Extreme Programming Club - one year on
Yorkshire’s first, and only, Extreme Programming (XP) Club is nearing its first anniversary – so what’s happened so far?Founded in March 2007 by a group of developers from Erudine, the XP Club is an informal discussion group for Yorkshire’s large, and growing, software development community.
The XP Club is closely modelled on the (relatively) famous Extreme Tuesday Club in London, which is a long-standing group of enthusiasts who meet in a particular pub every week to discuss agile software development methodologies and argue the toss about programming in general.
Based in Leeds, the XP Club now has an impressive bunch of regulars who attend every month, often with presentations on their own areas of expertise or on contentious ideas that inspire them in their work.
The XP Club has also formed alliances with other groups and individuals from the world of agile software development over the last 12 months. These affiliations include the club’s counterparts in Manchester and Scotland – Agile North and Agile Scotland respectively – and the GeekUp community, which represents ‘grassroots geekery’ in the north of England.
Members of these other groups, as well as industry experts from outside the region’s developer community, have given presentations, held seminars, and shared ideas on a regular basis.
Club organiser Daniel Drozdzewski believes the club has found its feet after managing to attract interesting speakers and overcome the publicity problem.
“Essentially it boils down to a chicken and egg problem: you won't find interesting presenters without having an audience of a respectable size, but you won’t attract people to come without good talks about cutting-edge technologies and groundbreaking ideas,” says Daniel.
“But we’ve learned a lot in the last 12 months. In order to break that vicious circle, we’ve used our industry contacts to set up some really good talks and increased our media presence. I think it’s made the offering even more attractive.”
The XP Club meets on the second Wednesday of every month, and also has a regularly updated blog (extremeprogrammingclub.blogspot.com) where you can find details of forthcoming meetings and other events.