Windows Apps London (formerly Windows Phone User Group) - it was good while it lasted

TLDR: User groups were great. I miss organising and going to them. Maybe I should revisit my plans about this...

I've organized over 100 user group events / meetups. I've also attended and spoken at many others.

The one I had the most to do with was the Windows Phone User Group, which later evolved/became Windows Apps London.

I "ran" this for as long as it existed. It all seems a very long time ago, but as I finish shutting up the virtual shop on the group (Stop paying for things--like domains--that I really don't need and no one looks at) I wanted to take a moment to reflect.

Here are a few of many pieces of similar feedback.

“Great to hear dev thoughts & experiences & see some interesting apps demo’ed”

“Met lots of cool people, and was well worth the trip.”

“Great bunch of people. Lots of enthusiasm and the usual witty banter”

“Meeting was great – fantastic bunch of WP7 developers, designers and officianados!”

“I really enjoyed everyone’s demos; even the games, which is not my domain, provided some interesting info about phone dev.”

“Thanks very much for putting on the event. I found it really useful as well as wonderfully motivating.”

“A great opportunity to meet and socialise with other developers.”

“We had a great time, really informative stuff, we learnt several things both from the talks and from general networking that we’re going to apply to our current and forthcoming projects.”

“Really appreciate the effort put into the event, great to meet everyone”

“It was great being able to network with intellectual individuals”

“It was really awesome. I now have the knowledge to create a better app.”

“It was very informative and enjoyable”

“Fantastic group. Always learn new things and pick up information”

“I like the format where someone knowledgeable us something we didn’t know already”

“One of the most interesting meetings I’ve been to”

“Wealth of knowledge to gain, recommended this to all developers”

“Good format, very useful.”

“Great event! Enjoyed the learning and the interaction with the other participants.”

“Thoroughly enjoyed the evening. Learnt a lot and looking forward to the next one.”

“Lots of fun, excellent talk and great people”

“I think this is a great event necessary for the platform. The atmosphere was good and enabling for sharing ideas.”

“Entertaining and inspiring talk”

“Really enjoyed the format! Great to hear everyone’s thoughts.”

“My mind is pretty blown away right now, very interesting evening with so much to takeaway and think about”

“Probably one of the best groups. Each meeting is useful for learning new things and getting a different point of view”

“Would love to see some more of these events”

“Fantastic presentation. Really helpful to pick up new tips.”

“Interesting conversation was flowing freely around the table. A really good night.”

“Great food, company, conversation and laughs!”

I couldn't let all the history of something that was a big part of my life for a very long time go away completely, so I've created an archive of the website at https://mrlacey.github.io/winappsldn/
Not that I really expect this to be of much interest or use to anyone any more, but it felt too important (to me) to let it go away completely.

Why feed pizza to developers at meetups?

TLDR: If you've ever eaten free food at a meetup (even though you could have afforded a meal), why not help out those who are not as fortunate? "Free" food at developer events is about practicality not being a reason to attend.

Mmmm, Pizza!

It's a cliché that developers like pizza.

Look here are some developers enjoying pizza at a previous event I organised.

This:

Quickly becomes this:

I've even heard developers be described as people who turn pizza (& coffee) into code.

I was recently talking with someone who was organising a meetup but was complaining about the lack of signups.

    "We're providing pizza, why haven't more people signed up?

They actually said that! As if people were coming for the food, and the technical talks, networking, socialising, and community building were all secondary.

Pizza isn't provided at evening meetups as a reason for people to come.

Pizza (or any other food) is provided at meetups, so people don't have to think (worry) about food or for it to be a reason for people not to come.

Pizza (or any other food or drink) isn't provided because of a concern for a lack of money to buy food. Developers are typically very well paid and able to afford to eat. 

[Side Note. I have had people come to events were there were concerns about some people only coming for the food, but I certainly wasn't going to turn people away based on this assumption. People attend for myriad reasons that are more varied and complex than anyone can imagine. You don't know what's going on in everyone's life and even if you asked they may not want or be able to tell. Based on where and when these meetings were happening, there were other ways to get food if that's what they really needed but couldn't afford. Sitting through several hours of technical talks as a way to get a drink and a couple of slices of pizza is unlikely to be a good trade off for anyone not interested in the technology.]

It's about convenience.

Pizza (or other food) is provided so that those attending don't have to think about when or where they will eat and how it fits around event attendance. As event organizers, it's necessary to consider situations like:

• If this person is coming straight from work, will they have a chance to eat beforehand?
• If they have to wait until after to eat is hunger going to distract them during the event?
• If they go somewhere to eat first, could they end up getting distracted and not come?

If a full day event and people leave at lunchtime to find food, there's a high chance that some of them won't come back in the afternoon.

Then there are events deliberately intended to fit around when people are eating. A breakfast or lunch time event would have to be much shorter if it also needed to allow time for attendees to also find food. The potential for missing a meal may also put off some attendees.

There's also a social benefit to sharing a meal (or even just a drink) with other people. With so many meetups calling themselves communities, it's great to be able to develop relationships between people based on more than a shared interest and location. Eating together can be a social lubricant to help start building relationships.

There are a lot of reasons and thought that go into providing food for developers at events and it's not about saving money or appealing to people through food.

