It’s been an exciting few weeks for me recently. First I was accepted to talk at two conferences in September, then our latest product at work went live, then I got a promotion at work and now I’ve decided to start a new .NET user group in Brighton which is call .NET South East.
The idea of starting a meetup has been at the back of my mind for a little while now and after much consideration I decided that I should just go ahead and get on with it. I’ve setup a new group on meetup.com called .NET South East. I expect it will mostly be attended by developers living and working in Brighton but I’m hoping that we can encourage people to join from anywhere around Sussex.
Announcing the First Meetup
I’m very excited to be able to announce that the first meetup will be held on August 22nd. At that event I’ll be talking about Docker for .NET Developers. In this talk I will take you on a tour of Docker, a modern application packaging and containerisation technology that .NET developers can now leverage. I will share with you the Docker journey that our team at Madgex are on, exploring our motivations for using Docker. You will learn the core terminology .NET developers need to know to begin working with Docker and explore demos that show how you can start using Docker with your own ASP.NET Core projects. Finally, I will demonstrate how we have built a deployment pipeline using Jenkins and explore the AWS EC2 Container Services (ECS) configuration we have created to enable rapid, continuous delivery of our microservices.
Elmah.io have kindly provided sponsorship for this event in the form of a 6 month business license for their software. We will be holding a raffle at the end of the event for one lucky attendee to win this fantastic prize.
Why a User Group?
User groups are a place where like-minded people can come together to enjoy a common interest, sharing and learning about that interest together. I’ve attended a few general developer user group sessions and watched many more online and I always leave having learned something or with a take-away I could follow up on later. Even if it’s just the seed of an idea or something I’d like to try, it has been well worth my time. Along with the content from the speakers, it’s also a good chance to mix in with other developers and make contacts, share thoughts and ideas. Perhaps you’ll meet someone who can help with a problem you’ve been fighting recently!
I started working in Brighton nearly two years ago and since then I’ve kept an eye out for groups and talks to attend. The only .NET specific group I’ve found locally is Brighton ALT.NET which meets once a month to have open discussion about any topics that the attendees vote to talk about. It’s a great format and there’s a nice variation of topics and opinions from the community there. I’ve attended on a couple of occasions and plan to get along to more of their monthly events.
Some may wonder, why start a group if one already exists and it’s a fair question. What I’m proposing to introduce takes a different format to that of ALT.NET. I’m looking to bring in speakers from around the area, as well as hopefully further afield, giving them the chance to share a topic in depth with the audience. In many cases I expect the talks to be conference length, 45-60 minutes long although I’m sure we can accommodate shorter talks as well.
Recently I met up with Mike who organises the ALT.NET evenings to run the idea past him. I was conscious that he already has a good community of regular attendees and I didn’t want to upset the balance by trying to introduce this second group. Mike was very encouraging of the idea and agreed that he felt there was room for both groups to exist and thrive together, helping to strengthen the local .NET community.
I recently watched a very inspiring talk from Ian Cooper at NDC Oslo entitled, The .NET Renaissance. In that talk Ian highlights the historical decline of C# and .NET. Ian ended that talk with a call to action to everyone in our community to help create a renaissance of .NET. Together, we can do it and bring the change. It’s an pivotal time for .NET developers with the new .NET Core framework and the approach from Microsoft to embrace open source and community. Later this year, version 2.0 of .NET core will be released and at that point porting over older .NET framework projects should be even easier. I’m very much enjoying working with the new framework and sharing my experience in this blog and now at soon at some meetups and conferences. I’m excited to play my small part in helping move the #dotnetrenaissance forward. Please join us!
What’s Next?
I’m still finding my feet as I establish this new group and start planning the events. I’m working on the logistics of the arrangements that need to be in place. My employer Madgex have very kindly agreed to allow me to use their meeting room space for the meetups. We have three meeting rooms that can be opened up into one large area, with A/V equipment and seating available. Perfect for our needs! Located close to the centre of Brighton, the Madgex office should be in easy reach of developers wanting to participate.
Madgex have also kindly provided me funding to setup the meetup.com group so that I could start to gauge interest in starting a new group. Already I’ve had over 40 signups from people interested in the idea and I hope that many of those will be able to attend the meetups going forward.
Finding speakers was my main worry, but already I’ve been approached by a few people who have talks they can offer to present. I expect there are other potential speakers out there with content to share, but perhaps no outlet for it. If you’d like to come along and speak please do get in touch.
I’m still trying to decide what the best schedule for the meetups. Ideally I’d like to run them every month and about two weeks after the local ALT.NET meetup. To begin with I’m planning on every two months as we build up the interest and I make arrangements with enough speakers who can present at the meetups. We’ll judge this on interest and the logistics or organising everything.
Call for Attendees
I’d love to get as many developers from our community involved in the meetups and attending regularly. I really believe that they will be a great chance to learn about topics that are necessary for .NET developers to thrive. Let’s get together and share our passion for what we do. I do urge you to save the date and RSVP on meetup.com. Please do spread the word with friends and colleagues who may want to attend.
Call for Speakers
I’d love to hear from you if you have a talk you want to present. It would be great to hear from the many local developers we have in Brighton, sharing what they do and teaching others about technologies they are using. If you’re further afield, but able to travel, we’d love to have you. I’d love to welcome first time speakers to join us as well. I’ve only just begun speaking myself and I’m finding it to be a great experience that is teaching me a lot along the way. I’ve never been a confident public speaker, but have found that by diving in, I’m able to deal with that fear and share my passion. Please do get in touch and I’ll help in any way I can.
Call for Sponsors
We already have two fantastic sponsors on-board, Madgex are providing their meeting space for free and assisting with some of the costs to get the event up and running. Elmah.io are providing a license as a prize for one attendee to win. If you’re a company in a position to offer prizes or sponsorship to our new group to help us get off the ground, please do get in touch.
Conclusion
I’m excited to get started to try to do my part to help build on the .NET community here in Brighton. I’m learning as I go and developing my own skills to organise the meetup and network with peers. I’d like to offer a huge thanks to those who have helped me so far. I’ve had great support from other event organisers (Dan Clarke, Joe Woodward, Dylan Beattie, Derek Comartin), community members via Twitter, Madgex and the staff there and elmah.io. Thanks to Mike from ALT.NET for his support and input and a special thanks to Ben Wood, a talented designer at Madgex who is kindly helping to develop a brand identity and digital assets for the new group.