It’s starting to get a bit warmer and litter brighter which means there’s some exciting meetups this month to add to your diary!
CodeHub Bristol: JavaScript 101
Tuesday 5th April 2016 – 10:00am – Beatroot Cafe, 20-21 Lower Park Row, Bristol
This meetup is about learning JavaScript together. So far you’ve been using the book Eloquent JavaScript as our basis. In 2016 you will focus on using different technologies like Node and React, and share your experiences. You are also planning to build an app together.
Most members of this group have a basic knowledge of JavaScript, but if you are new to it, just work through the Codecademy JS track and/or the first chapters of Eloquent JavaScript – Udacity also has a good JS basics course – then come and join in.
Read about the format of the meetup here: https://github.com/CodeHubOrg/discussions/issues/7
Bristol Java Meetup: Boot Springsteen and the Data Kids (Spring Night)
Tuesday 5th April 2016 – 6:15pm – Brightpearl, New Bond House, Bond Street, Bristol BS2 9AG, Bristol
This meetup is aiming to have a few talks on Spring related technologies, hopefully covering Spring Boot, Spring Data, and possibly some others..
1. Spring Boot in the real world
Spring Boot is here to stay and no one is missing the good old boiler plate configuration. Join the gang for a presentation on the concepts of Spring Boot, the impact on operations, the things you should consider when migrating you Spring applications to Spring Boot and the way it fits nicely with the Microservices approach
2. Testing Spring Boot Micro-services
Got up and running with your shiny new Spring Boot application so quickly that you’ve forgotten to write any tests? Keep that momentum up and build coverage for your microservice fast. Write fluent and concise contract tests with RestAssured. Integration test your service layer with minimal configuration. Enjoy auto-configured embedded databases. Best of all, get back to writing real code faster!
There will also be lightning talks of 5 mins each.
## [Bristol WordPress People: Project Management 101 and A WordPress Composer Shopping List](http://www.meetup.com/Bristol-WordPress-People/events/229633801/)
**Tuesday 5th April 2016 – 6:30pm** – *Famous Royal Navy Volunteer, 17-18 King Street, Bristol BS1 4EF*
Two talks this month on two very different subjects, Hannah talks about Project Management 101 and Simon covers A Composer WordPress Shopping List.
Project Management 101 – Hannah Smith
Practical advice and tips on how to get your project up and running and how to avoid common pitfalls once it’s going. For all levels.
A WordPress Composer Shopping List – Simon Pollard
A quick overview on how you can use composer to create and manage your WordPress sites and bring in all your favourite plugins whilst still version controlling your own theme with Git.
This meetup is a social one so pop along from 6:30pm to meet and chat with the team and other members. The first talk will start around 7:00pm. As always there will be a gap between the talks and everyone will be down in the bar afterwards if you have time to stick around for a pint.
Bristol Programming Languages: APL
Tuesday 5th April 2016 – 6:45pm – Oracle Bristol, Tower Wharf, Cheese Lane, BS2 0JJ, Bristol
From Wikipedia:
“APL (named after the book A Programming Language) is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the multidimensional array. It uses a large range of special graphic symbols to represent most operators, leading to very concise code. It has been an important influence on the development of concept modeling, spreadsheets, functional programming, and computer math packages. It has also inspired several other programming languages. It is still used today for certain applications.”
Bristol Clojurians: Programming in the Pub
Wednesday 6th April 2016 – 6:00pm – Small Bar, 31/32 King Street, The Beermuda Triangle, BS1 4DZ , Bristol
Bring your laptop to the pub and work on whatever Clojure project you like in the company of like-minded people.
Flag & Bell IT Pub Crawl Bath – For Techies & Entrepreneurs
Wednesday 6th April 2016 – 7:00pm – The Bell Inn, Walcot Street, Bath
Meet in the beergarden of The Bell Inn on Walcot St. Keep an eye out for the flag!
AWS User Group Bath
Wednesday 6th April 2016 – 7:00pm – The Makery, Beau Nash House, 19 Union Passage, Bath
Dear Members,
This meetup has a brand new sponsor / co-organizers Eduserv; a not-for-profit registered charity and authorised AWS partner specializing in IT services for Government, Charity , Education and Health
AWS Technical Evangelist Ian Massingham will be in attendance to kick things off!
BathSpark: Coffee and Networking at the Hub
Thursday 7th April 2016 – 10:30am – The Guild Coworking Hub, High Street, Bath, BA1 5EB
The Drop in Coffee mornings are a very informal networking forum, where you can come along and meet others who work in Tech in the region.
Whether you’ve just moved your business to the area and would like to build your network, or if you’re well established in the region, do feel free to pop down, have a coffee courtesy of those lovely people at the Guild Coworking Hub, and also a friendly chat.
The forum is there to connect people, spark ideas, and create introductions. At the very least the BathSPARK team will be there to have a chat and help connect you to the right people!
It’s also an opportunity for you to share ideas with the team for events and articles you’d like to see come to fruition over the coming few months.
Bristech: ‘Integrated Quantum Cryptography’ & ‘Go’
Thursday 7th April 2016 – 7:00pm – Bristol Engine Shed @ Temple Meads, BS1 6QH, Bristol
Integrated Quantum Cryptography – Chris Erven
In this talk, Chris will briefly outline some of Bristol’s work in cutting edge integrated quantum photonics, which is allowing us to demonstrate some of the most advanced integrated quantum circuits to date on tiny Silicon chips. This technology is completely compatible with the billion dollar classical micro-processor industry that has powered the PC revolution of the last 50 years, allowing us to piggy-back on the billions invested in that industry to deliver much more advanced devices than would otherwise be possible. We are reaching component densities that are now allowing us to design and implement interesting devices.
Go: as fast as C++ and as simple as Python? – Thomas Guest
Go is a modern programming language designed for a distributed and concurrent world. Can it really be as easy to use as Python and as fast to run as C++? This talk investigates. Expect live coding, flying horses, and answers.
UnrealDevs: Discuss the latest news and tools from Unreal Engine
Thursday 7th April 2016 – 7:00pm
Bristol & Bath Internet of Things
Monday 11th April 2016 – 6:30pm – The Engine Shed, Station Approach Temple Meads Bristol BS1 6Q, Bristol
Three exciting talks this month from some great speakers:
1. Roger Shepherd, Chipless: “Why we set up the B&B IoT Meetup”
2. Paul Wilson, Managing Director Bristol Is Open: Title to be confirmed
3. Andy Powell, Eduserv: “AWS IoT – a cloud platform for building IoT applications”
SWUX: The UX of long term relationships
Tuesday 12th April 2016 – 6:45pm – The Real Adventure, One Glass Wharf, Temple Quay, Bristol, BS2 0EL , Bristol
The UX of Customer Relationships – James Reece
James will explore the importance of nurturing long-term relationships between people and organisations. He will show how a long-term approach to customer experience can give great outcomes for both users and businesses.
South West Data Social
Tuesday 12th April 2016 – 7:00pm – The Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Bristol
The South West Data social is an informal evening for those involved in using, learning about or discovering data technologies to meet and network.
Bristol Salesforce Platform Developer User Group: Lightning Talks/Open Floor
Wednesday 13th April 2016 – 6:00pm – The Famous Royal Navy Volunteer, 17-18 Kings Street, Old City, BS1 4EF, Bristol
The April Bristol Developer User Group will be an open floor meetup. There will be some discussion cards, a couple of laptops and a projector/screen to encourage anyone who wants to do a show & tell, or “group solve” a problem they are having, or present a point/counter-point to step up and give it a whirl. There will of course, be beers, snacks and soft drinks available!
PHPSW:Clean Code
Wednesday 13th April 2016 – 6:30pm – BaseKit, 5th Floor, One Castlepark, Tower Hill, Bristol, BS2 0JA
April features a night all about Clean Code!
