Morning Clojure People

Just looked at dates for EuroClojure and I'm relieved I can't make it those dates due to family commitments around that time....because I was having an internal battle between wanting to go but not being able to justify the expense.

I feel like that about a lot of conferences...

Mornings

...I gave in to temptation one year and ended up going to ten conferences (luckily several were local) but I vowed never to do that again, and never did more than four in a year after that. I try to do just one or two now.

I know the feeling Chris, but it's been so long since i've been able to go to a Conference

Is anyone here doing Clojure Remote?

I only tend to get to one or two in a year..ClojureX being the most consistent but as I'm in the programme committee I gues I have to show my face!

I really, really, really want to do StrangeLoop sometime but as the pound get weaker during the Brexit process I may need to remortgage the house to afford it!

morning

Yeah, Strange Loop is definitely worth doing at least once. I've done it three or four times but, to be honest, having done it in the past, now I choose Clojure/conj instead as more relevant.

Over the last several years, I've generally done just one of either Clojure/West or Clojure/conj in order to do Strange Loop (budget is only two conferences). Last year I decided on C/c instead and it was the right choice -- for a full time Clojure dev IMO.

Morning all

If money was no object, I'd certainly still do Strange Loop each year 🙂

Hey @yogidevbear !

I love the look of the conferences in the US, just a little far and expensive 😉

Morning Sean 🙂

Or evening in your case 😉

plus you have to travel to an autocratic rogue nuclear regime now....

ha

Yeah, half past midnight. But I'm on vacation for a couple of weeks so...

I'm visiting the UK in April for a week. Wife's judging a cat show, so I'm tagging along to visit mum and dad.

I was trying to persuade my wife to let me go to Dutch Clojure Day, but she has a 10k race on that weekend so I'm putting her first. In return, I'm wangling a free pass to head into London for a Clojure meetup :thumbsup:

We must definitely make a plan to meet up for 🍻 Sean

Friday?

In London or in West Sussex (for Fridays)?

We can do Southwater I think. The cat show is in Leatherhead(!)

Yeah, sounds good

There's a pub in Southwater called the Lintot (I think)

Looks really nice

We arrive Wednesday, will spend 24 hours with mum, visit dad in Devon on Thursday, come back up on Friday...

Show Saturday/Sunday, then back to mum's on Monday, fly home Tuesday.

Very busy schedule

As always.

Haha. What date Friday? I'll make sure to diaries

We would like to visit my stepdad and his wife on Friday before beers too 🙂

(they live in Southwater too)

The Lintot, Fairbank Rd.

Maybe I can get Pete and Marianne to meet us there too... That would work out well for a social evening 🙂

Sounds great

I'm sure I could twist some other "local" devs from the CF side to venture outside of the M25

On a more on-topic note. Which meetup would you guys suggest for a relatively new Clojure newbie to come to in London? I'm keen to see which workflows, editors/IDEs, tooling, etc are being used and how. And it would be nice to meet some friendly Clojurian faces.

OK, bedtime here. Day 2 of vacation tomorrow (and then we actually go to Ohio for two cats shows and the baby hippo at Cincinnati Zoo!). We'll firm up the Southwater thing over the next month or so.

I’ve been to 3 of the last 4 strangeloops, it’s possibly my favourite barely-business-justifiable conference

not sure what i’ll do this year with the current state of border controls

@yogidevbear There are 2 coding dojos every month in London

@yogidevbear USwitch hold one on the second Monday of the month near London Bridge (next one is next Monday) and ThoughtWorks hold one on the 3rd Tuesday in Soho. I always struggle to do a Monday so I haven't been to the USwitch one for about a year. I try and make the ThoughtWorks one.

I used to host another Dojo to build an app in installments every month. It was fun but we didn't get much done and I pulled the plug on it when I returned to the NE for 7 weeks after my last London contract finished.

@jr0cket also hosts a Dojo in the Hack the Tower meetup on a Saturday morning every month.

yeah, the lon-clo-do (probably got that wrong) one

I'd love to check out Hack the Tower, but I've got a commitment on Saturday and Sunday mornings

So it'd probably be the USwitch or ThoughtWorks ones

ProCloDo - was mine! but I think it had side effects (please consult a Physician!)

haha

Has anyone tried to do a remote based meetup before?

Yes

Didn't really work

Pity. That is something I would invest lots of time into

But there is definitely something to be said for being in the same physical room and seeing peoples screens side by side

As well as their faces

So are the SkillsMatter meetups linked to ThoughtWorks?

Just checking out https://www.meetup.com/London-Clojurians/

Even ProCloDo didn't really work. It never had more than 8 attendees and once it was just me and one other person! I never managed to figure out if it was location, the concept of building an app over time (effort to get up to speed).

I think the main factor why it didn't work was actually when we stopped being able to provide food and drink

Freeloaders 😉

If I still lived in London, I'd probably have come to a few meetups by now, but living an hour outside of London and having a 4 year old tends to adjust reasonable priorities on a day to day basis

Abby and I ran a one off dojo at CodeNode in Jan that only had 3 attendees despite being the normal format. 20+ people signed up but when we announced we couldn't provide food most declined. May have been coincidence but...

