Dropping meetings -- or, making choices

When I took this leap from the safe employer position into contracting, I built my network of contacts in part by attending meetings of technical professionals.

I am now in a position to evaluate those meetings, and I have chosen to drop some of them.

The local Baltimore Linux user group was an easy one to drop. The group has seen a decline in its membership (or at least attendance at meetings) and they may be shutting down. The causes of the decline are two: poor leadership in the group, and a reduced need for assistance with Linux.

The latter is particularly problematic. When Linux was a strange new thing that required expertise, a user group made sense. Members could support each other and share information. Today's Linux distros are quite good at detecting hardware and correcting problems. (And there is the world-wide-web for information.) A user group must be based on more than sharing technical knowledge for a popular operating system.

The not-so-local Linux user group (a separate group from the local Linux user group) is also on the "drop" list. Not due to declining membership or low value; this user group has good leadership, provides informative speakers, and maintains an active membership. My cause to depart is a pragmatic one: they have moved their meetings and the new location is farther than I prefer to travel. I had to play games with the car, staging it at a different train station in the morning, to attend. Now even that does not allow me to attend in time.

The third group that I am dropping is the cloud computing group. I am sorry to stop attending; they had good presentations and interesting members. Their old location was in Virginia but near a metro stop. The new location is further out in Virginia and far away from metro stops.

Letting go of these user groups gives me time in three evenings every month. I plan to use that time in other user groups, preferably ones closer to home.

App Engine and goals for BASIC-1965

I attended the Capital Cloud user group meeting tonight. The talk was on Google's App Engine, and it was a decent talk. But as usual, the best part of the meeting was talking with other folks. I chatted with a few and had the opportunity to explain cloud computing (at least my "take" on it) to some non-developers.

In other news, I have a specific goal for the BASIC-1965 interpreter. I've been working on this interpreter for several weeks now, on and off. (Mostly off.) My general goal is to implement an interpreter that will conform to the description in Kemeny and Kurtz's book "BASIC PROGRAMMING" from 1967. But better than a general goal, I thought of a specific goal. A specific goal is a good thing for me; it gives me a definite target.

My specific goal: write a program (in BASIC) that will print a Fahrenheit-to-Celcius conversion chart.

The goal may sound trivial, yet I find it appropriate. Such an exercise was common in the early BASIC texts, and it is within the capabilities of the (quite limited) language of BASIC-1965.

So now all I need is some time!

Time constraints on user group meetings

I attended the CMAP meeting last night -- and left early. This was unusual for me. I have attended CMAP meetings for somewhat more than two years, and I have consistently stayed at meetings until their ends. The last event of the meeting is a raffle of prizes.

Last night I made the decision to leave early. I had arrived slightly early to chat with people at the meeting, which for me is the most important part of the meeting. With other tasks pressing on my schedule, I had to leave before the end of the meeting.

The presentation was on Microsoft's MVC Scaffolding, a set of assistants for application development. The speaker knew his material and presented it well. I have no complaint about the material, except perhaps that it doesn't apply to my current assignment.

Local Linux, Cloud, and Virtual Machines

This past week I accomplished a number of things.

I attended the local Linux user group. They are going through a transition, expanding their focus from Linux to open source. The change makes sense; when they were formed, Linux was a difficult beast and one needed a lot of technical knowledge. In today's world, the modern distros install themselves. (I recently installed Kubuntu 11.10 and the process was simple.)

The change in focus requires a new focus, and the challenge to the group is to identify it. No one is stepping forward to claim ownership, and the transition has stalled. I have considered stepping up, but I have no clear vision for the group, no "itch" that I want to "scratch". As such, I consider myself an inappropriate candidate.

The cloud computing meeting had an informative presentation on database.com, a "spin-off" of the salesforce.com folks. I chatted with a number of folks; these meetings attract people with varying degrees of experience.

The cloud computing group was in the Washington area, and it highlights the challenge of my living and working arrangements. Living in Baltimore and working in Washington leads to a long commute, even on the train. It also locks me out of a number of activities -- I arrive in Baltimore too late to participate, and I must leave too early to participate in Washington events.

As to virtual machines, I made modest progress with my local tests. I successfully connected to a virtual machine with remote access software. I had to completely disable the firewall on the host system, and the color palette leaves a bit to be desired. But it is success, and I am looking forward to tuning the arrangement, adjusting the firewall to allow access and handling the color palette. I also found instructions for creating a headless virtual machine, which makes a lot of sense for remote operation. I'll have to read up on the process; it is something more than simple.

Cloud computing user group

I attended a meeting of a the Capitol Area Cloud Computing user group. The presentation was on salesforce.com, a platform for building cloud-based apps.

I was impressed with the product. It's more than a sales or CRM tool; it is an application platform that can be used for a number of things.

I was also impressed with the enthusiasm of the attendees. They were much more "into it" than last night's audience for the Windows Phone 7 meeting. They salesforce.com crowd was also more diverse, with recruiters, newbies, and experienced developers. (The Windows Phone 7 meeting had only experienced developers.)

This is a likable group, and I plan to attend future meetings. Next month will have a presentation on Amazon.com's cloud offerings.

Microsoft User Group

I attended the BaltoMSDN user group meeting tonight. BaltoMSDN is a local group interested in all things Microsoft, and mostly the developer tools such as Visual Studio and .NET technologies.

Tonight's meeting morphed from a .NET meeting into a Windows Phone 7 meeting. The conversations were interesting, but as I am not a Windows Phone developer, not particularly pertinent to my work.

The meeting was held at the Baltimore Emerging Technology Center, which was part of the appeal of the meeting. They have had meetings outside of Baltimore, and I find it easier to attend meetings in the city. And the ETC is a nice space.

I had some good conversations with the folks at the meeting.

Another geek meeting

I attended the CALUG meeting tonight. It made an interesting contrast to the CMAP meeting of last night. The CMAP meetings are a bit more organized (structured) and presentations are a bit more formal. CALUG tends towards the informal end of the spectrum.

CMAP and CALUG both offer attendees free pizza and soda. I find CALUG's pizza a bit more digestible, but that may simply be due to different vendors. (CMAP uses Papa John and CALUG uses a local shop.)

I find the folks at CALUG more approachable. It's easier to start conversations. The conversations are generally deeper and more meaningful. Folks at CALUG focus on the art of programming (or sysadmin-ing, or management) and folks at CMAP focus more on careers. Well, the 'P' in CMAP stands for 'professionals' so perhaps a professional is one who keeps his career in mind.

The CALUG meeting had a presentation on GNU Screens and Byobu. GNU Screens lets you multiplex a terminal session, and byobu lets you manage the configuration. A "repeat" talk, but still interesting.

More interesting were the side conversations. One with a Tenable employee about talent, management, and angry drivers. We also chatted about Agile Development techniques and their advantages over "Big Design Up Front". Another conversation was with some DP veterans (I say "DP" because in their day that's what it was called) about the Ada programming language, DVD players, lucky finds, and early personal computers such as the Commodore PET and the Radio Shack TRS-80 model I.