There seems to be a recurring problem with members that pops up at every meetup which is the lack of time to work on whatever ideas we have in our heads. We all have many started, but unfinished Xcode projects on our drives, right? For most of us the reality is that we spend most of our time working fulltime for customers, either freelance or on a payroll. As a result the only way to work on our own apps is either after hours, or during weekends. But it’s hard.

Some of us (including me) have worked 4/5 for a while to spend one day a week totally focussed on own ideas. Apparently I wasn’t alone and there was general agreement that you get so much more done on one full day of coding than on a series of evenings during the week. To add fuel to the fire we had the WWDC debacle last week where some ideas were thrown on Twitter about maybe meeting up in Belgium during WWDC week to chat, watch the “live” video’s from San Fransisco and what not.

It didn’t take long before someone threw “wouldn’t it be awesome if you could have one week dedicated to coding your own ideas away from ‘it’ all?” on the table. Again, it proved a thought which others had had at some point in time.

We talked about it for a while and came up with this as a setting:

• a place to retreat for 5 days or so
• a place that has a decent internet connection
• a place where we can sleep
• a place where you can work on your own ideas, surrounded by other developers
• away from wife and/or kids (sorry honey)
• away from the drudgery of daily life
• away from whatever our fulltime job is

At this point in time, nothing is concrete. It is an idea. We want to find out if there are people interested. We are in the “maybe we should find out who’s interested” phase. It is an idea, a possible fix to cure the “I just don’t have enough time to work on my own apps” problem.

We have no location, no plan, we don’t know if it will be free or not, we don’t know how we will arrange food. We know fuck all basicly.

At this point in time, we need feedback: would you be interested in joining a group of 10-15 other devs, for 5 days away from home to work on your own apps?

We are looking for feedback. Please join us on our CocoaHeadsBe group: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/cocoaheadsbe/H5OSXeqTfvs

Register at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6210145713. Limited places!

How to get there
Step 1: use a map to find the building.
Step 2: the 10to1 offices are located at the back of the building. Turn left at the main entrance. You’ll find a parking lot there.

Address and timing
Tuesday, April 30, 2013 from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Offices of 10to1
Located at: Prins Boudewijnlaan 5, 2550 Kontich, Belgium

The perfect time to talk about Objective-C, our secret projects, and of course with a couple beers.

We have two presentations this month, something general and something technical.
Many thanks to Digiti, who generously provide the venue (plus sandwiches and drinks!) and to Bert and Tom for preparing a talk about some interesting stuff!

Bert Timmermans — Mobile UX
Translating your idea into a great iOS app is not always that easy. In my presentation I will give you some practical tips on how to make this a bit easier and to help you get the most out of your apps.

Tom Adriaenssen — Adventures in Multithreaded Core Data

Parking space is available at the carpool parking at 50m from the Digiti offices.

Location and timing
Monday, September 24, 2012 at 8:00 PM

Digiti
60 Rodendijk
2980 Zoersel
Belgium

Hope to see you there!

See you there at 8pm!

Koen Van Nieuwenhove (@CocoaCrumbs) will show us the basics of DTrace, the tool that’s behind Apple’s Instruments app.

The goal of the talk is to show what DTrace can do and thereby provide a better understanding of how Instruments works and how to interpret its output. The presentation will be at an introduction-level, consisting mostly of (live) examples to keep it as accessible as possible.

Practical information:

• Date: 26 April, 8pm
• Location: Het Trappenhuis (School), Lucas Munichstraat 29, 9000 Gent
• Topic: Koen Van Nieuwenhove will show us the basics of DTrace.
• Registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3385701725

See you there

Update: Slides of the presentation can be downloaded here. Be sure to read the readme-file for the ‘tooManySecrets’ demo. Enjoy!

Our next Cocoaheads Belgium meeting will take place on the 26 th of March at 8 pm in the offices of 10to1 (Prins Boudewijnlaan 5, Kontich).

This time Johan Ronsse (designer at wolfslittlestore.be) will give a presentation on designing for iOS. He will use the upcoming ConcertWall app as a case study and will share his experience on the interaction between developer and designer. There will also be lots of design-related tips & tricks, useful for both designers and developers.

Practical information:

• Date: 26 March, 8pm
• Location: 10to1, Prins Boudewijnlaan 5, Kontich
• Topic: iOS design case study: from concept to end result. Presented by Johan Ronsse.
• Registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3144050941

See you there

Update: Slides of the presentation are available at slideshare.net/Wolfr

Our next (informal) CocoaHeads meeting will be on 27 February, 8pm at Vooruit Gent.

The perfect time to talk about Objective-C, our secret projects, and of course with a couple beers.

This month the meeting will take place in Mons on the 27th of June.  Raphael and Sandrine from Creaceed have been kind enough to provide us with a location in which we can hold this month’s meeting.

The location for this month’s meeting is La Maison de l’Entreprise (LME) - Incubateur technologique, 7 Boulevard Initialis, 7000 Mons.  Raphael will be presenting a session on “GCD & Blocks”, an Steven from Blue CrowBar Software will open the meeting with a very special Steve(n)Note.

The meeting will start at 20:00, and there will be plenty of time to meet up with other Cocoa Heads BE enthousiasts. So if you’re interested, feel free to go to the EventBrite website and sign up, since spaces are limited.

You can find more information on CocoaHeads Belgium a the CocoaHeads Belgium website, in the CocoaHeads Google Groups and I even created a Linked In group for CocoaHeads Belgium.

Registration for this Meeting can be done on the Eventbrite page.  If you have suggestions for future sessions or are willing to give a session, that would be the perfect time to let us know.

This month the meeting will take place in Gent on the 2nd of May.  The location for this month’s meeting is in the offices of SHPArtners – Roving Bird, Kortrijksesteenweg 1099a, 9051 Gent.

The meeting will start at 20:00, and there will be plenty of time to meet up with other Cocoa Heads BE enthousiasts. So if you’re interested, feel free to go to the EventBrite website and sign up, since spaces are limited.

You can find more information on CocoaHeads Belgium a the CocoaHeads Belgium website, in the CocoaHeads Google Groups and I even created a Linked In group for CocoaHeads Belgium.

Registration for this Meeting can be done on the Eventbrite page. If you have suggestions for future sessions or are willing to give a session, that would be the perfect time to let us know.