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.”
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