I have to say that it was a great event, i had a blast. The atmosphere was great, the food was great (pizza, beer and softdrinks), people were so keen and enthusiastic, and a great meeting place to be.
There was a bit of technical glitch at the start of the event that left many of the atendees stranded on the ground floor for like few minutes, because level 8 is not accessible after 18.00. I actually was in the group that went up and down inside the lift for like 2-3 times, hoping that someone had the swipe card to level 8. The other people on the ground floor got mad, because the only lift that worked was full of us. It was a fun experience. Anyway we started a bit late, Richard gave a couple of news of what has been going on in the development world, and after that we had our meal followed by the presentations.
The first presentation was about Ruby on Rails presented by James Crisp. The presentation was top notch, he delivered it perfectly. It was brief, systematic, and very informative, I liked it alot. I have never tried ruby before nor have i seen one, but after the presentation, it makes want to try it. It looks like a very fun language to learn, definately putting this in my TODO list.
The second presentation was about Rhino Mocks presented by Richard Banks. His presentation was more like giving ideas of what you can do with mocking. He didn't give no background whatsoever about mocking and reasons why the concept is there in TDD or why we should even bother of using it in our testings. In my opinion it would be nice to have a little bit of introduction about mocking, just to give a bit of an idea to those who knows little about mocking like me. Having said that, Richard delivered a great presentation as well. After seeing examples of mocking, I asked my self "dang, why didn't i know about this before?". Mocking is such a great way to isolate your testings. Who cares bout other classes, I just want to test this bit and just mocks the other. Easy, problem solved!! Funny I must say, Richard Banks attitude towards software development reminds me a lot of my Senior Architect Paul Doessel.
Another great thing about the event is that, not only the presentations were very usefull, but the interaction and the atmosphere in the meeting room was very positive. People were collaborating, the presenters were not the only who gave answers, but there were many others that show as much as expertise as the presenters. There was no doubt, lots of people with great minds attended the meeting.
Overall, I think the event is a big success. I definately looking forward to attend next month's meeting, especially they're going to talk about my topic ORM (NHibernate in particular).
Some Resources: