DamienG

ALT.NET Seattle

One of the cool things about living in Seattle is the sheer number of passionate developers around. Whether you’re dropping into offices, heading across campus for lunch, meeting downtown for music and beer or, in my case, last month taking a Saturday out to participate in ALT.NET Seattle, there are ideas, enthusiasm and discussions with great developers to be had everywhere.

The ALT.NET event was interesting. If you didn’t already know the name encapsulates:

  • the desire to improve the art, process, individual and product
  • the understanding that the right tool for the job doesn’t always ship with the .NET

The event follows the same minimal up-front planning modern development practices enjoy relying on talented people and simple structure to achieving something great in a short space of time.1

This open-spaces format involves a small deck of cards to write topics you’d like to talk about and a board with rooms and times to use. I was surprised at how well the event unfolded (bar one session that veered off-course), given our unplanned attempts at the Guernsey developer group always resulted in five people having dinner in a bar :)

I had an enjoyable day, and my thanks go to Brad Wilson (ASP.NET) for driving and listening to my nostalgic 8-bit discussion with fellow Brit Ade Miller (P&P) who previously worked at Future Publishing (Your Sinclair magazine). I’m now messing around with a .NET based Spectrum emulator I started years ago, and I’m going to blame him for that.

The best news is that there are more events planned for the coming months:

  • January 17th — location TBA
  • February — provisionally the 7th, location TBA

ALT.NET Seattle 2009 Conference

This is the big one immediately preceding the MVP Summit by running February 27th to March 1st at Digipen in Redmond. Glenn Block has details.

Registration will open on Tuesday, 6pm (GMT-8), attendance is free, and spaces are limited — so get in quick!

Consider joining the Seattle area ALT.NET group or ALT.NET Facebook group for more details or to get involved.

[)amien

1And as either Glen or Brad said with a nod to the end-of-credits bit in Ferris Bueller — “When it’s over it’s over. Go home already.”

4 responses to ALT.NET Seattle

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  3. Avatar for Damien Guard
    Damien Guard

    Yeah I saw the post on the GDUG web site — shame things have gone quiet there. Perhaps they’ll pick up again in the spring where it’s not dark and cold after work?

  4. Avatar for Steve
    Steve

    Must be nice to have that many devs in the near vicinity, enough to form a group on even specific tech subjects. I have to rely on virtual meetings (forums etc) and occasional conferences.

  5. Avatar for josh
    josh

    I saw gblock’s post about alt.net seattle. I have hard time finding time for conferences, but this has got me thinking. I’ll have to figure it out soon. Registration opens Tuesday according to Glen.