http://www.meetup.com/AtlAltDotNet/  this is great for new ideas and decent technical depth. It is a fairly new group still finding its feet

http://www.iasahome.org/web/atlanta  Atlanta’s IASA chapter – always has super-smart people in attendance. Most meetings end up being a discussion (or argument!) with few punches pulled. The best part? BS artists are shot down very quickly and most never come back

http://www.atldotnet.org this is the ‘main’ .Net User Group in town and excellent at delivering high level introductions to topics. Networking is very good here too as local MVPs etc are at most meetings

Other .Net focused groups are http://www.atlantamspros.com and http://ggmug.com. A good attempt to list all relevant groups is http://www.devcow.com/usergroups but I don’t believe it is currently maintained.

Hopefully that helps a few people looking to learn more and network

DDD6 was the 6th UK ‘code camp’ and I was luckily enough for my session to be voted in. Many people missed out attending because there were ~450 registrations in 24 hours!! Everyone I met was incredibly bright – most of the tough questions I asked in my Continuous Integration session were immediately answered, by sometimes what seemed half the room!

Comparison to with US Code Camps is pretty easy. The UK version is was excellent too. Classic cultural differences were there: a little less pizazz, and the average attendee weighing 20->30 lbs less. Note the cycle racks outside reception in the photos below, if US gas were $9/gallon I think we’d be slimmer too.

It pleases me greatly to report TDD/ Automated Testing is certainly gaining traction with the .Net community here. Many people told me Mike Hadlow did an excellent talk on using Inversion of Control (IoC) with TDD. Speaker of the day must go to Ben Hall who gave an overview of xUnit tools, including MBUnit which he contributes to. Apparently Ben is a fairly recent grad and this was his first presentation – watch this guy he will do well!

Ben, Mike, Richard Fennell and Michael Foord blogged this event. Barry Dorrans shares some photos. Update: even more was said about the day here, here, here, here, here, here and here!

Ben Hall – future tech superstar (no, not the back of his head, he is the guy speaking)

Microsoft UK at 7am in Winter- brrr!

Just before I left the speakers’ lounge to meet some smart people

This was in the halls, along with life size Halo characters!

This should be fun a night, I will kick off with a light hearted look at Cruise Control – it is amazing how many projects still do not use Continuous Integration. My plan is take demos and a few slides – knowing the Architect Group the audience will soon be talking more than me

Next I will give a more formal presentation on Software Estimation – it will be a little dry, but I expect people in the room will liven it up with amusing tales from the field. We all have tales to tell of estimates which went awry.

The Architects group is really meant for Architects and CTOs with 10+ years experience. Even are you not an Architect (yet!) come along this month and enjoy these basic topics. Be aware that most regulars will call out any BS from presenters, I fully expect to be challenged and hope to learn a lot from other attendees.

The Atlanta IASA website is http://www.iasahome.org/web/atlanta.
We meet at Matrix in Dunwoody:

May 9 – 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Matrix (on the top floor)
115 Perimeter Center Place NE
Suite 250
Atlanta, GA 30346

Click here for a Google Map

The office is secure so if you are late knock on the window to the left of the door and someone will let you in.