Upcoming Code Retreats

This year has seen a huge surge in practice-oriented events, and code retreats are definitely in the fore-front of these. We've seen them happen in several cities in the US, plus even retreats in Iceland and Romania. Most recently, I hosted one in Chicago, where we had some great people practicing the craft together.

I'm working on organizing a couple more (one more in Chicago, one in Durham, NC, plus one in Cleveland), but there are two coming up that I wanted to let people know about.

Chirag Dadia and Sebastian Hermida are hosting a code retreat on November 1st in Philadelphia, PA. If you are in the area, you definitely want to come. They will be doing it in traditional style, in Java, but don't think you can't get something out of it if you aren't a Java developer; the practice you gain comes in handy whatever language you are using. I will definitely be attending this code retreat.

Looking more into the future, Jeremy Anderson is organizing a code retreat on January 23rd, 2010(!), in Grand Rapids, MI. It is a few months away, but put it on your calendar. This is sponsored by Atomic Object. This code retreat is going to be done in Ruby, so sharpen up yours skills. Stepping outside the standard Java box makes it a bit more difficult for just anyone to show up (you need to have a basic skill-set with Ruby), but, if the Chicago Ruby Code Retreat was any indication (and it was), you are going to have a great time. I'm going to do my best to make my schedule work to get to this one.