Robert Hurlbut Blog

Our first Boston Code Brew starts on Wednesday, January 19 at 6:00 pm. We are meeting at Airpath Wireless, Inc. in Waltham, MA for our first meeting. We also have a group membership page at codebrew_boston (a Yahoo Group) and will make directions available there.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, this models Bill Evjen's idea for a Code Brew back a few months ago. He had a very successful meeting in St. Louis. He put together some "guidelines" for one of these:

• A Code Brew consists of a small group of peers (4-10 to be effective)
• Meet with laptops ready, software ready and an understanding that each person is going to want to take a 10-30 minute lead with the group
• Each lead (in turn) works through either a work-through demo (which everyone will work through as well), a problem they are having (which others will try to help solve through either advice or samples), a product demo (either something someone built or something cool that was found which you feel others would benefit from)

My idea for the group is to start with a primary theme ahead of time and see where the discussions take us that night. The key is for everyone to be prepared to contribute. The bar is high, as we expect you to participate in sharing and learning. I think you get a lot more out of a study group like this when you do.

Our first topic is one of my favorites: security. We will be talking about security from the perspective of a developer building secure systems as well as using anti-spyware, antivirus, and other tools on a developer machine. We will probably talk about the reasons and how to develop as a non-administrator. It should be a great night!

NOTE: Don't forget the Boston Geek Dinner the night before on January 18th at the Boston Beer Works!