Thu 17 Jan 2008
It’s been over 9 months since BarCamp Boston 2 (March 17-18, 2007). So it’s time to start planning the next one! I’ve contacted the MIT E-Club officers about using the Stata Center again, but haven’t heard back yet. Do you know someone at MIT who can help? Or another venue that’d be suitable for a BarCamp?
Venue selection is always the biggest hurdle, but once we’ve got a date and place we’ll be in good shape for an excellent BarCamp.
Tue 18 Sep 2007
Cross posted from my blog, but I figured people may be interested.
Sunday marked the concussion of No Fluff, Just Stuff for the Boston Fall 2007 event. To put it simply: it was a truly amazing experience.
If you aren’t familiar with NFJS, it was started just over six years ago by Jay Zimmerman out in Denver, Colorado. After many discussions with members of the Boulder Java User’s Group, it was decided that there weren’t any local conferences that focused on Java and agility, and that were strictly technical. Shortly thereafter, NFJS was born with a three-day symposium format. It was decided to cap the attendance at 250 in order to keep a high level of interaction between speakers and attendees. Each day has five concurrent tracks with a total of eleven 90 minute sessions with top-notch speakers from around the country.
I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Jay, and one thing I had asked was if much had changed over the past years. Apparently it had not. The particular format of the symposium works amazing well, with the small number of attendees, great speakers, and a high level of interactivity. Changing any of these would detract from what makes it so good, and would violate the original intent in which the event was started. Sure venues change, more schwagg is introduced, and technology continues to plow ahead, but at the heart, it’s really the same as it has ever been, and that’s a good thing.
There were a lot of great talks this year. Here is a list of sessions I had the opportunity to hit up:
If I can find public copies of any of these presentations, I’ll update this list with links.
I found a few of the talks to be particularly fascinating, so I hope to follow up with several posts:
If you don’t see something about these in the next week or so, feel free to hassle me a little 
The most significant piece of advice I can give is this: be engaged. You have an amazing opportunity to interact with experts in the fields. You are surrounded by feels geeks and hackers who take time off to go to these kinds of things. Talk to them! Take notes! Absorb!
I really can enumerate enough how awesome of an experience it was. I’m feeling pretty pumped up to get back to development to put this new knowledge to use. If NFJS is coming to a city near you, take the plunge; you won’t regret it.
Mon 10 Sep 2007
Here’s a roundup of the various Meetups happening in the next 30 days or so. Check out the meetup page for more details.
Tue 4 Sep 2007
If the week wasn’t crazy enough already, the monthly Web Innovators Group is holding a meeting on the 10th.
If you haven’t been to one before, here is the general jist of it. A few people give 10-15 minute long demos, typically of a startup they are working on. This is the main dish. Then several more people talk briefly (1-5 minutes) on their startup. All have booths setup on the perimeter of the area for you to check out. From there, it’s networking, schmoozing, and what have you. It’s a good sized crowd, with several hundred at the last meeting.
Wed 29 Aug 2007
We have two big events September 6th.
The first ever TECH cocktail Boston is being held from 6:30 – 9:00 at Tequila Rain near Fenway. Open bar and technology… what more could one ask for? Signup was SO popular that spots were sold out the first day, and when an overflow list was started, it shortly became old out as well.
If you weren’t fortunate enough to register for TECH cocktail, O’Reilly is holding their second Ignite Boston from 6:00 to 10:00 at Hurricane O’Reillys near North Station. The schedule includes a few ‘launch’ talks to get the night going, followed by lightning talks, and a few surprises.
Fri 24 Aug 2007
There’s a lot going on in September, in the second week alone!
First up is Sun Tech Days, Tuesday September 11th through 12th. You like Java? You got it. Topics will include Java EE 6, Java SE 7, JSF, Java ME, scripting with JRuby, and NetBeans. Check out their site for more details and to register for free.
Next we have the monthly New England Java User Group meeting. This month, Ryan Cuprak will be giving a tour of the open source offerings for Java. Utilizing open source solutions can give you more time to focus on your core concerns, rather than developing and maintaining your own version of the Wheel. This month’s meeting will be held again at Sun’s Campus in Burlington. See their site for more details and to register. As always, registration and pizza dinner is free.
Friday September 14th through 16th is the New England Software Symposium 2007: Fall Edition. I had the opportunity to attend last fall’s conference, and it was an amazing experience. Two and a half days, 5 tracks, lots of amazing speakers. This is a very technical-oriented conference with no marketing fluff whatsoever. The only downside is that it is a bit pricey, making this a nice thing to try to get your company to expense. The early bird special ends Monday, August 24th for $750, and then $850 after that. You can get a $50 discount if you use the coupon ‘nfjsusergroup50′, courtesy of NEJUG. If you do go, here are some tips:
Last on the billet is DevHouse Boston 3 on Sunday September 16th. I had an awesome time at the last DevHouse back in June. I liken the experience to a LAN party, except with coding. The basic gist of it is everyone starts gathering around 10am, and shortly after, each person has a few moments to introduce themselves, what skillsets they have, and what project ideas they have to work on that day. Then there is a breakout, and people start forming groups to work on a project for the rest of the day. And then the coding starts, with breaks for lunch and dinner. After dinner, each group has an opportunity to demo the fruits of their labor, and following this, share a few drinks before everyone heads their own way. I have a few suggestions if you do get attend:
Edit: I was reminded that the New England Software Symposium has five, not three, concurrent tracks.
Fri 24 Aug 2007
Hello geeks of Boston! After speaking with Shimon, he agreed to let me help out around here, to keep you informed of the geekery going on in the area.
So allow me to briefly introduce myself. My name is Josh Nichols, but I’ve found myself more commonly known as Pickles. I’ve been in Boston just over two years. I’m currently working for the Broad Institute, doing Java web development type stuff for the Chemical Biology department. In my spare time, I’m a user and developer of Gentoo Linux, having worked on Java, Ruby, and Xfce support. And most recently, I’ve become a Rails convert, and wrote my own blog (it’s one of those rite of passage type of things), Technical Pickles.
So that’s all for now, and I look forward to keeping everyone up to date on the latest events!
Tue 14 Aug 2007
There’s a nice little article in the Boston Globe by Carolyn Y. Johnson about the Boston-area tech community, and especially about Beta House, the coworking loft in Central Square.
Thu 14 Jun 2007
DevHouse Boston 1 was great… and it’s been too long. I’m looking forward to working with some new people and ideas at Dev House Boston 2!
Fri 18 May 2007
O’Reilly is hosting the first Ignite Boston event at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square on May 31 at 6pm. Andy Oram reports that this event will be both technical and friendly, and since it’s held in a pub, you can drink during Scott Berkun’s keynote. Which I’m guessing will be delivered from the same stage where I’ve previously sung karaoke. 
They’re also still seeking proposals for 5-minute talks, so if you have a cool project or experience to discuss, sign on up.
Geeks in Boston is written by Shimon Rura, shimon@rura.org. Design apadpted from Connections by www.vanillamist.com.
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