Are you a good Code Scout? – Matt Cockayne
Scouts are taught to be adventurous, considerate, thoughtful, effective, diligent, ingenious, thorough, earnest and effective! All of these qualities are ones that we should be striving for as a Developer. Matt will prove that being a Good Scout and being a Great developer are are the same thing. He’ll take you through the actions and attitudes taught to millions of kids aged 7-18 and how you can apply those practices to what you do in your code.
Mission (Im)possible: Quality Decoupled Code with Drupal 7 – Marek Matulka
Everyone is excited about Drupal 8 coming up soon and you want to be ready for it! How can you make sure your code is ready for it? How can you build modules that are backwards compatible with D7 and future proofed for D8? Learn how to build code decoupled from your platform and use it with Drupal or any other framework.
Bristol Web Performance: Progressive Apps in the Real World
Wednesday 13th April 2016 – 7:00pm – cxpartners, 2 College Square, Bristol
Progressive Apps in the Real World – Dean Hume
Progressive web apps bring a whole new world of possibilities to the web. Whether on mobile or desktop, the ability to ensure a smooth browsing experience is the key. Using the power of Service Workers, we can provide our users with powerful features such as offline pages, background sync, push notifications and improved caching! This talk will show you how to use these features!
South West Founders Meetup
Wednesday 13th April 2016 – 7:00pm – Watershed, Canon’s Rd, Bristol
South West Founders is a monthly meet-up for people based in the South-West who have been, are, or want to be tech start-up founders.
They welcome entrepreneurs and tech investors with open arms, but discourage freelancers, consultants, lawyers and other service providers unless they have a genuine interest in founding or mentoring start-up businesses. There is a strict ‘no selling’ rule at their events.
CookiesHQ will be attending as we are official sponsors, so come and say “Hi!”
Bristol Wagtail Users & Developers: Wagtail Support for Sane Content Modelling
Thursday 14th April 2016 – 7:00pm – Omni Digital Office, 14-16 Wilson Place, Bristol
This Wagtail event is aimed at the UX community, and focuses on Wagtail’s UX/ user-centered approach to site builds.
There will be three speakers, with beer and pizza provided, followed by a trip to the Surrey Vaults.
1. Edd Baldry – ‘Wagtail and COPE’
2. Gary Stevens – ‘Reusable model patterns for Wagtail’
3. Third speaker TBC
CodeHub Bristol: JavaScript 101
Tuesday 19th April 2016 – 10:00am – Beatroot Cafe, 20-21 Lower Park Row, Bristol
This meetup is about learning JavaScript together. So far you’ve been using the book Eloquent JavaScript as the basis. In 2016 the focus will be on using different technologies like Node and React, and sharing experiences. There are also plans to build and app together.
Most members of this group have a basic knowledge of JavaScript, but if you are new to it, just work through the Codecademy JS track and/or the first chapters of Eloquent JavaScript – Udacity also has a good JS basics course – then come along.
Read about the format of the meetup here.
SWmobile: April talk night
Tuesday 19th April 2016 – 6:30pm – Neardesk, 1 Temple Way (5th Floor), Bristol
Lightning Talks:
Machine Learning – Andrew Wyld
Dark Arts of WKWebView – Jan Warner
Project Tango – Paul Freeman
Mobile Engagement – Mike Roberts
Bath Scrum User Group: The ScrumPLoP® Project – Towards a rationalized body of Scrum literature
Tuesday 19th April 2016 – 7:00pm – Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre , 2 Lower Castle Street, Old Market, , Bristol BS1 3AD
If broad experience is any indicator, people seem to be getting their Scrum knowledge from noisy and error-prone sources. Jim Coplien rarely gets the right answer when asking people why the Daily Scrum is in Scrum (not even close), about the Sprint failure rate of a best-of-class Scrum team (ditto), not to mention more subtle but nonetheless crucial aspects of the framework.
To address this problem, Scrum community leaders have come together to develop several pattern languages around the Wholes of Scrum. Unlike the Scrum Guide, these patterns provide deep rationale, history, and context for the components of Scrum. Unlike the Scrum Almanac, they reflect the authority and engagement of Scrum’s inventor and of the early shapers of the Scrum framework.
