HR Geeks

The local Hampton Roads Ruby/Cocoa Users Groups / Ken Collins is throwing an event friends, and it looks like it’s going to be good!

“On November 5th, 2009 Hampton Roads’ premier learning and network event for software developers, interactive agencies, and technology entrepreneurs will be held at Grow Interactive, Norfolk.”

Speakers:

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
by Andy Hunt
Author & Co-Founder Pragmatic Bookshelf

The Joy of Ruby
Clinton R. Nixon
Development Director at Viget Labs

iPhone Development: Touching Cocoa
Jamie Pinkham
Software Engineer at Mobelux

Sounds like a great event. It’s free, seating limited to 50. RSVP today!!

More information at www.757studio.org

If you’re local to the 757 (Southside would probably be best, but it’s up to you), shoot me an email if you’re interested in helping out a local group of high school kids in building their FIRST robot for competition. Work begins in January, for competition later in the spring.

From their home page, “The next Richmond Code Camp will be held at the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College campus on Parham Road on Saturday, October 3rd 2009. It’s totally free. No gimmicks. No sales pitches. Enjoy breakfast and lunch at no charge while you mingle with your peers in a state of the art learning facility and enjoy over 40 awesome sessions covering a wide range of database, software and portal development topics.”

Looks interesting and isn’t far. I was told there are presentations there not specific to Microsoft Windows environment. Would be good to hear a report from someone that attends!

Official site: http://richmondcodecamp.org/
(Uses Microsoft site for event registration)

Things lined up right, and I was headed to DC for a data center visit for work so I made the most of my trip. I had lunch with Curt, a DC local I know from the diving forum (who also has computer skills) and then broke for the DC 2600. They start later, due to the traffic. I visited the old mall, and it looks so much smaller now that we have MacArthur center.

Having heard that the prior meeting had 17 or so, I looked forward to it. At first there was 2 folks, and then it turns out 4 others were in a different part of the restaurant. Everyone moved outside, and a few others joined. Overall it was pretty cool, but attendance was low due to the holiday. I told them I’d return in the future and perhaps bring more locals. Their meeting moved from the Pentagon City Fashion Center mall to a food place (similar to our HRGeeks meetings really). There seemed to be confusion on the location as the magazine just updated the info.

I’ll drop in again, but next trip it’s back to Raleigh unless I’m in DC already.

Nice, chill, meeting this week. Lots of great talk and there was really little contention for talking. In attendance was Mark G, Paul, a brieeeefff appearance by Paul’s wife, the Spawn of Jody, Jody, Sunpuke, Remad, and myself. Some interesting discussions came up, such as music, queuing theory and its relation to real life, and table-to-chair-hight ratios. Short summary, however that factor should not be a testament to the meeting and its content. We stayed ’till kicked out. Ok, so “kicking-out” is a tad rough, we were nicely advised that the mall was closed.

-Matt (enferex)