Over the years, I've personally spent thousands buying pizza, other food, and drinks to help enable events to run smoothly. Only on a couple of occasions at smaller events did we experiment with asking for contributions. Being well paid at the time, this wasn't an issue. I expect that the majority of people reading this are people working in the software development industry who are well paid and never need to worry about being able to afford to pay for a meal.

But that's not the situation for everyone.

Food insecurity is a massive and growing problem and it's hard to imagine you can make a difference.

However, if you're in a position where you're well paid and you've ever been to an event where food was provided, please consider making a donation to Bankuet!

Bankuet is a social impact company who "make it easier to give to food banks." 

They maximize donations by letting food banks request the items they most need and then buy in bulk so that your donation goes further and waste is minimized.

You can either donate to a food bank in your area or make a general donation to where the need is currently greatest.

Please join me in supporting the excellent work they're doing.

https://www.bankuet.co.uk/givenow

A lesson in algorithms from Guess Who

Earlier this week, I attended the DotNetNotts user group meeting. The second talk of the night was by Simon Painter and was about some of the algorithms used in Machine Learning.

As part of his explanation of decision trees, he used an example based on the game Guess Who?

Here's a screenshot, from YouTube, where the hybrid part of the meetup was relayed.

If you're not familiar with the game, you have to ask yes or no questions to identify one of the characters:

Alex, Alfred, Anita, Anne, Bernard, Bill, Charles, Claire

David, Eric, Frans, George, Herman, Joe, Maria, Max

Paul, Peter, Philip, Richard, Robert, Sam, Susan, Tom

As part of his talk, Simon stated that the best strategy and ideal scenario for any decision tree is to divide all the available options in half (a binary split). However, for this game, there are no characteristics of the characters that make this possible (and hence the challenge of the game). 

Simon did however point out that there is the possibility of using compound questions to have a greater chance of success by more evenly dividing the groups in half each time.
So, instead of limiting questions to the form of "is the person wearing a hat?" you use questions like "does the person present as female OR have facial hair?" or "does the person have blue eyes, a hat, OR red hair?"

Such questions were relevant for the rest of the talk, but it got me wondering.

I looked at all those people and their names and thought I saw something...

About half the people seem to have names containing two vowels...

It turns out that 15 people have names containing two vowels. This is better than any visual differentiator but is still far from perfect.

Ideally, you want to divide the group in half each time.
So, we'd go from 24 > 12 > 6 > 3

When you get to only having three options left, there are myriad ways (questions) to differentiate any of the options in this version of the game, but (without having done the math), it's just as quick to guess each person/option in turn.

What we need to maximize our chance of winning, and probably remove all fun from the game, is a set of questions that will divide the group in half until it gets to a group of 3.

It was only on my way home that I realized that if I'm going to look at the letters in the names of the people there are probably more and better questions that can be used to play a perfect game of Guess Who without using compound questions?

And so, (because I'm "fun") I tried.

It actually turned out to be really easy to find such questions. And by "really easy", I mean it took me less time than it's so far taken me to type this.

Here are the questions:

Question 1: Does the person's name start with a letter that comes before 'H' in the alphabet?

This is a simple split.
If they answer yes, you get the people Alex - George.
If they answer no, you are left with Herman - Tom.

If the first answer was Yes, question 2 is: Does the person's name start with a letter that comes before 'C' in the alphabet?

Another simple split.
If they answer yes, you get the people Alex - Bill.
If they answer no, you are left with Charles - George.

If the answers so far are Yes & Yes, the 3rd question is: Does the person have facial hair?

If the answer to this question is Yes, you're left with Alex, Alfred & Bernard
If the answer to this question is No, you're left with Anita, Anne & Bill.

If the answers so far are Yes & No, the 3rd question is: Does the person's name start with a letter that comes before 'E' in the alphabet?

If the answer to this question is Yes, you're left with Charles, Claire & David
If the answer to this question is No, you're left with Eric, Frans & George.

If the first answer was No, the next question to ask was the hardest to identify. Question 2 is: Does the person's name contain fewer than 3 consonants?

Another simple split.
If they answer yes, you get the people Joe, Maria, Max, Paul, Sam & Tom.
If they answer no, you are left with Herman, Peter, Philip, Richard, Robert & Susan.

If the answers so far are No & Yes, the 3rd question is: Does the person's name start with a letter that comes before 'P' in the alphabet?

If the answer to this question is Yes, you're left with Joe, Maria & Max
If the answer to this question is No, you're left with Paul, Sam & Tom.

If the answers so far are No & No, the 3rd question is: Does the person's name start with a letter that comes before 'R' in the alphabet?

If the answer to this question is Yes, you're left with Herman, Peter & Philip
If the answer to this question is No, you're left with Richard, Robert & Susan.

Yes, this was a questionable use of my time ;)

If you don't think questions about the letters in the person's name are appropriate or allowed, please keep that opinion to yourself.

Anyway, if you want to know more about machine learning the whole event is available online.

Further silly posts about over-analyzing games are unlikely to follow. "Normal" service will resume shortly.

Rethinking "code-adjacent" talks

I've been thinking about the talks people give at technology conferences and user groups.

Not the ones that explain, "Here's a specific technology," or "Here's how to use a certain API," or even "Here's how to create an API."

I'm thinking more about the ones about less specific subjects. Topics like choosing between design patterns, thoughts about ways of working, project organization, communication, prioritization of tasks, who should do what, and the like.

