TECHcoffee

Short version:

Starting Monday, Feb 11, 6:30AM, for 10 weeks, at the Same Ol' Caribou Coffee (at the NW corner of LaSalle and Lake)

Long version:

It's Friday. You're looking forward to the weekend, where you will sit back and relax.

But don't you have a patch you're working on for Django? Isn't your blog comment system still screwed up? How about that business idea that really should only need a couple days' worth of coding, but that you just haven't gotten around to?

That, my friends, is what TechCoffee is for. A few hours of productivity, once a week.

Why are you productive at TechCoffee? Because everyone there is working, and there's power in numbers. It's like a quilting bee, or a running club. Only for coders.

Because we work at the productive hours of the day, before the coding life has been drained out of you by a workday of meetings and drudgery.

Are you ready? Okay.

Show up to the Caribou Coffee at LaSalle and Lake (conveniently located near every L line) at 6:30AM Monday morning. Once you're there, code. Promise someone that you'll be there the following Monday. Repeat.

Or, if you're feeling advanced, remember that the season goes for ten weeks. Plan milestones. Get all project-managerish. Make a chart. Just remember to code, too.

I promise y'all that i'll be there Monday morning, 6:30AM. I'll bring a power strip, too. And i'm gonna code.

jmelesky, 2008-02-08, 11:09

last updated 7 months ago #

Season 4 ended with a whimper on Monday as i flew solo into the Caribou coffee that we all know and love.

Still, it was a productive season. I made a bit of progress on Gamigami before switching gears completely to start and finish a simple flash game (quick plug: it's called Zombie Protagonist, and it currently lacks a bit in the art department, but it's still fun). I know others got some work done, so feel free to leave a comment on your progress.

I'll be glad to get my Monday mornings back for a bit. And, of course, season end means looking for the person to guide the next season. It's pretty easy, as long as you can spare one morning's sleep a week. Let me know if you're interested (my contact info is on the front page.

jmelesky, 2007-07-11, 12:57

last updated 1 year ago #

I've been averaging about ten minutes late this season. It figures that the one day i show up on time, the Caribou Coffee is closed for a holiday. Our emergency-backup Starbucks is also closed.

Thus, no TechCoffee today. Feel free to meet up on IRC, though i'll be absent, myself -- two subway trips and two closed coffee shops is too much of a gumption trap for me this early in the morning.

I doubt this will get out to people in time, but here's hoping.

jmelesky, 2007-05-28, 06:30

last updated 1 year ago #

We had a nice crowd this morning, big enough to warrant expanding to multiple tables.

The folks from Caribou remember us, though they were a bit confused that we moved from thursdays to mondays.

I, personally, spent the entire morning installing things. Haddock, PanDoc, HaXML, HList, HAppS, and probably a half-dozen other packages. My poor little G4 laptop creaked under the strain of it all. It's still running, though not without needing a battery recharge.

But, yes, Jake, Skip, John (me), John (not me), and Elliot all showed up today. John and Elliot were both here when i rolled in late around 6:08, and the other two trickled in later. Considering the complete lack of chatter, i think we were likely pretty productive.

Tune in next week, when i try to play connect-the-dots with my various new packages.

jmelesky, Monday, 2007-05-07, 08:31

last updated 1 year ago #

Hear, ye! Hear, ye! TechCoffee is set to begin its fourth Season!

TechCoffee Season 4 starts Monday, May 7th, at 6AM, and continues for ten weeks.

Do you code in your off time? Do you really want to code in your off time, but end up engaging in debates on Slashdot instead?

At TechCoffee, you get up early, and go hang out for a couple hours with other people who are coding. It's like a running club, only creative. Or a knitting bee with less chitchat. Or a hackathon that lasts only a couple hours.

It's an idea that's had three successful seasons so far, and is primed to get us up and out in the morning air.

When: Show up at 6AM Monday morning (May 7th), and every monday morning after that, till July 9th.

Where: The Caribou Coffee located at 200 N LaSalle (the corner of LaSalle and Lake), easily accessible from all L lines.

Ten weeks is how long we last. One commit a week is all we ask.

jmelesky, 2007-05-02, 16:40

last updated 1 year ago #

Sometimes side projects are open source, and sometimes we hope they'll make us money some day.

I'm happy to say that HowToOpenThings launched last week. It was my personal TechCoffee project this past season and parts of the prior season. It's powered by Python, Django, and PostgreSQL. I haven't made my fortune with it yet, but here's hoping.

