UGtastic’s most recent interviews are with Martin Atkins, Jonathan Baltz, and J.C. Grubbs. – Find out more about the people behind user-groups, meetups and technical conferences. Run a meetup or user-group then signup to get your community featured today.
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Remember me Forgot your password? Guest Martin Atkins Welcome To the User-Group Industry. You're
Going To Have a Good Time. Martin Atkins is an artist, teacher, author and musician who’s uniquely
open to new experiences. He started out as a drummer in bands like Public Image Limited and has had
a broad career of collaborations notably (for yours truly) with bands like NIN and Ministry. Most
recently he’s also published several books on surviving the music industry and has presented on the
music industry at conferences like Madison Ruby and ChicagoWebConf and has been sharing his
experiences running a successful Kickstarter Campaign. Let’s just say he’s a very busy fellow and
has some good thoughts that we should take the time to listen to. I’m very excited about this
interview and consider it a high point in my interviewing career. :) BTW, a Ministry tape was the
first piece of real musical rebellion I had squashed by my mom way back when I was a teenager, so
this is also a bit of a fan crush getting to speak with someone who helped create some of the music
I still enjoy. Make blackberry jam. Sponsored by ChicagoWebConf Interviewed on 2012-10-06 by Michael
D. Hall | Published on 2012-12-02 | permalink Guest Jonathan Baltz The Force of Sales Jonathan
Baltz runs the Chicago Heroku and Chicago Force.com Developers user-groups. We discuss the
differences and similarities between the types of people who gravitate to the two different
meetings. Sponsored by ChicagoWebConf Interviewed on 2012-10-06 by Michael D. Hall | Published on
2012-11-28 | permalink Guest J.C. Grubbs Chicago's Web Conference JC Grubbs is one of the lead
organizers of ChicagoWebConf conference and the CEO of DevMyndSoftware. ChicagoWebConf was founded
to fill the gap between developer focused and designer focused conferences. Sponsored by
ChicagoWebConf Interviewed on 2012-10-06 by Michael D. Hall | Published on 2012-11-25 | permalink
Guest Melissa Castello Learning About Interviewing Melissa Castello is a trained, professional
interviewer who’s worked interviewing people in the professional poker and horse racing circuits.
She’s gotten a chance to travel all over and hone her interviewing skills in sometimes high-pressure
situations. Sponsored by ChicagoWebConf Interviewed on 2012-10-06 by Michael D. Hall | Published on
2012-11-21 | permalink Guest Kumar McMillan From the People That Helped Make the Web Open, Mozilla
Might Do the Same for Mobile Phones Kumar McMillian works for the Mozilla Foundation for the team
working to create the Mozilla OS. Kumar talks a bit about working with large, distributed teams with
many volunteers collaborating with paid engineers to create a potential competitor to the Android
and iOS phone operating systems. Kumar also helps run the online radio station ChirpRadio. Sponsored
by ChicagoWebConf Interviewed on 2012-10-06 by Michael D. Hall | Published on 2012-11-18 | permalink
1 2 3 4 5 … Next › Last » UGtastic grew from the belief that interacting with people for a few
minutes can convey more or different ideas than blogs and twitter. Based on that idea, we aim to
collect a a series of short interviews with individuals who run user-groups, meetups, tech
conferences or are otherwise involved in supporting technical communities. If any of the above
applies to you, or you're engaged in fun software related things like running large F/OSS projects,
speaking at conferences, or simply feel that yours is a unique perspective on technical communities,
we should have a chat! Drop a note here to set up an interview or let us know what you are working
on and how we can help. We'd love a chance to learn something together. Published Interviews Welcome
To the User-Group Industry. You're Going To Have a Good Time. Martin Atkins The Force of Sales
Jonathan Baltz Chicago's Web Conference J.C. Grubbs Learning About Interviewing Melissa Castello
From the People That Helped Make the Web Open, Mozilla Might Do the Same for Mobile Phones Kumar
McMillan Citizen Programmers in Chicago Paul Baker AM Community Mike Busch Around the World in 80
Lines of Code Corey Haines Asynchronous Community Sean Massa and Todd Larsen Conference
Craftsmanship Angelique Martin Mastering Space and Time Noel Rappin Technically Literate Technical
Communities Steve Klabnik Coding in the Great Outdoors Evan Light Hackfests on Rails Ginny Hendry
Lights, Camera, WindyCityRails Adam Grandy Railers Gone Mad in Madison Stephen Anderson Five Years
of WindyCityRails with Zolk Kevin Zolkiewicz From Java to Ruby and the Communities That Bind Them
Eric MacAdie A Designer Perspective for a Developer Community Ryan Singer Ideas Like a Thunderbolt
Brian Liles Midwestern and East Coast Ruby Community Benjamin Oakes Community Makes Code More
Interesting At Madison Ruby Jim Remsik Second City, SecondConf Amy Kinney Extra! Extra! Read all
about it! Chicago Tribune Supporting Chicago Tech Community! Jen Lindner and Milan Dobrota Just in
love with Ruby & JavaScript Justin Love Chicago: Big Shoulders, Big Data. Ethan Gunderson and Ryan
Briones Chi-town Craftsmanship Jim Suchy and Steve Kim Fest of Geeks Dave Hoover GOTO Considered
Helpful Dave Thomas A Refreshing Group in Chicago Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, and Shay Howe Getting
Chippy with ChiPY Brian Ray Pat Paasch And Clark Sell Founded Anglebracket A Clark Sell and Pat
Paasch Scott Seely Runs A Net Users Group Up In Scott Seely Zach And I First Met At Software
Craftsmanship Zach Shaw Michael Norton Sits Down With Me To Discuss Michael Norton Software
Craftsmanship in the Steel City Dustin Updyke .NET in the top-left corner of the USA Bobby Johnson
Flexing in Houston Drew Shefman I can't imaging a Chicago Ruby scene without Ray bringing it all
together. Ray Hightower Software Craftsmanship in the Land of Corn and Hoops David Dickinson and
Ross Beehler Sandro Pinged Me On Twitter After I Put Out A Call Sandro Mancuso and Tom Brand DC .NET
Max Lancaster Tech community in Denver & Boulder Charley Barker Alternative's in .NET Sergio Pereira
Upcoming Interviews Andy Lester Wed, Dec 5th Aaron Kalin Sun, Dec 9th Igor Polevoy Wed, Dec 12th
Aaron Bedra Sun, Dec 16th Tim Ottinger Wed, Dec 19th ugtastic by michael d. hall is licensed under a
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