I'm not sure of a universally understood term for these things, but let's use "code-adjacent" to talk about things related to the code (and the way we write it) rather than the code itself.

These topics are never purely objective but are highly influenced by context and subjective opinion.

And now we get to the idea of giving talks on these subjects.

I recently attended a conference with many such talks, and it struck me how popular these types of talks have become and how easy it is for presenters to accidentally treat opinions as fact or their experiences as universally true.

[I waited a few weeks after the conference before posting this to try and avoid direct criticism of individuals.]

I suspect many people listening to these talks didn't know or notice where the speaker was doing this.

At the conference where I started thinking about this, I heard:

• Questionable opinions being passed off as absolute facts.
• "Facts" that were demonstrably false.
• Broad dismissal of topics that the presenter acknowledged they didn't enjoy or understand in detail.
• Things that are true in the speaker's limited and highly specialized experience being taught as always true in all circumstances.
• A detailed discussion of scenarios that may have been relevant 10 years ago but which modern tooling, techniques, and best practices make redundant. 

 I wonder how many attendees (especially less experienced ones--there were many students in attendance) left, not realizing there was a lack of nuance expressed in what they were told.

These talks are often also shorter, so have less time for questions or clarification. The talk ended when it got to the end of the time allocated, and then everyone filtered off to other rooms for subsequent talks.

As an attendee, I want the best, most up-to-date, fact-checked information from experts.  Or, I want people to share their opinions and experiences while clearly justifying and explaining these.

As a (sometimes) organizer, I want speakers who have thought out, planned, checked, and verified what they will say. I don't want speakers who will do the bad practices mentioned above. I want the best for the attendees. I don't want them to say, "That was a bad speaker," because that quickly becomes, "That event doesn't get good speakers," or "I was given bad advice or incorrect information at that event--and so won't go back." 

As a speaker, I know it's all about the audience and giving them the best information in ways that will help them remember and be able to apply the knowledge I'm sharing. I get the impression from some speakers that they think they are the experts and must be right as they are the ones talking from the front, and so no one else matters. (Basically, they make it about themselves rather than the audience.)

What if these talks were done differently?

What if talks of this nature had (at least?) two different speakers. Ideally, with very different experiences and opinions.
Maybe they do the talk together.
Maybe they do shorter talks back to back.
Maybe one gives a talk, and the other has time at the end for rebuttal or clarification or to give counterpoints or counterexamples.
Or, maybe you can't get more than one expert on a subject, so you get a small group of senior, experienced, and broadly knowledgeable people to lead questions and clarifications at the end.

Will this be more work? Possibly.

But wouldn't that give a much better experience to attendees?

But what if the presenter is worried about being contradicted or having their errors pointed out?

Well, do you want speakers who have that attitude?

Do you want the audience to be given bad or incorrect advice?

As a (sometimes) speaker and presenter, I want to know if the information I'm giving is incorrect, outdated, easily misunderstood, or otherwise wrong. I want to know for myself, and I want to know for the people who will hear what I say.

I'm currently planning and preparing a talk on the importance and value of documentation and testing for software developers. It's potentially challenging (to hear) and will contain much that is highly subjective, but I think it's very important, and I have valuable advice to share on the subject.

I'm not yet at the point where I'll welcome criticism and objections to what I have to say, but I know that there are people with different opinions, and I want to know and acknowledge these.

A talk that's just "These are my thoughts on this subject." is far less valuable than "Based on these experiences, I have these thoughts about this subject, and this is why it could be useful for you to know."

Thoughts?

Give a Great First Technical Talk: Share your experiences at user groups and meetups - Available now!

 

My third book is now available on Kindle. It's called: Give a Great First Technical Talk: Share your experiences at user groups and meetups

User groups and meetups are perfect places to gain public speaking experience. They also provide a great way to build professional and personal networks by sharing what you’ve been working on.

This book provides a simple way to give a short talk based on three questions. It’s been used successfully over many years, for many topics, by hundreds of people.

This short guide shows how to use these questions and explains why it works.

For group organizers, the outlined talk structure provides a simple and practical way to build community while encouraging and supporting new speakers.

It's a very short book (about 7000 words) and should take you less than an hour to read.

It's 24 chapters plus an appendix.

Yes, very short chapters. To give you a sample, here are the first two.

Give a great first technical talk - Table of Contents

Want to know more about the book I'm writing about helping people give their first technical talk at a user group or meetup?

Here's the Table of Contents.

Hopefully, it gives you a good idea of what to expect 

• Why give a technical talk?
• You are not going to give a talk like you’ve seen many times before
• You only need to answer 3 simple questions
• Question 1. What did you make (or do)?
• Question 2. Why did you do (or make) it?
• Question 3. What did you learn from the experience?
• Shorter talks are better
• Anyone can give a talk
• Your experiences (whatever they are) qualify you to speak
• You speak for the audience’s benefit
• You’ll get a lot out of speaking too
• You already know everything you need to do this
• You are telling a story
• You are not the hero of this story
• You don’t need to say everything
• You want questions and discussion--and there will be some
• You are not there to sell anything
• You have nothing to fear. You are among friends
• Your nerves are a good thing
• You only need to do very minimal preparation
• Do not start with PowerPoint (or Keynote)
• Your first technical talk is just the start
• Show and tell me how you get on
• Help others give great technical talks too
• Appendix 1. – Examples of talks given
• Appendix 2. – Advice for meetup organizers
• Appendix 3. – Advice for developer evangelists and marketers

Yes, there are a lot of chapters, but they're all very short.

More details to follow.....

What I learned from 14 years of organizing user groups and meetups

I'm unsure about my future involvement with organizing meetups and user groups.

However, I do know that over those years, I've learned a bunch of things that might be useful to other people who organize, attend, and/or speak at them.

There are 4 key components to organizing a meetup/user group

1. Finding a venue
2. Organizing speakers
3. Telling people about upcoming meetings and persuading them to attend
4. Running the actual event.

I can't help you with the first component but can do something for the others.

I think the key to creating a strong community where people want to attend regularly is to get attendees to talk about what they've worked on.

Over the years, the most requested subject for talks has been to hear from others about what they've made and what they learned in the process.
Introductions to technologies and basic demos have their place but seeing actual projects and hearing about overcoming the challenges of creating them can be much more interesting and informative. They also have the possibility of providing unique information. Such talks aren't the things you can hear anywhere else and are unlikely to be something you can find a video of online.

Having these talks has a few potential benefits:

• It provides more unique speakers.
• It provides unique content.
• It allows an opportunity to hear from peers.

That all sounds good, but how do you find people to share such experiences?

Well, as part of an event, as an organizer, I'm going to try and talk to as many attendees as possible. Not only is making people feel welcome part of my role as host, finding people with things in common and connecting them with others is much more likely to make them come again. It also gives me a chance to ask people what they've been working on. Then, if they've been doing something I think might be of interest to the group, I ask them if they'd be up for giving a short talk about it at a future meeting.

This simple behavior helps build connection amongst attendees which increases the likelihood that they'll come again, and it helps find interesting new speakers.

It's simple, and it works.

But giving a talk can be intimidating and a lot of preparation. So I don't ask people to do that. I ask them to spend five minutes answering three simple questions.
It takes minimal preparation, is easy to do, and produces great results.

It's been so successful that it's enabled over 100 people to give such talks.

This is the unique insight that I discovered, and I think is valuable to other group organizers.

So, I've written a short book about it.

It's going to be called: 

Give a Great First Technical Talk - Share your experiences at user groups and meetups

More details to follow soon.

Feb 25th is UnoPlatform day (in London & Birmingham)

Are you in London or Birmingham (in the UK)?
Want to learn more about the Uno platform?

You're in luck, as I'm giving introductory talks:

In London, on the morning of Feb 25, at 9AM

In Birmingham, on the evening of Feb 25, at 6PM


More details and registration can be found by following the above links.

If you're in (or near) London but can't attend at this time (maybe you have work or something like that) stay tuned for details of an evening event coming soon...

Can I put the best parts of a user group/meetup in a podcast?

tldr: I'm going to start a new podcast that will just be developers talking about what they've developed. If you want to be on it get in touch.

----

I organized and ran user groups for the best part of ten years. Firstly, I took over DevEvening, and then I started the Windows Phone User Group which eventually became Windows Apps London.

Of these groups, one of the things I was most proud of was the ability to get regular attendees to talk about what they were working on or had built. Many group organizers will tell you that this can be very hard to do.
Having people talk about their actual experiences was also one of the most requested things whenever I asked attendees about what they wanted at future meetings.

My family circumstances changed a couple of years ago and we now live in a remote area that makes hosting in-person user groups/meetups difficult. However, recently, I've been thinking about how I can take some of the best parts of the groups I used to run and do something that would work regardless of location.

So, I'm going to try this:
I want to take the short, simple demos that were so popular at in-person events and create audio versions of them and package them like a podcast.

Yes, a visual format might be better for some things but I'll start with just audio and maybe extend to video in the future based on feedback.

It will be simple.
For many people, standing up and giving a talk can be daunting. I made it simple by asking the speaker to answer three questions:

1. What have you built?
2. Why did you build it?
3. What did you learn in the process?

I'm hoping this structure will work for a podcast/audio version too, as it's simple but provides opportunities to develop in different ways as appropriate.
As with the short demos people used to give, it will be between 5 and 15 minutes long. Anyone can talk about what they've made for 5 minutes and will easily find they can say much more.

Talking for 5-15 minutes about something you are an expert in is easy. (If it's software that you developed, I consider you an expert in it.)
I'm also hoping this will avoid people being put off by not requiring a lot of preparation or being worried about "filling an hour".

If you've developed something, however big or small, other developers want to hear about it.

Expect lots of links in the show notes.

For now, I'd like to just focus it to Windows. Hey, it's what I know a bit about and having a level of targeting/focus will, hopefully, help with finding an audience and setting appropriate expectations.

If you've built something for Windows (however you define that), be it an app, a tool, a library, a service, or something else and would like an opportunity to tell people about it, then I'd love to have you on my new podcast.

Diversity in tech is about more than gender

It's about a lot of things.
In the context of diversity within tech communities, here are two that I'm not hearing other people talk about: technology discrimination and alcohol.

Do you like my new T-shirts?

It's not about the technology used but what's done with it that counts

If you want to be part of a group of people that are just like you: who have similar experiences, interests, areas of technical focus, and goals, that's okay.
However, I think everyone benefits when a community is open and inviting to people with different backgrounds, interests, skills, and experiences. When there's variety in the room it provides the opportunity for us all to learn new things.

