For the March MeetUp we’re back at Fudge cafe restaurant, and a big thanks for Rosie and the staff for having us.

For all the details,

>> head over to the MeetUp site <<

and if you haven't joined the 223 other members, it only takes a minute!

Food and drink will be available to buy on the evening.
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So onto our speaker!

I’m delighted that we have the pleasure of the legendary Stephen Lewis
who you can follow on twitter here >> click!

Stephen Lewis, an experienced EE developer, makes the business case for ExpressionEngine, describing why it’s an excellent choice for both web developers and their clients.

ExpressionEngine: Taking Care of Business
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ExpressionEngine is a hugely popular content-management system, used to power an incredible variety of sites; everything from small personal blogs, right up to Barack Obama’s campaign website (http://change.gov/)…, and the BBC’s Top Gear website (http://topgear.com/)….

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PROFILE
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Since founding Experience Internet in 2005, Stephen has been busy building award-winning ExpressionEngine websites, and a reputation as one of the world’s best EE developers.

A member of the ExpressionEngine Professionals Network, Stephen has developed over a dozen popular open source EE add-ons.

In 2009, he was nominated in three separate categories in the Devot:ee Awards (as voted for by his EE peers), and was a runner-up in the Developer of the Year category.

Stephen recently released BucketList, his first commercial ExpressionEngine add-on, which seamlessly integrates ExpressionEngine with Amazon S3.

Stephen tweets as @monooso, and blogs about business and EE (sometimes simultaneously) here.

We’ll have the normal great chat and networking before and after Stephen’s talk.

We look forward to seeing you there

The format of the next meetup will different to the first as there are not going to be any speakers this time around.  Instead we are hoping to make it a discussion evening, with everyone participating. This should hopefully be  a good way for all the attendees to learn more about each other.

To make the discussions relevant to the majority of developers what we hope to do over the next couple of weeks is gather suggested topics from yourselves, and then ask attendees to vote on the list of topics.  The most popular topics will then be discussed at the meetup.

To get the ball rolling there is a list of topics below.  This list has been created based upon comments from previous blog posts, so thanks to the community for those ideas.

1. Document-oriented Databases (e.g. MongoDB and CouchDB)
2. Testing Techniques and Tooling
3. Continuous Integration
4. The Agile Manifesto
5. The principles of SOLID
6. Outside-in Development

Clearly there are many, many more topics that could be suggested, so please let us know what is relevant to yourselves.  Whether it’s front-end web development techniques, or object oriented programming techniques, please let us know.  Remember you don’t have to be an expert on the topics you suggest, it may well be you know very little and want to talk to other developers to gain a better understanding.

And that’s not us talking, it’s you! We’re delighted to say that the 2nd Hull Digital MeetUp has got 5 stars from you!

“ Great work Jon – a really good event. Diverse range of speakers and some lively debate! See you next time. ”

“ Brilliant meeting, with some great speakers, who all did great especially as it was the first with speakers. Really looking forward to the next one. Excellent work to all involved. ”

“ Very interesting, fun and enjoyable meetup. Looking forward to the next one already! ”

“ We had a very good time, the speakers where very informative and I’d like to thank them and Jon for a very good evening. Wish we’d have had a bit of time at the end of the evening but we had to get off otherwise we’d have mingled a bit. Well done Jon it was great to meet you and some of the members tonight. ”

“ Loved the meet, there were even Doritos. Thanks for top welcome. ”

A HUGE thanks to the 30+ people who came along, and especially to the speakers, Intrasource for hosting the event and their staff who stayed behind to look after us all. Hat tip to Cairn Emmerson the group Chairman for his generosity!

How the evening progressed
The evening started off at 6.30pm but we had a steady stream of attendees turning up from 6.15pm. The drinks and doughnuts / pastries seem to be a big attraction to most people, and yes, we noted who “wasn’t shy around the buffet”
The Intrasource offices were soon full of the happy chatter of developers, designers, agency folk and geeks, discussing everything from php, to Linux, to Wimax, fibre and games. It was a job to keep up!

We kicked off the speakers with Paul Rhoades from Random Developments / ITSupported, who took us all through some excellent ideas concerning “Credit Crunch Computing”. He has made the slides available, and I will post the url as soon as I get it / remember it! We particularly liked the discussion around using alternative operating systems, open source software such as Open Office, and also making sure you service your computer regularly. Personally the Hull Digital team have one really easy suggestion to save time and money…. get a Mac

Following Paul, Steve Jagger from Quickline took the stage and gave us a fascinating talk about the opportunity to use Wimax to beam in broadband across the Humber. This innovative approach prompted a good few questions, some rather technical, but the concept proved popular, and the method of nodes seemed an ideal way of doing it.

Last, but my no means least, Lucy Wurstlin form Channel 4′s 4ip gave us a great insight into the £10 Million that has earmarked for the Yorkshire and Humber Region. 4ip is actively looking for ideas to support and fund, anything that will help / improve people’s life. Lucy has set up a top community over here >>> Whippet on The Wire - so do head on over there and join up! Remember to support your ideas to 4ip here too!

Whippet on the Wire is a new creative network for companies and individuals in the creative and digital sector in Yorkshire and Humber (and friends further afield). It’s a chance to share ideas, be inspired, find partners and collaborators, make new networks and find out what’s going in the region.

Overall, it was a great evening, and many thanks for the very positive feedback. What we did learn was that we need more time for chilling, chatting and netorking, so this is going to play a much greater part going forward. Also, a BIG thanks to Richard Griffiths, Head of Sales and Marketing Consumer from Kcom for coming along and entering the lion’s den. It’s great to see Karoo getting to know us.

Please keep your eyes and ears open in the next few days as the March MeetUp is going to be announced and it’s looking to be a corker! Cheers!

We’ve just announced the February Hull Digital MeetUp! Please do head on over to the MeetUp website to check all the details.

The MeetUp is at a private venue – MeetUp members obviously see that location over on the MeetUp site. Numbers are limited, so be quick!

25th Feb – 6.30pm to 8.30pm

We have a dedicated venue for this meeting thanks to Intrasource, so a big thanks to them. We are going to start following a little bit more of a structured format from now on along these lines:

- Welcome and catch up with everyone
- Hull Digital News
- Speakers and questions
- Help session – anyone can ask a question and see if the group can help!
- Wrap up and chat!

I’m hoping this means we get more out of the time we have

The speakers that have already confirmed are:

Paul Rhoades from Random Developments
“Credit Crunch Computing” 20 mins of suggestions on how to get
the best value from your computer systems in the credit crunch.

Steve Jagger from Quickline Communications
Alternative broadband solutions in the region.

There are a number of others who have expressed interest, so will be speaking to them very shortly. I’m also delighted to report that we have been contacted by Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency for the Yorkshire & Humber region. They are hoping to send a representative along from their Digital department.