The only constant in life is change. How do we prepare for change? Should we? In this session, I will go over changes relating to the smallest unit in our code base up into our careers. What does DRY really mean? When is too much YAGNI too much? When is it not enough? Should I change where I work or change where I work? The intention of this session is to open ourselves to change, understand how to make the change we would like to see and how to be the change we want to see in the world. This session is a frank and open discussion of software craftsmanship, career building and the nature of existing in the world of software development.

The mobile development craze comes to Indy ALT.NET! We've got the three hottest platforms that are competing for consumers' money - iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile - and we'll compare and contrast application development for each of them, as well as their respective centralized application marketplaces and what it takes to submit your apps to them.
Pizza Holiday feast (complete with roast beast and more!) and chatter are at 5:30, and the technology discussions begin at 6PM.

Matt will give an overview of a few source control systems and what differentiates them.
Be prepared for discussion once the presentation is over too!
Food (pizza) begins at about 5:30, so get here early!

Come join us at Scotty's for our administrative meeting and randomly inappropriate but so much fun geekery. Thursdays are Pint Nights which mean cheap draft beer ($2-2.50/pint). If you're 21+, you have interest in improving our group, and you get here before 6pm, then your first one is on me! There are also some great things on the menu you can order, but you're on your own with that.
Proposed Agenda:

Jon Fuller leads a discussion on Continuous Integration (CI). He'll give a quick intro to what it is and why it's important to you, as a developer and as an organization. Soon he and possibly some others will get into some demonstrations of various tools that many use to implement CI. Some such tools are CCRB and Rake, NAnt and CC.NET, MSBuild, and perhaps some others!

This is the second of a 2-month ALT.Storm Series hosted by Indy ALT.NET. This second session of ALT.Storm will be a sequence of lightning talks given by various people who want to share an awesome code sample they have, teach you a neat coding technique, explain how they applied a pattern in an interesting way, or almost anything else. The sky is the limit and we want YOU to share what you have with us!
 

This is the first of a 2-month ALT.Storm Series hosted by Indy ALT.NET. The first session of ALT.Storm will be a sequence of lightning talks given by various people on their favorite utility applications. Have an amazing XML editor? What about a spectacular code generator? You know you have an excellent Visual Studio plugin (that you can show off and explain in 5 minutes)!

In March, we will be meeting in a pseudo Open Space format discussion. We're calling it a "pesudo" Open Space discussion because it will not be a true Open Space discussion in that we will begin the discussion as a follow-up to Mike Brown's introduction/summary of his trip to the Seattle ALT.NET's Open Space event and the Microsoft MVP Summit.

NEW LOCATION (this month only)
Clojure is a functional programming language for the JVM that is designed to bring dynamic features and approachable concurrent programming to an established platform. It does so with parentheses, but you need not fear them (seriously, car and cdr don't even exist in Clojure). If you've ever wondered about Lisp or thought it was too hard or too impractical for work, Clojure may refresh Lisp in a package you want to check out. If you fear the day you have to multithread your C# app, you may be interested to know that Clojure provides a different, safer model in which you don't write locks.

This month, Brian Ball will be joining us to lead a discussion on functional programming with F#. F# is a typed functional programming language for the .NET platform. F# is already used by Microsoft for XBox analytics as well as many financial and scientific groups.

During the fishbowl meeting, discussion will take place around how project roles interact with each other. In the modified fishbowl setting, a Business Analyst, Project Manager, and at least one developer will discuss their functions in a software project and the challenges working with other roles. Be there to take part in the discussion!
 
Food is at 5:15pm.

On August 21 Jon Fuller will lead a discussion on Castle's MonoRail. You are encouraged to spend some time familiarizing yourself with the framework, and also Castle Windsor, as it will also be used during the discussion (but not as an active discussion point). Please come prepared with questions, information you would like to share, and concerns you have that can be discussed.

On June 19, Aaron Alexander, Sasha Kotlyar, and Dean Weber will lead an interactive group lab based around Mono. You are encouraged to spend some time familiarizing yourself with Mono, come prepared with questions, information you would like to share, and concerns you have that can be discussed.