In other news, TechCoffee, Season Four, should be coming up soon. Summer means early morning coding, folks. Watch this [blog]] and [the front page for details.

jmelesky, 2007-04-30, 12:05

last updated 1 year ago #

Newcomer Dave Lewis and I were the attendees this morning. Dave came in from Lincoln Park to check things out and is working with a startup company. Thanks for dropping by Dave and sharing your morning.

This was the final session for this season. Any volunteers for hosting the next season, please name the date, time and place for the meetings and pass the word along. Feel free to contact John Melesky, Jason Huggins or me for adding an account to the Blog to make announcements.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

Peter Harkins and I were the attendees this morning. Peter said he made it to the first season of TechCoffee, which I missed since I was in Maine for the summer. We chatted a little about the previous seasons, then worked on our projects. Just around 8:00 we parted company and I called Peter by the wrong first name and butchered his last name (sorry on both counts, Peter).

One more session to go for this season, which will be on March 15th. In the tradition of passing the hosting along to another geek for the next season, I'd like to ask for volunteers. Just name the date, time and place for the meetings and pass the word along. See you on 03/15/07.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

Once again, Dan and I were the main attendees this morning. After a few minutes of getting each other up to speed on our exciting lives in Chicago, we exhausted that subject and got to work.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

Dan and I were the main attendees this morning, with a late arrival by John. Dan and I caught up with the weeks events for a bit then dove into our respective projects. Not sure why, but the progress on mine was in the wrong direction. I discovered a broken function and screwed up another by the time I was ready to leave. Looks like I'll need to reverse course over the weekend.

John was heading in as I was heading out, so we did our 10 seconds of chatting on the sidewalk with the pleasant sounds of the L in the background.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

John from Season 1 joined in this morning. He's checking out an Adium issue with reconnections.

We had another newcomer, Dan Stowell, who is working on an activism/lobbying project. No good name for it at the moment :-) Thanks for joining us Dan.

After some intros and minor chatter, we got into our respective projects.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

John Melesky and I (Mike Schienle) were here for the duration, with a special appearance by Ted (last name?) from the Chicago Python group, and Jason Randolph.

Ted was in town early for another appointment and was directed to Tech Coffee's meeting place at Caribou for a local place with Wi-Fi access where he could kill some time until his meeting started.

Jason dropped in to tell us he had accepted an offer from Google in Mountain View, CA and that he was heading out of town in the near future. That pretty much started the gab-fest.

Good luck Jason and be sure to get those stock options back dated :-)

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

Kumar McMillan made his first appearance today to join me this session. Kumar is working on a Python project and I'm doing a little work for a client to add some additional functionality to a previous Perl CGI project.

Also, those of you who know me as a Monster/FastWeb employee can refer to me as a Citadel employee on 2/12/07. This will be my 2nd round with Citadel, having worked for them previously from 6/2004 to 12/2005. I'll be returning to the Energy trading desk.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

Josh, John and Mike (me) attended this session. John has been dealing with a cold, along with 1/2 of Chicago, and looked like he wasn't ready for the day, quite yet. One of my co-workers resigned this week, which prompted Josh and I into a quick discussion about colleagues rotating through a few of the local Perl shops in town.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

Just a quiet day at Caribou with Josh McAdams and me. A few minutes of chattering, then we started turning caffeine into error messages.

If you see Josh around town or need to send him an email, be sure to tell him to get to work on his Master's thesis. His wife will appreciate you and you might have a smarter BitTorrent algorithm when he's done.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

John and I started the new season of TechCoffee as the only attendees. John showed up on time, but I wandered in about 10 minutes late with no good excuse. After a few minutes of idle gossip, we were both heads down on our projects for the duration. Caribou started getting pretty busy as 8:00 rolled around and I parted company to head off to work.

See y'all next week.

Mike Schienle

last updated 1 year ago #

Season 2 ended not with a bang, but with a jingle, jingle, jingle. The Friday before Christmas weekend, and all through the Caribou, not a crowd was stirring, not even something that rhymes with "Caribou" (Malibu? Drunken Shoe? Piper Perabo?).

That's not entirely true. There were some people around, but much quieter than most friday mornings. TechCoffee itself was quieter, too, with myself and Elliot in attendence, and with a special last-minute guest appearance from Chris.

But that's it for Season 2. We'll reconvene in a little while, hopefully with someone else at the helm. Announcements will be sent to all the usual suspects, and we'll spend our early mornings coding again.

