IT Brain Trust Meeting

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by mwisconsin, Feb 28, 2016.

  1. mwisconsin

    mwisconsin Administrator Staff Member

    Some of you have suggested or implied that you have a technical background, and may be willing to volunteer for efforts to maintain and develop Gary Con's web presence for 2017.

    Things I'm seeking: Java Struts/Spring/JSTL/JSP experience, hopefully with some experience with an Agile development group. If you have project management with Agile experience, but less with the programming, I'd love to have you, as that saves me from writing and organizing things myself. If you have general CSS/HTML/JavaScript experience, you'll be helpful, but not during the first few Sprints.

    I'd like for us to meet for an hour or so at the convention, in one of the bar areas, preferably when we've all imbibed a little bit. Remember, this is a volunteer opportunity. Do not pay attention to the man behind the divider with the ropes and black masks. He's there for an entirely different event.

    Also, please let me know ahead of time if you have an allergy to Chloroform. #cough

    Times we can meet: 11pm on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. Please respond to this thread if you're interested.
     
  2. athornton

    athornton Footpad

    Paolo Greco and I are up for it. I think we could both do Thursday night but not Friday or Saturday.

    I have some Agile experience (as a developer, not a PM), and I have done Java in the past, but it's not one of my real fluencies; I'm much more of a Python and Go kinda guy. I do, however, have a few specific design suggestions that I think would help with what I think the major failure mode seemed to be this year, which was simply way too many concurrent database writes.
     
  3. grodog

    grodog Troubadour

    I'm interested, but running or playing games during those times, Thomas. I've already emailed with Brendan and Luke about my areas of expertise (not code/development, but UX/usability, UI design, information architecture, program mgmt, requirement definition, etc.). If you want to try to synch up at other times at the con, or (more likely) afterward, let me know.

    Allan.
     
    Tink333 likes this.
  4. mwisconsin

    mwisconsin Administrator Staff Member

    I'm in the Adventurer's League room 24/7 for the convention as the admin, so you can always find me there, if you want to stop by and chat. About every 2 hours, I have to manage a game of Musical Chairs (with Swords) as I get people seated at their proper tables, but between those times I'll be open for some chats.
     
  5. Jamie Hale

    Jamie Hale Level 0 Character

    Happy to chat. I'll track you down or I'm unattached Saturday at 11pm. You'll have more luck with whisky than chloroform.

    I have a programmatically (not physically) high dexterity, and while I can do Java I usually choose not to. :) Happy to chat regardless. Code is code is code.
     
    mwisconsin likes this.
  6. Khasimir

    Khasimir Footpad

    Thomas,

    I've got PM with Agile experience. Even have a smidge of scrummastering under my belt if you want to run sprints. ;)

    The earliest I'm scheduled to be free it 10pm on Thursday and Friday evenings. Saturday I go until 11pm. I can always stop in at the AL room but it will either be quite early or late.
     
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  7. mr.peabody

    mr.peabody Level 0 Character

    I'd love to join too. I could likely swing Thursday and maybe Saturday, but I might be in a pick up game at that point. Most of my experience is as a PM, with some Agile experience, mostly as a UI/UX guide and dev translator - I also have over 15 years in setting up ticketing, membership and ecommerce systems, so could add some clicks-not-code value there, as well. It think @handyhaversack will likely join too, if he's free, would be my guess. see you folks soon!
     
  8. Glenn Holmer

    Glenn Holmer Level 0 Character

    I'd at least be interested to find out what's being planned. I'm a recently retired programmer/team leader/sysadmin with 15 years Java experience. Some Struts, but years ago (recently pure Java EE and JSP). I could make Thursday at 23:00, but have games at the other times you mentioned.
     
  9. heyscot

    heyscot Level 0 Character

    It'd be keen if you guys developed an iphone/android app that shows live updates of which games are open and which aren't, and give the GM the ability to designate if events are full or if a spot opens up, including the location of the game, and an area for brief notes. It'd also be cool if there was a map of the site location. Nick Abruzzo turned me on to the idea.
     
  10. mr.peabody

    mr.peabody Level 0 Character

    Hi all.

    Any thoughts on where/when this might be happening? If you need to gather on the fly, you can text me at 917.570.6803 and I'll try to circle to you.
     
  11. Glenn Holmer

    Glenn Holmer Level 0 Character

    Also curious if this might be happening.
     
  12. mwisconsin

    mwisconsin Administrator Staff Member

    We're downstairs in the Adv. League room.
     
  13. Zog

    Zog Level 0 Character

    I would love to help. I can't offer much right now as I'm only a student at UWGB for Comp Sci and PM and Agile are not things I've yet encountered. However when you need some general work done on CSS and HTML I can certainly be put to use. Personally I would love the learning experience. Sorry I missed meeting up at the Con. Let me know though because as a student I should have a fair amount of time to dedicate over the summer. I'm also already tossing around the idea of building an unofficial/official Gary Con app.
     
  14. silas

    silas Chevalier

    I think depending on people to help out when they get around to it, who may or may not have the necessary experience, is a really bad idea.

    Hiring a firm to create an e-commerce system that can scale to tens of thousands of attendees is not difficult, and it isn't as expensive as you think.

    Or, finding an IT professional who really knows what he/she is doing and drawing up a contract with deliverables, is another option.

    You can also rent a system

    Getting someone to do stuff for free always involves the danger that he/she will simply bail on the project or phone it in. They get in over their head, have other paid projects they need to work on, and the registration system becomes an afterthought. Garycon has plenty of revenue to create/rent a system that works.

    Let's please not have a disaster again like this year.
     

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