[ajug-members] Who and/or What Next?

[Burr Sutter]

Hello AJUG'ers,

It is about that time of year to ask...who and what.  Who would be a great
speaker to bring to Atlanta? and/or What topics would you like to see
covered at our 3rd Tuesday night meetings?

Also, if there is another "style" of event that you think would be helpful
please let the rest of us know.

Here are some examples of different types of events:
- DevNexus happens during the working week - during the day time: this
encourages managers to send their employees and we had many  teams show up
at DevNexus 2009.  The feedback has been very strong and we made our revenue
goals (break even) so look for this event to be back in 2010.
- NFJS happens on weekends - this encourages the contractors/consultants to
come out so they don't miss billable time
- Lunches - we have run many lunch bunch type of events inviting the most
senior techies in the Atlanta area, no specific agenda, just hardcore
techies discussing best practices, emerging technologies, solutions to
political problems.  We found that senior architects, team leads, CTOs,
consultants can normally take a 1.5 to 2 hour lunch (if they are in town and
not traveling)
- Open space meetings - we held one of these in Summer of 2007 (Barry
Hawkins organized) - several of the attendees really enjoyed this type of
session but it is very different.  I've been asked to bring this back.  The
basic idea of an open space meeting is that it has no agenda, no speaker, no
slideshow with LCD projector - it has open areas, poster paper on easels,
markers and an overall theme, with a coordinator keeping things flowing.
This is one of the least costly events.
- Movie theater meetings: Microsoft sometimes has day time (1pm to 5pm)
meetings at the Regal Hollywood theater off I-85, the "pros" are a really
large screen & stadium seating with popcorn, the "cons" are rooms are not
shaped for networking, discussions, lunch is a little more challenging, only
cost effective when you hit the 200+ attende mark.  We did something like
this at Atlanta Station where James Gosling came to speak and we watched
Talladega Nights a three years ago.
- Bring your laptop Hands-on events: this is often requested but very
challenging to organize.  A couple of years ago we had a "bring your laptop"
sub-group but it ran out of gas.  The difficulty is that the instructor must
spend many more hours preparing to give a hands-on session vs a
lecture/demonstration.  I would guess that the difference is around 500%
increase in workload on the instructor (I've been performing both types of
sessions over the last 17 years).  So this is challenging, with that said,
we do have some people in the group who are "teachers" and would be willing
to teach for 1 to 2 hours on JSF, Seam, Spring, Hibernate, Flex, etc.

What else?  Who else?

Burr
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