Re: Who and/or What Next?

I would like more of hands on sessions and it need not be Speaker has to demonstrate. Rather, more of lab session where we take up some small problem in particular technology and do hands on exercise so that we get a feel and have better chance to learn over presentation.

Also, we should be able to get some invitations from local charity groups to seek help in java related technology to implement tasks and we help them. What do we get? We get a kick to use latest & greatest technologies which we don’t get to use at work.

Hello AJUG'ers,

It is about that time of year to ask...who and what.  Who would be a great speaker to bring to Atlanta? and/or What topics would you like to see covered at our 3rd Tuesday night meetings?

Also, if there is another "style" of event that you think would be helpful please let the rest of us know. 

Here are some examples of different types of events:
- DevNexus happens during the working week - during the day time: this encourages managers to send their employees and we had many  teams show up at DevNexus 2009.  The feedback has been very strong and we made our revenue goals (break even) so look for this event to be back in 2010.
- NFJS happens on weekends - this encourages the contractors/consultants to come out so they don't miss billable time
- Lunches - we have run many lunch bunch type of events inviting the most senior techies in the Atlanta area, no specific agenda, just hardcore techies discussing best practices, emerging technologies, solutions to political problems.  We found that senior architects, team leads, CTOs, consultants can normally take a 1.5 to 2 hour lunch (if they are in town and not traveling)
- Open space meetings - we held one of these in Summer of 2007 (Barry Hawkins organized) - several of the attendees really enjoyed this type of session but it is very different.  I've been asked to bring this back.  The basic idea of an open space meeting is that it has no agenda, no speaker, no slideshow with LCD projector - it has open areas, poster paper on easels, markers and an overall theme, with a coordinator keeping things flowing.  This is one of the least costly events.
- Movie theater meetings: Microsoft sometimes has day time (1pm to 5pm) meetings at the Regal Hollywood theater off I-85, the "pros" are a really large screen & stadium seating with popcorn, the "cons" are rooms are not shaped for networking, discussions, lunch is a little more challenging, only cost effective when you hit the 200+ attende mark.  We did something like this at Atlanta Station where James Gosling came to speak and we watched Talladega Nights a three years ago.
- Bring your laptop Hands-on events: this is often requested but very challenging to organize.  A couple of years ago we had a "bring your laptop" sub-group but it ran out of gas.  The difficulty is that the instructor must spend many more hours preparing to give a hands-on session vs a lecture/demonstration.  I would guess that the difference is around 500% increase in workload on the instructor (I've been performing both types of sessions over the last 17 years).  So this is challenging, with that said, we do have some people in the group who are "teachers" and would be willing to teach for 1 to 2 hours on JSF, Seam, Spring, Hibernate, Flex, etc. 

What else?  Who else?

Burr