CoastNerds - Takes a vacation

As mentioned in the previous post, CoastNerds takes a break now until February.  Now is a good opportunity to thank all of our fantastic presenters for this year and also to everyone that came along to share their knowledge and experience.

Here is a summary of the presentations from this year:

• Using Git for Version Control - and why I wouldn't use anything else..  - Tony Quilkey
• Android Application Development - The First Few Hours...  - Shannon Marsh
• The What, How and Why of Database Version Control  - Justin Stafford
• Prioritising your Application Portfolio  - Campbell Page
• So what do Cucumbers have to do with Testing?  - Robert Dyball and Shannon Marsh
• Programming PIC Microcontrollers + Kinect SDK Preview.  -  Robert Dyball
• Continual Integration  - Ben Black
• Retrospectives  - Scott Wallace
• What's New in Web Technologies  - Ron Walden
• The Enterprise Mobility Market and The Blink Mobile Platform  - Ben Thomas-Brigden
• Introducing Windows Home Server 2011  - Robert Dyball
• Estimating Using Planning Poker  - Shannon Marsh

 

We also had our first CoastNerds Retrospective back in June where we discussed things we should start, stop, continue or do more or less of.

Well done everyone!

CoastNerds will re-convene in February. Based on the discussion at the last meet-up the consensus was that we would meet at the Austrian Schnitzelhaus again for a meal and discuss the agenda for 2012. We'll keep you posted on the date and time closer to the event.

Until then, Merry Christmas and All the Best for the New Year!

Image Credit: freedigitalphotos.net

ACS Central Coast Regional Professional Forum

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) are holding a Central Coast Regional Professional Forum on Wednesday 14 December at the Central Coast Campus at Ourimbah. 

The Art and Science of Diagramming: Communicating Effectively Using Diagrams

Presented by Dr Daniel Moody

Check out their website for more details or to register to attend.

November Meetup

The next meetup event is going to be at:

The Austrian Schnitzelhaus, Erina Fair

Tuesday 22nd November

7pm

This month we are doing something different (and slightly easier for us to organise).

Instead of a talk, we are going to meet up for a dinner at the Austrian Schnitzelhaus at Erina Fair.

We'll be meeting at 7pm.

The plan is to continue our networking, have a bit of a look back over the past year, and a look forward to next year. And to also enjoy a schnitzel, and maybe even a beverage or two.

This will be the final meetup until February 2012 so we hope to see you there...

October Meetup

The next meetup event is going to be at

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Tuesday 18th October

6:00pm for 6:30pm start

 

 

This month we will have some lightning talks planned. 

 

 

Introducing Windows Home Server 2011 - Robert Dyball

Rob will tell us how he uses Windows Home Server to manage his own home network and why he thinks it is a great tool for anyone who has more than one PC at home or at a small business.

Estimating Using Planning Poker - Shannon Marsh

Shannon will explain how a simple card game can help your team come up with better estimates for your project.  No Bluffing!

 

 

You

Come along and tell us about a free tool you downloaded that you can't live without, a great project you worked on or that time you met Bill Gates at the bar at an IT conference....

 

 

As usual the CoastNerds meetup is a great opportunity to network with other IT Professionals, Students or Enthusiasts from the local area.  No registration or membership required.

 

 

Hope we see you there.

September Meetup

The next meetup event is going to be at

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Tuesday 20th September

6:00pm for 6:30pm start

 

 

This month we have presentations from Ron and Ben from Blink Mobile Interactive.

 

Ron Walden will tell us what's new in web technologies, including HTML 5.

 

Ben Thomas-Brigden will be speaking about the new enterprise mobility market sector and when companies shouldn't build iPhone apps.  He will also discuss the Blink Mobility Platform and creating a Domain Specific Language (DSL).

 

Blink Mobile Interactive

ATUG ‘Communication Innovation’ Winner 2010

Anthill Magazine's Smart100 Australian Companies 2010, 2011

Australian Business Awards Winner 2010 - Best New Product, Best E-Business Product

Australian Business Awards Winner 2011 - Innovation

AIIA iAward Winner (NSW) 2011

Make sure you get along to this one.

August Meetup

The next meetup event is going to be at

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Tuesday 16th August

6:00pm for 6:30pm start

This month we are going to try something a little different, and host several shorter talks and discussions. So far we have the following:

• Ben Black talking about Continual Integration
• Scott Wallace talking about retrospectives
• You - talking about something you have done since last we spoke.

We are hoping this will open up the floor and allow better connections to be made between attendee's instead of the usual talking head at the front of the room.

Please let us know if you'd like to do a talk. Anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes is fine. Even if you think you don't have something of interest to share, you probably do.

Presentation deck from July 2011 PIC Microcontroller talk

Thanks to all, and congratulations to John Watson, winner of the door prize, a PICKit 3, kindly donated by Microchip Australia.

The PowerPoint and with notes are downloadable here:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=9e05dbe93ef7fc57&resid=9E05DBE93EF7FC57!2868

July Meet-up: Programming PIC Microcontrollers + Kinect SDK Preview.

The next meetup event is going to be at

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Tuesday 19th July, 6:30pm*

Programming PIC Microcontrollers

Are you interested in robotics,  data logging, turning things on and off from your PC, Mobile Phone, or other 'smart' device but not sure where to start?  PIC microcontrollers may be just what are looking for. Starting at just a few dollars each, don't let the electronics or the programming involved turn you off these amazing little chips. Find out how you can get started with minimal effort or expense. You'll see a demonstration of programming PIC chips; sensing temperature, pressure, humidity and also how you can link these to real world devices, even a web page. 

Kinect SDK

Come for a sneak preview - see how easy it is to start using the Microsoft Kinect on a Windows 7 PC to create  your own games or other fun projects.

Presented by Robert Dyball

Many thanks too to Microchip Australia who have kindly donated
a PICkit 3 In-Circuit Debugger/Programmer as a door prize this month.

*6:00pm for a 6:30pm start

Our First Retrospective - June 2011

At our last meeting we had a bit of a retrospective, on how we feel about the group to date,and what we can do to make it better.

We followed the Start, Stop, Continue, More of, Less of format...

The actions we got were:

• Looking into a few options for funding of the venue hire - will hopefully have an outcome to discuss at the next meetup
• Setup a schedule for later talks

These came from the following retrospective notes:

Start:

Sort out finances - one member paying for all meeting costs
More diversity in talks

Stop:

Continue:

Cross platform examples in talks

Good mix/variety of topics

More Of:

Simpe talks about the tools we use

Advertising/Promoting

Less Of:

Name of the group - maybe rethink the whole Nerd thing

June Meet-up: So what do Cucumbers have to do with Testing?

The next meetup event is going to be at

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Tuesday 21st June, 6:30pm*

So what do Cucumbers have to do with Testing?

All about Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) and some oddly named tools you can use to make it work.

Presented by Robert Dyball and Shannon Marsh

 

In this month’s CoastNerds presentation Rob and Shannon will be discussing the practice of Behaviour Driven Development and how it is a valuable way of identifying and developing test scenarios with your customers in a language that everyone can understand.  They will also talk about some of the free tools that are available to automate the tests and incorporate them in with your existing unit/integration test suite.  The presentation will cover:

-          What is BDD?
-          BDD Tools for .Net, Java, Ruby, etc.
-          Demonstration of StoryQ (for .Net)
-          How BDD and StoryQ are used in practice

This month we would also like to dedicate a few minutes to a Retrospective on CoastNerds so far, looking at what we are doing well, what we aren’t doing so well and what can we do better? 

 

You can't afford to miss this one! 

*6:00pm for a 6:30pm start.

May Meet-up: Prioritising your Application Portfolio

The next meetup event is going to be at

Tuesday 17th May, 6pm

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Prioritising your Application Portfolio

Presented by Campbell Page

Prioritising your application portfolio allows you to work on what is essential in your workplace.  The talk shows a way of investigating the application in your portfolio and ranking them considering both business and technical needs of each application.  The technique allows you to estimate the "age" of the application in the application life cycle, forecast the way the application will move in the future and how to show this information to management.

As usual, we look forward to swapping ideas and sharing war stories...

Don't forget to join us over at facebook.

April Meetup Presentation Slides

Here's the slide deck from April's presentation - "The What, How and Why of Database Version Control" by Justin Stafford.