The state of the open source mindset 😉

It's hard, if like me, you are trying to run one of these without any corparate sponsorship. I can ask SkillsMatter for a venue but I can't afford pizza for 20 people every month

I can completely agree with that sentiment

To answer your question on SkillsMatter and ThoughtWorks, the only connection is the LondonClojurians organisers.

So Yolina is a co-organiser and runs the TW dojo. There are co-organisers who work for USwithc who do their one. People like me, @jr0cket, @jonpither and @otfrom try and help out with other events like ClojureBridge, ClojureX and the SkillsMatter talks.

Always hard for me to do a lot in London on weekends as I'm 275 miles away!

Well it's really awesome that so many people are giving up their time to organise such regular events. I would imagine it's particularly frustrating for the people that do live that much further outside of London who can't really benefit from being there in person. So big :thumbsup: for doing the records at these meetups as well!

That's why I get frustrated with ppl who complain that tickets for ClojureX are expensive. SM gives us free venues and records talks all year...they deserve what little money they get from conference.

agile_geek that's why I call it our "Bake Sale"

I suspect SM barely broke even this year after expenses for speakers, overheads, etc.

not to mention free beer @agile_geek - was that provided by SM ?

SM organise it but they try and get some of the costs covered by sponsors...but we had fewer sponsors this year

So in terms of paid events in the UK, There is ClojureX yes? And anything else?

people call clojurex expensive?

it’s one of the cheapest conferences i’ve been to. The few days in london not working dwarf the ticket price

@glenjamin it depends on when you buy your ticket....I always buy early bird (£114 inc VAT). In fact I buy one even when I'm on the committee and get two free ones

Usually cos I'm not usre how much time I will have to be on the committee right after the conference.

I have bought mine at early bird as well the last few years. as I was paying for it myself that seemed to be the prudent things to do...

and I was a speaker twice, but still paid for it as I don't mind support SM ( a bit)

Anyone know what is going to be covered at Monday's USwitch Clj Dojo?

dojo format is usually idea suggestions at the start and then voting

usually split up into groups of 5 ish and then you can choose what to do (pretty flexible though)

FWIW I would do a regular dojo as an attendee whether there was food or not.

My first Clojure Dojo ever, I inhaled a Subway 6" on my way from Tottenham Court Road Station to the old TW offices 'cos I had no idea there would be food.

I didn't realise there was food involved either so wouldn't have minded either way 🙂

usually pizzas at the start while people socialise and come up with ideas, also beers a lot of time if that's your think

As I'm gluten intolerant, beer and pizza is a terrible choice so I get my own food unless it's TW as Yolina always remembers I'm GF and makes sure there's something I can eat.

I am looking forward to getting back to Dojo attendance...

Will call it “The Return of the Jade” just to keep @agile_geek autocorrect in check

i think you missed a "warrior" off of the end of your title @jasonbell

🙂

I am talking at Clojure Remote this evening about building communities through events, so very relevant comments today from @agile_geek and all... https://clojureremote.com/schedule/

If anyone has any topics they would like me to talk about, please let me know. Thanks

I think even emacs 25 doesn't like long lines. It is a nasty regression

yep - this is emacs 25

I think that bug has been around since emacs 22 (I know it is old, but hasn't always been there)

My new favourite clj-refactor is drum roll please.......

cljr-inline-symbol

https://media.giphy.com/media/cD7PLGE1KWOhG/giphy.gif

I think @agile_geek would give an awesome talk about clj-refactor in April for London Clojurians...

jr0cket I agree

so do I 😉

so say we all

so we all agree... good news... not pressure @agile_geek 😇

I've done this before and if we want a talk on cljr we should really ask @benedek ! 😈

hehe, i am much better sitting in the back row of seats trying to intimidate the speaker (just by jedi style thought power, no heckling)

I mostly just heckle

agile_geek just think about how valuable your misunderstandings are for benedek as user research 🙂

aargghhhh my lein ring uberjar can't find my compiled (cl)js files and somehow deletes them...

most annoying

indeed otform exactly the reason i was hiding out on @jr0cket ‘s spacemacs talk couple of weeks ago

😄

resulted in a PR to spacemacs 😉

ah, the joys of community involvement. 🙂

@agile_geek it was so long ago though, before you were a professional clojure developer

What involvement can I provide in dojos as an experienced clojure developer? Never done any dojos, or socialized much as a developer.

Have no idea of the format or what I could offer, but feel like I could probably offer something

@dominicm from a newbie's perspective, I'd just appreciate having any experienced devs around for the dojo so that I can learn from them

See how experienced devs use the different tools, editors, etc

I can give you a little insight into my editing: https://juxt.pro/blog/posts/vim-1.html (as you're interested!) @yogidevbear have you been to a dojo before?

Nope. Thinking of going on Monday, but if not Monday, will definitely make a plan to come to one soon

@dominicm @yogidevbear I'm one of the organisers. More experienced developers are always welcome! - either to help out the beginners or simply to try out something new. The usual process is that at the beginning anyone can come up with ideas about they would like to work on, then people select most popular ideas and form groups - usually there are 3-4 groups of people working together on different ideas. And at the end people present the results... Last time I was working on setting up a ClojureScript project running on node.js, this time I was thinking of suggesting trying out Arachne.