Until then, enjoy what holidays you celebrate, and sleep in a little.

jmelesky, 2006-12-22, 10:05

last updated 1 year ago #

Small crowd this time. Myself, Elliot, and Mike showed up.

I'm not sure if Caribou changed their free wireless policy to be less than an hour, but i will tell you this: my weekly commit had to wait until after i returned home in the evening, since my wireless access disappeared. I made up for it with a big commit, overhauling our storage system completely. Sorry if you get conflicts, Jason.

Our next and final meeting is this Friday, right before Christmas weekend. Let's deck the halls with lines of code.

jmelesky, 2006-12-18, 11:13

last updated 1 year ago #

Four people this morning (myself, Jason, Elliot, and Mike).

Work was sidetracked for a little while when a troll (Jason) threw up some flamebait about the possibility of any language being better than any other in the general case. This prompted Elliot and i to feed the troll for longer than was strictly necessary. Elliot took the relativist position (every language is better than all others in certain cases), i took the positivist position (v2.2 of language X is better than v2.1 of language X in the general case). We should have just exchanged links about the Blub debate and been done with it.

As with all technical discussions started by trolls, there was no clear winner (not even the troll in this case, who regretted bringing it up and tried to cut the debate short). No fisticuffs broke out, though, and nobody's been banned from the Caribou, so we're all good.

We're at the tail end of the season. Next week will be the penultimate session. This means we're looking for volunteers who would be interested in driving Season 3 when it comes time to do so. Drop a line if such a thing floats your language-agnostic boat.

jmelesky, 2006-12-08, 11:24

last updated 1 year ago #

So, the months changed in Chicago like the flip of a switch. The last few days of November were in the mid-60s, and then December first woke up with several inches of snow on top of a couple inches of ice, slush, and crap.

Because of this, i failed (failed!) to show up to TechCoffee that morning.

Did anyone make it?

jmelesky, 2006-12-04, 21:27

last updated 1 year ago #

Much to my astonishment, i was not the only one at TechCoffee this week. Mike showed up, too. I wasn't as productive as usual, due in no small part to the post-Thanksgiving dinner lethargy, but i did get a couple things done.

The Caribou staff seemed less than enthusiastic about being there that morning, and when 9am rolled around, the place was empty save for us TechCoffee regulars. This prompted some more-than-half-hearted joking that they should close the place down.

Whether they did or not, i couldn't say, as i ran off around 9, myself, to perform Thanksgiving weekend hosting duties.

I'll see everyone on Friday, hopefully past my holiday bloat.

jmelesky, 2006-11-27, 13:45

last updated 1 year ago #

Exciting morning. Jason and i pledged to eachother that we would arrive early. This meant we didn't arrive late.

We appeared on TechSocial, and between that and some marketing at Jason's workplace, we had seven people show up. Old regulars Josh, Jason, Mike, and myself were there. Recurring roles were played by Chris and Peter. And we had a first-timer, also named Josh, show up as well.

Jason and i have made some progress on the secret unnamed infogami clone. Jason's now finally able to run the thing, and i'm averaging three substantive commits a week. Which brings us to our new TechCoffee motto, courtesy of Mike:

One commit a week is all we ask

jmelesky, 2006-11-17, 08:20

last updated 1 year ago #

Small crowd this morning, with only three people showing up.

Last season saw a lull like this around the middle few sessions. I'm guessing this one will stick with us until Thanksgiving. Ah, the holiday season.

That said, i don't know about the others, but i got quite a bit done.

last updated 1 year ago #

Well, winter is different. People aren't as prompt. Heck, i'm not as prompt. This was my second late arrival this season.

I showed up about ten minutes late. Mike was already there. Elliot showed up shortly after, and then there was a lull. Eventually Jason and Josh showed up, pulling some old-school J weight.

People trickled out about the same rate.

All that said, winter also seems to be more productive -- everyone was heads-down working.

The time change didn't cause anyone to be an hour late, that i noticed. It was quite pleasant to have a little daylight, though.

last updated 1 year ago #

Another good week. There was much more chatter this time than previous, so probably less actual work. Peter kept running into a problem with Rails plugins, and Jason and i were talking about our infogami clone (we're taking suggestions for names).

Josh, Les (a first-timer, welcome!), and Mike (i think) were also present and accounted for.

See you on Friday.

johnnnnnnnnnnn, 2006-10-30, 07:14

last updated 1 year ago #