Projects' Little Helper

Networking = yawn-fest?

I used to think that “networking” was some type of dreary activity that only terminal bores went to. However, increasingly I can see that getting together with like-minded people to share experiences can have benefits.

Geeks in the night

I live in Oxford, which along with its Dreaming Spires, also has a healthy geek scene. A foremost example of this is Oxford Geek Night,  ably organised by JP who also works at Torchbox, an Oxfordshire web agency. The basic gist is that there are a variety of technology related talks (keynotes and shorter “microslots”) with healthy gaps in-between to discuss the issues with geek-minded folks. It is held every couple of months and is generally a good night, although the PA system sometimes lets it down. Most of the talks are archived on the OGN site and are worth a look.

I also sometimes stop in on the Oxford Internet Professionals meetup, which meets monthly with no particular agenda (i.e. talks), just some chats over a couple of beverages. I’ve met some fine folks such as Rob Jones, the organiser and head honcho at Surefire Digital and David Langer, a co-honcho at the fast-rising startup, Group Spaces.

In my previous job, I was in London 2-3 days a week, so another group that I often attended was the London Scrum User Group, which is held monthly.  The format of this user group is a bit different to the OGN in that it often used the Open Spaces concept, although that might have changed.

Agile Oxford

As far as I know, there is no equivalent group that meets to discuss agile development/Scrum/Kanban and so on, in Oxford. There used to be an agile book group, The Oxtremists, however that seems to be undergoing a hiatus.

With that in mind, tonight I met up with James, a developer and quite freshly minted Scrum master, who was keen to discuss setting up an agile user group in Oxford. The basic idea for the first event, is to have a guest speaker  as an icebreaker, then have some time for groups to form to discuss issues relating to agile development. We could also thrash out future directions for the group, adapting the format in an…agile…manner.

Some possible areas of discussion:

• We just started “doing agile”…what now?
• Help! I need advice on insert problem here.
• How do you do continuous integration/source control/pair programming/automated testing/behaviour driven development/agile UX etc.

We’re looking to start some time in October November probably at the East Oxford offices of my employer, White October. I would be very keen to hear from anyone interested in this idea, so GET IN TOUCH!. You are also welcome to comment, as per the usual weblog etiquette.

The photo at the top of the post is from The Library of Congress on the Flickr Commons.