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Norfolk Developers December 2014 News Letter

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The Joy of Generators & Philosophers, Knowledge and Children's TV Programmes
Wow! What a fantastically busy year. We’ve just been adding it all up and in 2014 we ran 11 regular evening meetups, 9 full or half day workshops, 4 special events, 3 lunches and 1 conference. That’s 28 events! We’ve also grown organically to over 500 members!

We decided not to run an event in December as there’s so much else going on and it’s difficult to get people to attend.  Plus, Dom and Ben left Norwich temporarily to go to London and be Techstars with Rainbird.

Don’t worry though, Norfolk Developers will be back with a full programme starting in January.

January


The regular evening event sees Phil Trelford, who spoke at the very first Norfolk Developers event, returning to Norwich for the third time to speak about functional programming in F#, with his presentation ‘Write your own compiler in 24 hours’. This is followed the next day by a full day F# workshop featuring ‘Ham or Spam’ and ‘Hands On FParsec’. More detail are on the website. The workshop will cost £20.00 per person.

The first Norwich Tech Lunch of 2015, the lunch we run every month together with SyncNorwich, will be on Wednesday 21st of January at 12.30pm at All Bar One in Norwich. You can RSVP here. These lunches are great! They’re very informal and lots of fun. In November the Norwich Tech Lunch fell on the same day as the Norfolk Software Leaders lunch, so we all grouped together. More than 20 people attended.

On Thursday 22nd of January we have our first special, ‘Learn Wordpress in a Day’. The workshop is being given by London company WP Courses. This course teaches you all the basics of building, running and marketing websites using WordPress, the world’s leading website solution. In one day, you will build your own stunning website, which will be hosted free for one year. The course runs from 9.30am to 5pm and is limited to 12 places. The cost of the course is £150 and you can RSVP here.

February


February is packed also! On Wednesday the 4th we have our regular evening meeting where local games company, Freekstorm will be speaking alongside a yet to be confirmed speaker on SQL from Redgate in Cambridge. You can RSVP here.

The February Norwich Tech Lunch is on Wednesday 18th of February. You can RSVP here.

Then we’re into a series of conference events. On Thursday 26th February, the evening before the conference, we have a very special pre-conference event with Kevlin Henney speaking about The Rule of Three and Allan Kelly telling us that Every Business is a Software Business. The event a 5pm for 5.30pm start. Each speaker has 30 minutes and there will be free beer! Everyone is welcome, whether attending the conference or not and it’s free. You can RSVP here.

Following on from the pre-conference special is the pre-conference dinner at All Bar One from 7.30pm. Everyone is welcome! We’ve got a fixed price (£11) menu this time and you pay and make your choices when you RSVP. You will then need to pay for your own drinks after the meal. You can RSVP here, places are limited to 40.

Then of Friday 27th of February it’s the Norfolk Developer’s Conference (NorDevCon). 2015 sees the return of the tech, Agile and workshop tracks and the addition of the business track and three graphic design sessions. The keynotes are given by Jon Skeet, returning after a superb performance last year and by Rupert and Harry of Neontribe, who will be closing the conference. Other highlights include 90 minutes on C# 6 from Jon Skeet, the first ever NorDevCon session from Norwich Winter conference regular Letitia Fearon, and Ali Clabburn of local company Liftshare speaking about how to get the best from developers when you haven’t got a clue. AWS will be returning to Norwich for a third time to give a 90 minute hands on workshop on continuous integration. With 29 sessions over 5 tracks, there’s something for everyone. Check out the agenda here.

March


We’ll be skipping the first Wednesday in March as it’s so close to the conference. The March Norwich Tech Lunch is on Wednesday 18th. You can RSVP here.

We’re hoping to organise an evening meeting towards the end of the month.

April


In late April we’re hoping to have a visit from one of the original creators of the Agile manifesto to do a couple of sessions on Agile at the evening session. Watch this space.

The Norwich Tech Lunch is on Wednesday 15th of April. You can RSVP here.

On Thursday 16th of April, in conjunction with the Norwich Ruby Users Group (NRUG), we’ll be doing a full day hands on workshop on Ruby on Rails from scratch. The cost is £30 and includes lunch. You can RSVP here.


The Norfolk Developers Team would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year and we look forward to seeing you all in 2015.



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