At Tuesday’s regular monthly JUG meetup, I put forward some ideas of the sort of stuff that I’m going to be pushing in order to make the JUG more valuable to our members.
Master classes – a 2-3 hour session for 20 people max that explains how to use one technology properly. Eg. how to test a Struts, Spring, Hibernate app at all levels, or using JMX to modify the behaviour of a web application at runtime. These are just some starter ideas. Yes, the info is all out there on the net, but this would be a tutorial overview that collates all the good stuff in a digestible module.
A themed conference – eg. “Build me an SOA”. From the feedback that I’m seeing, a lot of the big conferences focus on what’s coming up in the near future and why you should use the latest and greatest. Cool. No probs. But tell a team of developers that you’re embarking on a project to implement an SOA strategy using an ESB and you’ll be left with a whole bunch of folks scratching their heads or nodding and quickly reading up on the net. So how about an event that explains what the buzzwords are, how they work in theory, the problems they solve and then how to go about implementing it. Add in a few local speakers who have gone through it all to describe hazards, pitfalls and the payoffs and I think you’d be on to a winner.
One off presentations – evening conference presentation type things. “Here’s the coolest new framework/development paradigm”.
The forum welcomed the ideas, and with the support that I have received over the last few weeks from various parties around Dublin, I’m looking forward to getting some of these ideas rolling as soon as I can. Fun times ahead.
Not part of the Dublin JUG? You should be.