I was chatting with Udi Dahan the other day at the user group (as a side note, the user groups are a great place to get to know people, hear some ideas and a great way to find out all the stuff you've been missing living in your own little bubble somewhere. You should really go to one of them when you get some time) and he mentioned two great ideas that I immediately wished I had thought of myself:
- Do a talk on Refactoring techniques in the user group
- Consider opening an "Agile Development" user group
While idea #1 seems perfectly logical and it's amazing I did not think about it myself, idea #2 certainly blew my mind. This would be the perfect outlet for all those ramblings and ideas that are starting to show up here and there in the community.
Here are some of the reasons we thought a group would be a good thing:
- There is very little (if any) knowledge in Israel about agile methodologies, namely XP or Test Driven Development. This group could add a lot to the community in terms of educating on these very important subjects.
- All our talk ideas don't really belong to any of the user groups out there today. The ideas are too broad reaching and general to be constrained to a specific web or, vb or c# group.
- It's a great way to get known and respected in the community
Here are some possible obstacles:
- There are already like 6 or 7 groups. Another one?
- People can't go to so many groups at once. Someone has to pay them to leave early from work and usually once or twice a month is more than enough.
- Some of the user group leaders might find its “stepping on their toes“ perhaps.
If you're in Israel, tell me what you think. If there was such a user group, would you go? If not, why? Do you even see a place for such a user group in Israel? What issues would you like to see addressed in such a group?