Another great presentation and interesting discussions made for a fantastic night for the Coast Nerds...

Details about May's meetup coming soon...

April Meetup: The What, How and Why of Database Version Control

The next meetup event is going to be at

Tuesday 19th April, 6pm

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

The What, How and Why of Database Version Control

Presented by Justin Stafford

Teams of developers can benefit from database versioning through tighter collaboration, change tracking, ease of deployment and automated builds.

The presentation will examine the case for database versioning including the benefits, methods, and tools. A demonstration will be conducted using Blueshift's workflow and tool of choice - DB Ghost.


As usual, we look forward to swapping ideas and sharing war stories...

Don't forget to join us over at facebook.

March presentation now available on SlideShare

The presentation from last Tuesday, "Android Software Development - The First Few Hours" is now available to view or download from SlideShare. http://www.slideshare.net/sjmarsh/android-software-development-the-first-few-hours

As mentioned on Tuesday night the presentation contains instructions on setting up your Android dev environment and how to create your first app.

March Meetup: Android Application Development

The next meetup event is going to be at

Tuesday 15th March, 6pm

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Android Application Development -

The First Few Hours...

Presented by Shannon Marsh

My challenge for this year is to learn a new programming language or software development technology.  While I don’t intend adopting the suggestion of The Pragmatic Programmer and learning one new language each year, I do think that there is much to be gained by seeing what else is out there.  With the booming popularity of the Android platform for mobile devices I thought what better place to start?  Over the past few weeks I have taken the first few steps in learning about Android application development.  In Tuesday night’s meeting I will share this experience and cover off:

-          What is Android all about?  Why did I choose this platform?

-          What do you need to get started developing Android Applications?

-          How to create your first App.  Hello World!

-          Anything else I discover between now and Tuesday.

Bring along a USB stick if you want a copy of the required tools.  They are all free for download from the web but why waste valuable bandwidth?  You’ve gotta have something left over for YouTube right?

Are you coming?

 

PS. CoastNerds is now on facebook. 

February Meetup: Using Git for Version Control

The next meetup event is going to be at

Tuesday 15th February, 6pm

The Erina Centre, Erina Fair next to the Library

Using Git for Version Control - and why I wouldn't use anything else..

Presented by Tony Quilkey

This practical presentation will cover using Git for version control and why distributed version control systems rock. It will be heavy on demos and should give attendees a good starting point to begin using Git straight away to improve developer flow. Tony will give insights into why he would choose Git over other version control systems he has used in the past. This will be very interactive, so bring some tough questions for the Tony. He loves 'em....

Are you coming?

The Holiday Continues...

No Meeting This Month

Based on the feedback we've received it seems as though many of you are still on holiday so might skip the meeting this month and re-group in February. 


Networking Opportunity - Nerd Dinner - Thursday 20/1/11 
Our friend Peter Drew from Newcastle Coders Group has put out the call for anyone who is interested in attending a Nerd Dinner with Agile and .Net guru Richard Banks. 

Richard Banks has developed software for the last 18 years for a wide range of industries and development platforms and over the years and has filled many roles including developer, team lead, project manager and CIO/CTO.  He is a Certified Scrum Practitioner and Professional Scrum Developer Trainer, runs the Sydney Alt.Net user group and the Talking Shop Down Under podcast, owns and contributes to a few open source projects and has spoken at Tech.Ed and a number of other events and user groups around the country. For some strange reason he gets a real kick out of helping development teams to improve and produce great software. If you want to get in touch he tweets at @rbanks54 and blogs at http://www.richard-banks.org/.  He currently works as a Principal Consultant for Readify and is a Microsoft Visual Studio ALM MVP.

Anyone who is interested in attending should check out the Nerd Dinner site.  Perhaps if enough people are interested we can organise a car pool.


Volunteer for February
We need a volunteer for the February meeting on 15/2/2011.  Anyone who is interested in presenting or leading a discussion.   Something you have worked on, read, learnt or just something you are interested in.  Remeber it doesn't have to be a formal presentation.  If you just want to run us through some code or demo that awesome free tool you found from google, it's all good.  There are also some ideas on the Coast Nerds backlog.  We have a laptop and projector available for use if you need it (just let us know in advance).

(Image source: Michelle Meiklejohn, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/)