PhillyCocoa 2009 Year-End Wrap-Up

December 14th, 2009.

We had a great meeting/year-end wrap-up last Thursday, thanks to everyone who participated. Here are some of the highlights:

Meeting format

The first item of discussion was the format of the CocoaHeads meetings themselves. We'd love to organize in-depth, hour long "tech talks", but that just isn't feasible with our small group and busy schedules. A couple suggestions were:

"Lightning" talks.

In order to accommodate the nature of our group, we're going to try to do Smaller, more focused, "lightning" talks.

Some ideas were:

  • Objective-C runtime
  • Core Data Tips & Tricks
  • Using the NSFetchedResultsController
  • Core Animations HOWTOs
  • Using the Objective Resource library
  • How to do X with Y, etc.

Guest speakers.

Another idea was to have guest speakers or joint meetings either in meatspace or via Skype. The details still need to be worked out, but it's a cool idea if we can make it work.

Challenges.

Finally, we talked about having a focused "challenge" at the end of PhillyCocoa meetings. These could be related to talks, or be just be stand-alone. There is still a lot to be worked out on this one, but it could be a good way to increase collaboration at meetings.

"Hack" nights

There is a lot of interest in hack or "NSCoder" nights. However, we haven't quite found the right recipe for a really great event. Hive 76 has worked well for those of us in the city, but it's not very convenient for out-of-towners. We'd like to continue semi-regular coding nights at Hive 76, but are certainly open to other venues. If you have a suggestion for a venue or would like to organize a coding night, please let us know.

Fund-raising

PhillyCocoa has very low operating costs, but some funds to cover venue costs and provide refreshments for meetings would certainly be nice. There are a few ways to raise a little money:

  • More workshops and classes. These have been very well received so far, but also require a lot of work to run. Still, we'd like to continue them if it all possible since they provide one of the biggest opportunities to raise money for the organization.
  • Sponsors. We're very open to the idea of sponsorship. If you would like to sponsor PhillyCocoa for a perspective sponsor, or would like to sponsor PhillyCocoa, or have a suggestion for a good perspective sponsor, please let us know.
  • Member donations. We don't want to require any sort of dues for PhillyCocoa, but if there are members that would like to donate to the organization of their own free will, we should provide an avenue to do so.

2010

Thanks for being with us in 2009, and we look forward to an even better 2010. If you have any additional thoughts, please hop on the mailing list and share your ideas.