We all benefit when we are exposed to others who are different to us. It makes us better developers and better people.

If you want a community to grow. If you want new people to learn and adopt a technology so it becomes successful that requires that you help new people and make them feel welcome.

You mustn't make fun of people because of the programming language they currently use.
They may have had no say in this. They may be very successful with it and have created many popular, loved, and financially rewarding pieces of software with it. The programming language used to write a piece of software rarely plays a large part in the success or failure of that software. Don't pick on people because they use something that's older than what you use or that you have stopped using.

Do not make fun of people because of the platforms they build tech on.
Again, developers rarely have a say about the platforms they use, particularly in corporate environments. If developers only worked on the latest platforms or used the latest frameworks then the majority of software in the world wouldn't be being maintained or updated. If we want to keep society moving we can't abandon all old software and we can't constantly re-write everything that's in use.

I've seen the numbers. Most developers don't use the latest and greatest technologies or the hottest new language.
If you do, then congratulations. How about sharing your knowledge with others who haven't had that opportunity yet? Help them learn new things. Even if that means you have to help with "older" technologies.

Alcohol and a drinking culture

Not everyone wants to or can drink alcohol. Some people are unable to be around alcohol.
Even if someone who doesn't drink alcohol is in a place where alcohol is served they don't want to be made to feel different or left out.

As a user group organizer, I found people were really positive when we had more than just a small selection of beers to drink. More people were even more positive when I extended the range of soft drinks that were provided. When organizing an evening user group event and providing drinks, I now do one third as a mixture of alcoholic drinks, one third as soft drinks, and one third as fruit juices. Fruit juices were amazingly popular when we first started having them.

When holding evening events in offices or meeting rooms I'd often propose going to a bar afterward. This choice of location was chosen because it was easy and pretty much the only location available. Plus, "it was just what you do." I have the cultural experience where going to a pub to socialize is the norm. However, only a small percentage of people who came to the initial meeting would also come to the pub afterward. There are many reasons for this but I believe the location was one of them. Next time I run an evening event where we can't stay in the meeting venue indefinitely, I'll look harder for alternate locations where we can continue discussions afterward.

I don't drink alcohol. I choose not to based on past experiences and my levels of self-control. Other people don't drink alcohol for other personal or religious reasons.
I'm happy to be in places where alcohol is served and drunk. There are people who are not. Again, this could be for personal, religious, or other reasons. If you host an event involving alcohol it will automatically keep some people away. If an event is about technology, why use something unrelated (alcohol) to keep a large number of potential attendees away.

I've been to a number of events where the presence of alcohol made me (as a non-drinker of alcohol) seem less welcome.

• I was at a conference party with multiple bars serving alcohol. There was only one serving soft drinks. I discovered this as I went round all the bars asking for soft drinks and it was only the last one I came to that had anything. The options were limited and hidden at the back while multiple alcoholic beverages were on display on the counter. The message I took from the conference was that my needs as an attendee were not important.
• I was invited to an event where special, custom, themed, cocktails were being served. This was a tech event and the cocktails were free. I asked what non-alcoholic drinks they had but these were very limited and I had to pay (an unusually large amount) for a coke. The message I took from this was that this was an event for people who drank alcohol. Even though I'd been invited they didn't value me as much as other attendees.
• I once attended a tech event in a bar and the only soft drink they had was coke. I was looked at like there was something wrong with me when I asked if they had any other non-alcoholic drinks. Just drinking cola all night can be unpleasant. Ensure there is more than one non-alcoholic option and don't make people feel uncomfortable if they don't want alcohol.
• I've known tech events where the social aspect was a bar-crawl. Events that encourage lots of drinking (even if that's just implied by visiting lots of different places that serve alcohol) discourage some from attending. 
• I've been at invite-only tech events where the social aspect of the event was beer and spirit tasting. Again, this is actively excluding people from something that was supposed to be tech related.
• I've been to a tech event held in a brewery. A great way to exclude people who can't visit such locations.

I know it's hard to find locations for events. I know it's the norm to do these kinds of events. I know I may seem hypocritical for saying this as I've held events in pubs and bars.
However, if you reward or recognize people in your community with alcohol or events involving alcohol then you make people who don't drink alcohol or actively avoid it less welcome in your community.

If you're a leader or organizer and you want to grow your community (both in numbers and diversity) I hope you'll think about this.

Personally, I'd love to organize and attend more meetups in coffee shops and learn from people who use technologies I don't.

99 developer events

Last month I organised my 99th developer event.
(I've attended and spoken at many more but that was the 99th I'd been primarily, if not solely, responsible for organising.)

These have been as part of DevEvening and then as the 'Window Phone User Group' which was later renamed 'Windows Apps London'. (27 for the first and then 72 for the latter.)

These have mostly been presentation based events on a mid-week evening but have also included:

• one-day barcamps and mini conferences
• all-day hackathons
• workshops
• coding competitions
• collaborative coding challenges
• show-and-tell sessions
• social events

Through these events, I've met some amazing people and been granted some great opportunities (both in terms of work and personally.)

