s obligations when providing information in a proactive, transparent and accessible manner to the public. The presentation will highlight the challenges faced and the measures taken to deliver a workable solution in a very tight timeframe.

The technology underlying the solution includes DataWorks / ECM (EDMS), 2 Windows Services, a C# thick client configuration app, J-Query and Google Site Search. We will outline how each component fits together to form the end product. There will also be a brief demo of the Phase 2 development - depending on maturity, is likely to take the form of a 2 – 3 minute screen-grab movie.

Are you coming?

Talk on Agile software projects on Tuesday 21st, 6pm-8pm

On Tuesday at 6pm at the Erina Centre (at Erina Fair) the next Central Coast IT meet-up happens.

Scott and Shannon will give a talk about an 18 month Enterprise project using Scrum and other Agile software development techniques.  the team faced many challenges, both on the technical and teamwork fronts, but by the end emerged with a great product and a very high performing team.

Come and hear them talk about the adventures they had, and come along and support your Central Coast IT community.




Here is the draft of the presentation.  It's very "agile" isn't it.

Software Freedom Day

Software Freedom Day is an event held all over the world to celebrate and raise awareness of free software and open source software.

The following events are currently registered in Australia:

• Launceston (TAS)
• Limestone Coast (SA)
• Melbourne (VIC)
• Newcastle (NSW)
• Nimbin (NSW)
• Perth (WA)

This list was taken from the official map of events on 12/8/2010. Please let us know if you like us to list your event.

Scrum and Agile Software Development talk on Central Coast

The next Coast Nerds tech talk will be a case study of Scrum and Agile Software Development project that went horribly right.

Tuesday 21st September, 6pm

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Scrum in Wonderland

Presented by Scott Wallace and Shannon Marsh

Abstract:

Since the early parts of this century the Agile Software Development movement has made massive inroads into increasing productivity and quality from software development teams around the world.

Hear the case study of a team that has delivered a complex software project in a large enterprise context. Zero defects, on time and under budget. All with a regular bunch of guys who were given the freedom to do what they thought was best for the product.

And hear the lessons learned continually (often several times over) through 18 months of hard work.

Beer and unit tests on Tuesday night

"You go to conferences and hear how much you have to learn, and then you talk to guys in your own community and realize how much you have to share..."

The first Central.Coat IT nerds event was last Tuesday night and it turned out pretty well. While we didn't have 400 people beating down the doors we did get to discuss how we grow this idea into a sustainable community. 

For example we will focus our next event on agile software development and Scrum and where it is on the Central Coast.  This should be an interesting talk for all IT teams regardless of platform. 

And we should have flyers for the next local computer fair. 

Anyway, thanks.to the guys that came, and a special thanks to Peter Drew from the Newcastle Coders Group who shared his advice from their own startup phase.

Organising the world’s nerds and helping them eat in packs

Our event is listed at Nerd Dinner where you can get a map, import the event into your calendar and more.  What a great site!

A free lunch?

A new feature of our first tech meet-up at Jack's bar and grill - A free meal for a door prize (care of the Entertainment guide book I bought)

So another incentive: You could be eating free that night :)

Central Coast Techie meet-up

Jack's @ Erina

6.00pm, Tuesday the 17th August

Agenda

Developing an IT community and series of meet ups to share, learn and support each other in our technical careers.

Ground Zero

On the 17th August 2010 we will meet-up for the first (that we know of) Central Coast IT community... ummm... err... meet-up.

Where: Jack's Bar and Grill, Erina
When:  6pm - 7.30pm (but stay as late as you want.)
Why:   Build a community around what we do, share knowledge and experiences.  That sort of stuff.

What's on the agenda?

What do you want to get out of this?
I know what I want.  To learn from other people who have been there before me.  To hear interesting stories and to share  my own.  Enough about me - what about you?

How do we build this into a sustainable community and series of events?
I'm not sure.  Let's work it out together.


Do we have a clear vision and mission?
Not yet.  The basic idea is to get people from multiple businesses (and government) to come together and share their knowledge and experience.

Will I be the only one there?
Nope.  We already have over half a dozen people committed and more as 'potentials'.  So let us know you are coming or just walk in and look for the table of people who look like IT nerds.