Chicago Alt.net: Mike Hall Interviews Sergio Pereira

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Hi, this is Michael sitting down with Sergio Pereira. He runs the Chicago Alt.NET user group and I'm just going to ask him a few questions about his group. We'll start off with, well, what is Chicago Alt.NET?

Sergio Pereira Chicago Alt.NET

It's very hard to define what Alt.NET is. I'm not going to dare try to define it. It's something that people want to define when you're starting Alt.NET. But I can give a few traits that could more or less describe the group. So I think we are mostly developers that are going after the continuous improvement and improvement of self or processes and also the quality of the software that you write. We like to think we are not necessarily . net developers, but we are developers that happen to use . net a lot. Probably like . net a lot. And I think we try to also give a little bit of a voice to things that are good practices, good components, good methodologies that may or may not come from Microsoft. It may or may not even be . net necessarily. So we try to give space for those things to be talked about. So it isn't just about technologies that are related to Microsoft and . net, but things like testing and Agile and things like that. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that was Alt.NET, but how do people find out about your user group? Do you have a site?

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

Yeah, so, well, we do have our site. We have Chicago Alt.NET. Yeah, moving to that. We have an account on Twitter. We have a mailing list. In reality, this site and all the communications are mostly about our events and meetings. There's no propaganda of any type of thing there. It's really just about the group events. But you can find out by subscribing in several ways. I mean, I think the site has everything you need to know to get info about the group. Well, so, you know, we can contact you via the site or via the Twitter. You said that there's a mailing list. I'm sure all that's linked through the site. It's all on the site. There's a calendar. There's everything there. Okay, and so, what is kind of your meeting schedule? Do you hold regular meetings? It's a monthly, bi-weekly? How do you do it? Yeah, we have a monthly meeting. We almost always meet on the second Wednesday of the month. We meet on the Sears Towers. We list towers at Redpoint Technologies. It's usually, well, I guess we start at 6:30 on those days. And it's once a month. Why do you, why do you go at 6:30? Why, why 6:30? Which is 6, 5 o'clock, 8 o'clock?

Sergio Pereira Chicago Alt.NET

I think, you know, I don't really know why. It just has always been 6:30. I guess it's not too bad for people that work in the city and it's viable for people that are catching the train from the suburbs. And

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

so, you know, like, how many people typically do you see at a meeting? Like, what is, do you have, I mean, you've been doing this a while. How about, over the last couple of years, how many people have, you typically see, do you see, like, a few people or is it? I think, so, I think an average meeting would have, like, 25 people. We have capacity about 50. And we hit that several times. But normally it's really around 25. So it's a good size, I think, group for anyone that even has not necessarily given talks to other user groups. Right. So, I think I encourage our members to give talks. Because they probably give talks to their, you know, development teams at work. Yeah. And it's just a little bit of a next step to bring their talks to our user group. It happens a lot. Okay, so, I mean, you try to not just bring in external speakers, but you're trying to cultivate speakers inside the group. Oh, for sure, for sure. I think so. Especially in . NET. . NET's a funny, . NET developers are funny type of developers. I mean, they have grown up being told what tools to use, how to do things, mostly by Microsoft. There's not a, you know, it's kind of comes with the territory. I mean, you work . NET's a popular platform in businesses and enterprise, and it kind of comes with the kind of developers that you end up having in . NET. And so, there are not a lot of . NET speakers that are into non-Microsoft things. Some are, but they don't talk about. There's no venues for them to talk about. So, one way to change that, we believe it's one of the charters of our group, is to create more speakers within the community. And so, we really try to get our members to be encouraged to present on topics. And how often you're going to find a . NET user group that will invite you to talk about in Hibernate. Yeah. Or Goldsharp. Or Iron Ruby Mike. Well, I have to say that the first user group I ever wanted to was Chicago Alt.NET. And the first user group I ever spoke of was Chicago Alt.NET. So, that's why I wanted to interview you first, because Chicago Alt.NET is always, even though I'm not in the . NET community anymore, it's always going to hold a special place in my heart. So, ultimately, it really kind of comes down to, for you, you've been doing this for a few years now, why do you do it? Yeah.

Sergio Pereira Chicago Alt.NET

I think, so, I think an average meeting would have, like, 25 people. We have capacity about 50. And we hit that several times. But normally it's really around 25. So it's a good size, I think, group for anyone that even has not necessarily given talks to other user groups. Right. So, I think I encourage our members to give talks. Because they probably give talks to their, you know, development teams at work. Yeah. And it's just a little bit of a next step to bring their talks to our user group. It happens a lot. Okay, so, I mean, you try to not just bring in external speakers, but you're trying to cultivate speakers inside the group. Oh, for sure, for sure. I think so. Especially in . NET. . NET's a funny, . NET developers are funny type of developers. I mean, they have grown up being told what tools to use, how to do things, mostly by Microsoft. There's not a, you know, it's kind of comes with the territory. I mean, you work . NET's a popular platform in businesses and enterprise, and it kind of comes with the kind of developers that you end up having in . NET. And so, there are not a lot of . NET speakers that are into non-Microsoft things. Some are, but they don't talk about. There's no venues for them to talk about. So, one way to change that, we believe it's one of the charters of our group, is to create more speakers within the community. And so, we really try to get our members to be encouraged to present on topics. And how often you're going to find a . NET user group that will invite you to talk about in Hibernate. Yeah. Or Goldsharp. Or Iron Ruby Mike. Well, I have to say that the first user group I ever wanted to was Chicago Alt.NET. And the first user group I ever spoke of was Chicago Alt.NET. So, that's why I wanted to interview you first, because Chicago Alt.NET is always, even though I'm not in the . NET community anymore, it's always going to hold a special place in my heart. So, ultimately, it really kind of comes down to, for you, you've been doing this for a few years now, why do you do it? Yeah.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

What are your thoughts on changing the .NET developer type of definition or stereotype?