It's not been just about me . Through these events:

• friendships have been made
• businesses have been formed
• people have found work (and whole new careers)
• many people have learnt a great deal
• many apps/products/services/tools have been created and improved
• attendees have been motivated
• lessons have been shared and learned
• people have been encouraged to share what they've learned
• some of the people who spoke at these meetings for the first time have gone on to become international conference speakers
• at least five other groups have been started prompted by attendance at one or more meetings
• lots of people got free phones and tablets
• I've given away a lot of software, conference passes, t-shirts, badges, stickers, books, pens, cups, and other assorted SWAG (huge thanks to all who donated these.)
• a lot of burgers and pizza have been eaten. (For events held in pubs this usually meant people buying burgers. For other events this meant ordering pizza--and I'm now very good at ordering large quantities of pizza!)
• and, of course, much drink has been drunk. (Possibly surprisingly more soft drinks than alcohol and I've also learnt that people really appreciate a variety of drink options.)

It's been an incredible time. 

I started organising these meetings because I wanted to go to them. To meet people with similar interests and learn from their experiences. I've certainly done this and more, even though I'd often miss some of the talks I was keen to hear as I was busy doing organisation related things.

The highlight of eight years of organising events is hearing from people who come to and look forward to these events because they would have had little option to socialise otherwise or at least to meet with other people who share their interests.

It can be tempting to joke about or dismiss a group of geeks or nerds meeting together to talk about technical subjects. (There are even lots of technologies and acronyms discussed that I don't know anything about but others care about passionately--and that's ok.)

While the freebies and trips have been great, the biggest highlight for me and which makes all the organisational effort worth it is one story which almost had me in tears.

Someone who had been coming to meetings on and off for a few years stopped coming for a while. He turned up at one meeting a few months later and after the meeting spoke to me. He said that he was sorry he hadn't been there for a few months. His father had died, his wife had left him and taken their three kids, he'd had to find a new place to live, and get a new job. That night was the first time he'd been out in three months and he was really appreciative of the opportunity to see some friendly faces and spend a few hours doing something for him and enjoy focusing on something pleasant that he like doing. I felt it an honour to be able to help create something and a place that would allow him to feel like that.

In a world where people are increasingly being isolated, it's important to meet with other people with similar interests. Even if it is just to talk about "techy geeky stuff".

What comes next? (Some people have told me that I have to get to 100 events, but 99 seems like just as good a number.)

Right now I honestly don't know what'll be next. Personal circumstances mean it's highly unlikely that I'll be doing any more evening events in the next few months.

Maybe something online - but I've always really valued the difference people meeting in person brings to an event. (see above)

Maybe something during the day....

To all who've attended or otherwise been a part of those 99 events, Thank you. I hope you enjoyed and valued them as much as I did.

The user group I organise now has a code of conduct

(Well actually I added it last week.)

Much has been said over the last year or so about codes of conduct (CoC) at conferences and hackathons. I've not heard anyone else talk about them with regard to meetups/user groups but, as a group organiser, they've been on my mind for a long time. Should we have one? Shouldn't we? Do we really need one? What if we do? What if we don't?
I see user group events as being no different to mini-conferences so that seems like a good reason to have this discussion.

As the title suggests we do now have one and I've written about why on the group's website but I thought it might be worth sharing here too.

Ultimately it came down to two reasons:
1. The people who aren't already coming
2. Potential speakers.

The people who aren't already coming.
We haven't had any issues with the people who are coming. (I know that some people assume that CoCs only get created in response to issues. We haven't had any and hope we don't.) This is about people who aren't coming and don't know what to expect if they do.
As a group we're happy for anyone to attend who is interested in the subject (of creating apps). What matters is your interest in the subject. What doesn't matter is where you're from, what you look like or how you identify yourself. In fact having people attend who have a broad range of ideas, experiences and backgrounds is a great thing as those factors can bring new perspectives. It's the opportunity to meet, hear from and exchange experiences and ideas that meeting in person provides. If we were all the same it would be very boring. The CoC just says that we acknowledge differences as a good thing and it's not acceptable to discriminate or act inappropriately in reference to those differences. We know it can be intimidating to go somewhere for the first time when you know you may be different from the other people there. We just want to say that we know that can be the case and we want you to feel welcome if you do come.

Potential speakers.
Hearing speakers, from other events, start to say that they won't speak at events that don't have a CoC could also have been potentially limiting. They don't want to be involved with communities that aren't addressing this potential issue.


If you're interested you can see it at http://windowsapps.london/conduct/

If you've got an opinion on this I'd love to hear it.

WinApps London (& WPUG) 2014 in review

I'm not great at keeping stats about the user group I organise but I just had an email from Eventbrite with some summary stats and after a quick check on them I thought they would be good to share.

In 2014 we had 12 meetings with an average attendance of almost 60 people.
Even more encouraging is that there was a general trend towards an increase in numbers at each meeting.
As it feels that, generally, there's been less interest in building apps for Windows and Windows Phone in the last few months, that we've been growing in numbers during this period is something that I'm very encouraged about.

If you want to know more about our past meetings you'll find them at http://windowsapps.london/meetings/. You'll also see details of what's coming in the next few months on meetup.com.

At the end of a bad conference session...

I've been thinking about feedback to speakers at the end of a session.
I'm currently at NDC London and at the end of each session they use a traffic light system to provide feedback. If you liked a session you put a green card in. If you didn't like it or thought it was bad you put in a red card and if you are somewhere in the middle you put in a yellow card.