These patterns not only provide a reference body of literature for the community but can be used as practical tools by a team adopting Scrum or transitioning to Scrum. They provide a roadmap for an incremental, piecemeal path to Scrum adoption.
Jim Coplien is the Product Owner of the effort and will say a few words about what pattern languages are, about the Value Stream and Organizational Structure pattern languages of Scrum, and will focus on a few patterns that may surprise even people who consider themselves Scrum experts.
BathSPARK: Springtime Mixer!
Wednesday 20th April 2016 – 6:30pm – The Bath Brew House, 14 James Street West BA1 2BX, Bath
It’s springtime once again and it’s time to celebrate!
Last year’s spring social was a fantastic tech social mixer and drinks event, and nothing’s changed of course; it’ll be another fantastic evening this year too.
Less than 4 months in and it’s already been an amazing year for Bristol and Bath’s tech scene. In February alone we celebrated the best of tech in the West at #theSPARKies awards and were announced as the most productive tech region in the UK by Tech City’s 2016 report.
So pop along and meet with the movers and shakers in the tech industry at the lovely Bath Brew House this April! Perfect for all members both old and new to mix, mingle & seek advice and support from the local tech scene.
Thanks to our sponsors, KPMG, you can enjoy a tipple to warm your cheeks too!
BristolJS: ReactJS & React Native
Wednesday 27th April 2016 – 7:00pm – cxpartners, 2 College Square, Bristol
An introduction to ReactJS – Jack Franklin
ReactJS has really taken the community by storm in the last year or so, bringing new ideas, new syntax and new approaches to front end web application development. In this talk you’ll dive into React and look at how you can build web applications using it. You’ll tackle dealing with data and state changes, handling URLs and even look briefly at server side rendering.
PS: if there’s any specific React questions you have, please let Jack know ahead of time!
Geeking out about React Native – Colin Eberhardt
ReactJS, Virtual DOM, JSX, a hackable editor, ES6 modules, classes, arrow functions, node, iOS, native-UI, flexbox, … and while we’re at it, why not throw in a bit of redux and time travel? In this talk Colin will be geeking out about all the seriously cool tech that makes React Native possible.
South West Cloud: Identity & security in the cloud
Thursday 28th April 2016 – 6:00pm
Details to follow.
Cardiff SQL Server User Group: Common SQL Server Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Thursday 28th April 2016 – 6:30pm
Making mistakes is natural, but learning from them and avoiding them in future takes effort. There’s no substitute for experience or the shared wisdom of others to help you learn what mistakes to avoid. In this session, Tim will share with you a ton of what he’s learned over the years from working and consulting at multiple Fortune-level companies. You’ll hear about real-world environments he has worked on where there was a high impact from administrators making mistakes in how SQL Server was configured and administered. You’ll learn many proven and accepted best practices for installing, configuring and supporting SQL Server to help your environment run as smoothly as possible and you’ll leave with a checklist of items to take home to make sure your SQL Server environment is configured properly.
South Wales Agile Group: Introduction to the Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) Framework
Thursday 28th April 2016 – 7:00pm – Little Man Coffee, Bridge Street, Cardiff, CF10 2EE
Ahmad Fahmy will introduce the group to the LeSS Framework and will cover the scaling dilemma, local optimisation and systems thinking, how to descale an organisation with LeSS and will tell some stories about success and failure.
April BathCamp: Topic TBD
Thursday 28th April 2016 – 7:30pm – The Guild Coworking Hub, High Street, Bath, BA1 5AW
After the success of February’s BathCamp, it will be returning to The Guild in April for another one. So far the confirmed speakers are:
⢠Sam Machin: Home Automation with Amazon’s Echo and Alexa services.
⢠Andy Powell: AWS IoT – a cloud platform for building IoT applications
⢠The team from Blispa: Talking about how they use beacons at big events, including festivals like WOMAD.
Thanks for reading. Leave a comment, or contact me:
@gemma_twomey
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