Danny over at the Alt.Net yahoo group asked about alt.net events in London. I thought I would publicize more widely for folks that do not know what is on offer.
I run the London .NET user group. We have covered alt.net topics for the last 5
or so years, and have always had strong alt.net community involvement. For example we ran the XP game for everyone back in 2005. You can find our, much in need of work when I get some time, site here.
I am also involved in running the altnetconf in
London with Ben and Alan with lots of help from Michelle at Conchango. We held an open spaces conference last January and are in the planning stages for a new one in September. We do have a google
group that you can find here. I
don’t spend as much time there as I should
Sebastian Lambla is running an
alt.net beers get together. I think he is looking to add more technical content to his existing social scene. If you are looking for a more regular and explicit
alt.net get together that is worth trying (sorry Seb will try to be in the
country for the next one). Seb usually advertises meetings on the above list and
you can also pick it up via our newsriver. Thanks
to Dave Verwer for that (Dave is a Ruby guys but I believe he is also working on an ASP.NET MVC book with Jeffrey Palermo).
Skills Matter hosts some ‘Open Source .NET Evenings’. London .Net User group will be hosted there a few times this year.
You can find their listing on their website.
So
we are pretty well-covered, in fact there are too mauy events to attend all of
them.
In addition there is a wider agile community to attend such as the Extreme Tuesday Club.
To be honest I am strongly opposed to a user group self-identifying
as alt.net as the point is to reach out to the wider audience. I would say that
a lot of UK groups tend to run alt.net topics including the NxtGenUG and VBUG
guys. I know that because I have spoken at them. If you are interested in alt.net and want to see more events, I would encourage you to offer to speak, for that is the limitation a lot of groups have on alt.net topics – speakers. In feel sure all would welcome you and not turn you away for presenting the alt.net viewpoint. Given how much is already available I would definitely question anyone setting
up an explicit alt.net group in the the London area. Presumably they would be focusing on
alternatives to things happening at existing groups and be running sessions
like ‘Waterfall: Return to Righteousness’ and ‘Procedural Programming: Putting Data Stores Back On Top”.
