Meeting – Notes

Well, I would like to thank Tom Maes and the kind folks at Sun Microsystems Belgium once more for allowing us to use the room for our Cocoaheads Belgium meeting.

It took us a while again to get everyone subscribed for this event, and to find an appropriate location, and sadly this time we had to limit the number of seats available. I hope everyone got in though, and if you didn’t make sure you register for the next meeting ASAP (or at least when we have more info about it). This time we had a room filled with about 30 people, at least a dozen of iPads, and even two iPhone 4 devices !

This month Tom Maes prepared a session on all things WWDC. Tom gave us his opinion about WWDC and why he finds it so interesting. As with many conferences, the sessions are quite interesting, but at WWDC you also have the opportunity to have some Lab Time with Apple Technicians which proves to be very valuable. He also mentioned that the conference isn’t always held in the session rooms, but quite a few times you meet up with interesting people in the lobby or hallways and you probably learn a few things there too.

Status Update

Personally I am very pleased with the way the Cocoaheads Belgium community is growing and evolving. I remember the first meeting where we all seemed strangers … but meanwhile we’ve grown acquainted to each-other and the sharing of knowledge and information is starting to be a fact !

I’ve had quite a few suggestions and ideas from the community last month and we have discussed a few of those during the meeting as well. For those of you who didn’t make it to the meeting, I’ll give you a little summary on the 2 most important suggestions.

NSCoder Nights

The goal here is to get together with a small group of developers and actually Code together. The idea exists in other countries and there is even a website dedicated to NSCoder Nights.

The actual goal is to have a weekly / bi-weekly event where a small group of Cocoa developers get together and … well code of course ! The big difference between the NSCoder Night and regular meetings is that the idea is to work in smaller groups, and be less formal. There would be no need to subscribe at all, if you feel you’re ready for an NSCoder Night you just turn up with your Mac and a project you want to work on.

It would be a great opportunity to share our knowledge ! One person could have an issue with some Core Location stuff and another developer could help him with the task at hand. I have already seen that we have quite a few smart people in our community, some know everything about Core Location, others about Core Animation and even some OpenGL experts. We are probably all experts in a specific area, but imagine what we could do if we could bring all that knowledge together … wel that’s exactly the idea of the NSCoder Night!

We have no concrete plans yet, but I noticed that the people present at the meeting would be interested in it, so here is a little list of things we would probably need :

  • Spot with enough electricity / chairs to host a small group of developers
  • Preferably a calm, not too noisy location
  • If possible some Wifi access to the interent
  • Some drinks / food in the neighboorhood would be great as well

In many cases it is done in a Pub with Wifi, which makes it absolutely perfect if it isn’t all too noisy (we still need to hear the each-other think & talk).

So, if anyone has a suggestion of a place where we could host the NSCoder Nights, please let us know. Remember this is supposed to be a smaller group, and there is no problem at all with having it take place in 2 or more places in Belgium at the same time. For example, I could imagine one in Antwerp, one in Gent, one in Brussels, …

NSBBQ

The other idea is a suggestion for a more social happening. From time to time we get together for our meetings, and we even take some time to grab a beer together and that’s how the idea started to grow. And if there is one thing we Belgians love on hot sunny days, … its a BBQ with good food and a few drinks! (if you answered : creating iPhone apps in 1 day, you should check the NSCoder Night topic again)

The idea is to plan a day where the whole community could meet up and socialize. Since there is no technical content attached to this event, you could even bring your girl/boyfriend, husband/wife and maybe even the kids.

We have absolutely no idea yet on how we should organize this. For now it’s a wild idea, but a quite interesting one. With the help of the community we could get it organized (find a location, catering, …) or we might even be able to do it ourselves (bring our own food, do the BBQ ourselves).

If you are interested in this idea, and have some suggestions / can offer a helping hand, please get in touch with us.

Feedback & Suggestions

If you have any feedback on the topics mentioned or have any other suggestions at all, feel free to get in touch with us. You can reach us through our Google Group for CocoaHeadsBE and CocoaHeadsBE group on LinkedIn, and of course our CocoaHeads Belgium webiste / Blog. Furthermore you can also follow the CocoaheadsBE twitter account to learn more about us.

Next Meeting

As of yet, the date is undecided. If we keep our schedule, the next meeting would be on the 26th of July, but that will probably be during most people’s summer holidays. Personally I’m out of the country during the last 2 weeks of July, but that doesn’t mean you guys can’t have a meeting without me.

Some people suggested we should skip July and jump straight forward to August. Who knows, we might be able to organize our NSBBQ during the summer holidays for those of you eager to see me before the end of august :-)

Final Note

If anyone thinks he can help us out with one of the ideas mentioned in this topic, please do contact us. If you still have more ideas … well contact us as well. There is a real need for a CocoaHeads Belgium, and I’m sure that we can make it happen if we all work on it together.

Regards,

Stefaan