Here's the thing though. With multiple sessions on at the same time, what are you saying by staying to the end and then putting in a red card?
Yes, it's good to provide feedback to the speaker and organiser if you didn't think the session was very good.
But why would you stay to the end of a session you are not enjoying or don't think is very good? Vote with your feet. If you're not enjoying something or benefitting from listening then go to another session.
If you stay to the end and leave a bad review aren't you saying something about yourself in addition to what you're saying about the session? What does it mean to say "I didn't find this useful or enjoyable, but chose to stay and listen to it all"?

Additionally, providing feedback via a voting system is good. But providing more detail is better! Whether your feedback is positive or negative please share it with the speaker and organiser. Events are organised and speakers speak for the benefit of the people who attend and listen not for the ego of the speaker. By providing constructive feedback you can help the speakers do a better job in future and allow organizers to ensure that session abstracts match what is wanted and delivered and that it benefits the audience and matches their expectations.

100 developer events that wouldn't have been the same without me!

Tomorrow I'll be speaking about Mobile app security at NDC London. Not only will this be the biggest developer event I've been involved with it'll also be the 100th.

Yes, I've spoken at or organised 100 developer events.

There are also many dozens that I've been to as an attendee, I just haven't kept track of all of them.

Here's how it breaks down:

• Organised and hosted DevEvening 27 times
• Organised and hosted WPUG/WinAppsLDN 48 times 
• Spoke at or hosted events organised by other people 25 times, in: Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bradford, Bristol (twice), Dundee (Twice), Edinburgh, Glasgow, Gloucester, London (five times), Newcastle, Norwich, Reading (twice), Southampton, Taunton, Telford and Woking (twice).

With an approximate average audience of 50 people that's an awful lot of developers I've helped to build better software. Most of which has been related to creating apps for Windows and Windows Phone.
I want to build great apps and that's made possible by learning from and with others who are also building apps. That the only way opportunities for developers to meet and learn from each other is if I put the events on is by-the-by. It's not just all about me though. I know the ecosystem benefits when more people build better apps and that's what we all want--as it benefits everyone, not just me.

I'm not very good at self-promotion. That's partly the reason for this post. It was more that I just wanted to mark this milestone .
I'm quite happy not shouting about all I do. I put the time, effort and energy into promoting the events to people who may be interested in coming. If you ever find me talking more about how great I am for putting on events (or running a user group) rather than taking the time to actually put on events, please call me on it.

At a time when it seems community events stopping and organisers stepping down is becoming a regular occurrence I can only say that I haven't got any plans of stopping soon. Getting to 200 events is more than I'm thinking about at the moment. For now I'm just focusing on all the exciting things planned and being planned for 2015.

;)

Organising community events is a lot of work

This may turn into a rant. I won't be offended if you don't read it ;)


I've been organising (and helping organise) "community" events for about 6 years.
By "community" events I mean user groups or meet ups of/for developers who want to learn from and with each other. Most of these meetings have been related to "mobile" and the majority have focused on Windows Phone.

I've also spoken at a number of groups organised by other people.

I am frequently asked about what it takes to organise such a group and how to get started. I've been meaning to blog about this for some time. Here are some thoughts.

Sad fact #1 - It takes a lot more work than it may appear.

There are 4 basic tasks that a group organiser must do:

1. Find & book a venue
2. Get speakers/presenters
3. Promote the event to attendees
4. Make sure everything runs smoothly on the night

Find & book a venue
Depending on location and the size of the group this can be particularly complicated. Technical requirements (at the very least probably projector and Wi-Fi) and the desire for somewhere cheap, or even better free, mean that such locations are often in popular demand by other people too.

Get speakers/presenters

Most people when they start a group are also prepared to speak but this isn't a permanent solution to finding speakers.

I can talk for hours but think people would get bored and stop coming if it was me speaking each month. In fact, I consider it a failure when I have to speak because I couldn't find anyone else to do so.

It's really important to persuade attendees to speak up and share their knowledge and experience. This is often easier than getting an external speaker. Persuading people to come and travel to speak at a small group can be tricky based on the time and effort they put in to coming for probably, very little in return.

Logistically managing people who are interested in speaking, when you are able to meet and when the venue is available can be tricky. With one past speaker who was really keen to come at the first available opportunity, it still took over 2 years before we found a date which was suitable for all. But hey, I said none of this is easy.

Promote the event to attendees

Most people aren't looking for events to attend. Those that are will go to places like meetup.com (so it's important to be discoverable there) but they are only a very small number.

In terms of promoting events it typically means finding people who may be interested to attend and persuading them on why they should come. This typically comes down to the speakers and the subject(s) they are going to talk about. - People come for the speaker but come regularly because of other attendees (the community). 

This takes lots of time and effort.

Of course, once you get someone to attend you need to get and keep their contact details so you can tell them about future events. It's much more successful to actively contact people and tell them about similar future events. Just hoping they'll see a tweet about it or happen to remember to check a website for possible events is not a good tactic for getting a full house.

Make sure everything runs smoothly on the night

Unfortunately, for an organiser the actual event is not a simple affair. It's mostly non-stop. Is everything ready for when people arrive? Are any and all issues and questions handled correctly during the evening? Does everyone get away all right and everything get packed up ok?

There are lots of things to be done in the days before, and after an event.

