Details of our July meet are finally up on upcoming.
Apologies for the short notice - we wanted to get a venue so we could have a class rather than our normal lovely pub meets.
Details are here, bring friends
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/218452
Between conversations about cakePHP, privacy on the web (totally dead), PSPs, XBOX and a myraid other things that geeks talk about, we were able to get a few XSLT related things in there, like XSLT jobs going at the BBC, possible applications using XSLT for Hackday London (June 16th). We also tossed around a few ideas of what we ‘d like our next Masterclass to be on - in June (watch out for the details on the mailing list london[at]xslug.org).
We also welcomed 2 new members Nigel Pepper and Nathan Fisher. Sheila was able to join us this time around but unfortunately had her wallet stolen right before our very eyes - well almost. Sorry Ms Ellen :p
Pictures are now up on flickr http://flickr.com/photos/tags/upcoming%3Aevent%3D190628/show/. I think I was the only one taking pictures, so as usual they ‘ll be somewhat random.
Thanks for coming along guys. See you all shortly.
UPDATE
We have had to change the date from Thursday May 31st to the Tuesday May 29th.
All other details remain same.
Details of the XSLT usergroup meeting in May are up on upcoming.org
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/190628
Details:
Date: May 29th (Thursday)
Time: 6:30 pm.
Venue:
The Anchor pub
34 Park Street
London, London SE1 9EF
See Map if you don’t already know how to get there.
Nearest stations are London Bridge, Cannon Street and Blackfriars.
Please help spread the word.
For notice of future events, please subscribe here.
Nic Ferrier and I have been doing a lot of work with XSLT recently. This prompted a discussion on the merits of forming an XSL community and to find out whether other known XSL users in London saw the merits of one, we decided to have a preliminary event (another excuse for a pub visit) in order discuss pros and cons.
We met last night at the Prince Regents Pub on Marylebone High street and in attendance were Ian Forrester, Tom Morris, Andre Lambrechts (Larry) and Will Prescott (both from Thompson) and of course Nic and myself. Sheila Thompson was planning to join us but could make it unfortunately. There’s something to be said for communities and even though a small gathering, it became immediately obvious why such a group would be beneficial for all involved. Larry put it best when he said “We need a way of seperating the wheat from the chaff.”
It isn’t my intention to discuss the benefits of XSL in this post, any number of mailing lists and more talented developers and designers are doing that everyday. A few of the problems we are hoping to solve include providing companies with a place to look when in need of XSL developers. Agencies, we have determined are no good at this, all you need is a mention of XSL in your CV and you are viewed as being a qualified candidate - this isn’t the case when your only use involved the transform of a SOAP response to some other format 3 years ago. In fact more often than not, you either get someone with no idea besides a simple use a while ago or an expert who wants to break your bank account and rewrite xalan first. Yes, functional programming breeds zealots. We ‘d also like to provide developers with a forum to show off their skills, teach and mentor other developers.
We plan to meet once a month for small hacking/tutorial/masterclass sessions. We need interested developers to attend and we need capable hackers to come teach at these events and this is where you come in. We are forming a community and we want YOU to become a member of our community. Leave comments if you are interested in helping out, no effort is too little and we ‘ll keep you updated.
Stay tuned for more news of our website launch and first event shortly.