Thursday "Virtual Brown Bag" Meetings

June 28, 2010 · 2 min read

One of the best ways for developers to learn from each other is "brown bag meetings", where they bring their lunch to a conference room and share tips & tricks.

That's something I've always wanted to do, but there aren't a lot of others at my organization who are interested in doing that.

I've been lurking at "Virtual Brown Bag" meetings organized by Claudio Lassala the last couple of months, and have enjoyed them a lot.

They're held every Thursday from noon until 1PM U.S Central time via LiveMeeting.

Claudio's suggestions for the sort of thing that people could share at the meetings:

  • A shortcut in Visual Studio, Windows, whatever, that you’ve learned or have been using for a while;
  • A tool (free or commercial) that you can’t live without it;
  • A tool that you may have run across, find it to be interesting, but are not sure about it yet. Maybe somebody else already uses the tool and can jump in;
  • An article, book, or blog posts you’ve read and want to talk about. It may be something you’ve read and couldn’t quite understand; maybe somebody else can shed a light on it for you;
  • Some command, language feature, workaround, design pattern, etc., anything you’ve learned or run across and could share with the others;
  • Something that you’ve found a way to implement but still think that there’s got to be a better way to do it; maybe somebody else can tell you what the other way is;

It's usually Claudio & JB who take turns presenting, but they genuinely encourage everyone to share. I think others probably feel intimidated by "the wizards of smart", though:) I've contributed a few links and comments via the Q&A interface, but hope that sometime soon I'll have something cool enough to get on the mic and share my desktop.

You can join the weekly meetings via this link:

If you can't wait 'til Thursday and want to see a recording of a previous meeting, see http://virtualaltnet.com/Recordings.

There's also a wiki with links to topics discussed during the meetings: http://sites.google.com/site/vbbwiki/

If anyone knows of other "virtual brown bags" held midday in the U.S., please let me know. I have four other free weekday lunch hours:)

EDIT: 10/9/2010 - There's a shiny new Virtual Brown Bag web site: http://www.virtualbrownbag.com/

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: Brian Schroer

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