From confirmation of details to ordering catering, to sending out post event follow up emails. A lot more happens than just turning up at the advertised start time on the night.

If an event doesn't go well, why would people come back next month?

Sad fact #2 - Nothing comes from most of the people who offer to help. They either don't mean it, don't realise it will actually take effort, or don't have anything useful to offer.

At least this is my experience. If I don't do it it doesn't get done and then there is no event.

The cost of organising, attending, hosting and travelling to events has cost me £££££s.
In return it has helped me get a couple of interviews. While getting me in the door it's my knowledge of the subject (in a large part demonstrated by and gained from answering questions on Stack Overflow) that has got me jobs though.
At best the return on my investment on events breaks even.

While spending lots of time organising events I haven't been doing work that demonstrates my skills and abilities.

I've recently missed out on a highly financially rewarding opportunity due to my lack of ability to show what I have done and can do.

Organising lots of user group events has lead me to be good at organising such events. The result hasn't necessarily been that I can say I'm good at what the events are about.

Being able to say "I've helped build apps with a collective download total over 50 MILLION" is useless if you can't say what the apps are. Unfortunately most of my contracts stop me talking about the apps I'm helping ship. (Some don't but I easily muddle the ones I can and can't talk about - It's safer for me to not mention any of them.) Ironically people come to me because they want the best, but don't want me to talk about it because they feel it may reflect badly if they, as a large brand name company, were putting so much responsibility for their app(s) on an individual outsider.

Remembering the past advice I've received of:

"you get the work you do"

This shouldn't have been such a shock to me.

I spend my time trying to help other people build better apps - so I don't have time to build apps myself.
I spend my time building apps I can't talk about - so I don't have any apps to demonstrate what I do.

It's a vicious cycle.
Maybe as a community event organiser I need to find a way to balance helping others and managing my future job prospects and demonstrating my abilities beyond community events. I'm open to suggestions on ways other people have done this or how you think I could.


Sad fact #3 - most groups don't last more than a handful of meetings.

I organised 27 DevEvenings and my 42nd WPUG meeting is next week. I think that's pretty good going.

Here's the kicker though. Most potential employers aren't interested in the ability to organise meet ups.

Fortunately I'm not looking for work from most employers at the moment. But I do still need to pay the bills.

I'm not thinking of packing it all in just yet though. Despite everything I do still enjoy organising events.



Yes, this has all been a bit selfish.
Through organising and speaking at events I have done a bunch of things for other people:

• Helped people learn about new technologies 
• Helped people learn what makes a better app
• Helped people build better apps
• Helped people get better exposure for their apps
• Helped people make friends, business contacts and jobs
• Helped people get free phones

This is what's important to remember. I'm doing this to help other people build better apps.

Talking "community" on Channel 9

On Monday* I was interviewed for App Hack Monday as part of a conversation about "Guide to making the most of local app communities".

You can watch it at http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Appy-Mondays/App-Hack-Monday-5-Guide-to-making-the-most-of-local-app-communities

Here's one comment to give you an idea of what's covered:

"This short interview actually tells a lot about ICT events, and how they have been changed over the years.Very good and entertaining yet informative, thanks, I am going to participate"

* It was actually recorded last week ;)

Telford: done! Next it's Bristol.

Last month I talked about Windows Phone 8 development at the university in Telford. Next week it's the UWE in Bristol.

The feedback from Telford was very positive.
There were 3 questions on the feedback form and each was marked on a scale of 1 to 10.

The talk was well delivered and I could understand the concepts discussed: 9.1 / 10
I got something out of this that I could use in a project, either in work or as a hobby project: 8.5 / 10
I would attend one of your talks again: 8.9 / 10


I'm particularly proud of those results considering only 1 person in the room with a Windows Phone 8 device and no one there had any previous experience developing for Windows Phone.


If you're in the Bristol area next Tuesday and are interested in hearing about Windows Phone 8 development,why not come along. More details, registration, etc.

Talking WP8 in Telford

On Wednesday I'll be speaking at ShropshireDevNet. If you're in the Telford area why not pop along and say hello.

This will be the same as (or very similar to) the talk I gave in Southampton last week.

Here's what some of the people who came last week said:

"Really great presentation. Good tempo. Dry humour worked well. Well executed and useful examples. Inspired."

"Excellent. So much to learn and explore!"

"Excellent look at the features available for windows 8 phone."

"Great session. Learnt a lot of useful nuggets of information. I realy want to push ahead with some app ideas now."

"Good speaker. Whistlestop tour but useful. Speaker mentioned issues and problems as well as good features. "

"A lot covered, in short time. The constant questioning and boucing around actually worked really well"

"Great session, fast paced and good atmosphere"

"very fast presentation but liked the examples"

XNAUK + WPUG = #DevChatUK (July 21st)

+

Come join both XNA-UK and WPUG for a mad bash twitter evening in a DevChat style Mashup on:

Thursday 21^st July
7 – 9 PM UK time
#DevChatUK

We’re going to hijack the twitter hashtag #DevChatUK and do a wide scale Q&A / Chat session on all things Phone, XNA, Silverlight and Mobile development in general (including multi-platform questions)

So come join in, publicise your current projects, lets us know who you are or just come and get info on what all this noise is about with online help from the experts in the field.

We recommend using a web service like http://tweetchat.com/ and enter the HashTag #DevChatUK to join in the fun.