Sergio Pereira Chicago Alt.NET

I think there's a lot of room for improvement in your average .NET developer. I don't like the terminology, but in reality, that's what it is. And I think that over the last four years, not because of my group, of course not, but I've seen so many changes in .NET. I mean, Visual Studio now shipped with jQuery. Really, that's huge if you look back four years. So, there are many things changing. Microsoft is an MVC platform. A bunch of those things changed over the last four years because of feedback and pressure from people. Some of those were associated with .NET back then. And I think that makes the .NET developer a better developer, you know, having access to things that are just normal in other platforms. So, you enjoy being able to give developers who might not otherwise have an opportunity to voice their thoughts and ideas and what they're passionate about, a platform to come and learn about other people's passions and to also share their own. I want to give the regular .NET developer a chance to see better ways of doing things that he might not have a chance to see.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

How do you think these changes are impacting the .NET developer community?

Sergio Pereira Chicago Alt.NET

I believe it's better, although I hope to not be running the user group. So, I do believe it's better, but it's my opinion. Right. And, you know, people come because they hope it's better. They don't know for sure, but they hope it is. And I do want them to have a chance. If I could, I would like to bring every single .NET developer that worked with me to attend those meetings. Because I think it could be changing for them to see, you know, see how test-driven development is done, how behavior-driven development works. So many people don't know those things because it's just not part of the .NET culture. It varies by organization. Of course, there's always good places that do the right things, but it's not the rule. And I think that by having those people come and see ideas from other platforms, other groups of developers brought to .NET, and even .NET technologies that are just not mainstream, because they don't have a voice, they don't have a magazine that shows them all the time. That's the place that they can come, see those things, and judge for themselves if it's going to work for them or not. And there are people speaking and showing those things. They have facts and numbers and examples from other languages, and even from .NET, that they believe it works. And they want to show you that everything's going to work for each other. And I think that's more or less it. I like being part of that, like helping people a lot, and I think if any little bit of thing

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

What can I do to help a .NET developer become better?

Sergio Pereira Chicago Alt.NET

That's really great. And just a few more specifics about the meetings themselves. You said typically you see in the range of 20, 25. Do you typically see people coming repeat? Do you start to have regulars or do you continually see new people? Because the .NET community is so huge. It's huge. So we do have regulars, of course. We have a core group of people that will be there no matter what every month, even if it's something that they have already learned, just like Hangouts. So we have people that are there every month. We have, depending on the topic, we have lots of people that are not .NET developers just because we're not necessarily talking about .NET topics every time. And we're .NET developers, but we're developers. So we mingle with all developers from all platforms.

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

I believe the last meeting or the upcoming meeting is Kanban. Yeah, it was this week. Yeah. So an app, not everybody was a .NET developer there. I think it's awesome that that happens. That's the thing. I mean, all my participation in community events, I make sure it's not about .NET, it's about software development. I participate in Chicago Code Camp as well, the same thing. We try to not make it about .NET, even if it's heavy on .NET, but it's not exclusively .NET. And again, just a few more questions about the meetings themselves. Do you typically have food? Oh, yeah. Don't worry about that. We are guaranteed food every week. Our sponsor's main sponsor is Red Point, which gives us the space and dinner. So it's every month. I don't think we've ever had a month that we didn't have pizza, so I'm very thankful for them. Do you like pizza? Yeah, I think they're salad too. I don't pay attention to those things. And in the typical format, do you usually have people coming in to talk? Or do you ever do hands-on exercises? Is it more of the presentation style in the group where people talk?

Sergio Pereira Chicago Alt.NET

Yeah, that's where there's a clash of culture at .NET world. We tried several times to have more hands-on events and more participative type of meetings. And they just didn't go as well as we thought they should have gone. I think people, fortunately, or fortunately, that's just the way they grew up in .NET. They just expect to attend those user group meetings and sit down and watch a presentation and in the end ask questions. And the pool will eventually participate during the presentation asking questions, but that's the extent that they expect to see in a .NET user group meeting. We had other occasions that we tried to have what we call the open projector nights where anybody could come with any 10-minute

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic

presentation, very similar to lightning talks. Yeah. And just keep their talks. All the same. It barely worked. It kind of had mixed results. Yeah, it barely worked. So, most of the people that came were the people that wanted to talk. So, nobody came to see them talk. So, I just realized there's not a lot of interest. We used to have a beginning of the meeting divided into two sections, a shorter presentation, and then more of a debate or a fish ball or whatever. And the first few work, then people start leaving after the presentation. Because that's really what they're there for is the presentation. So, we kind of cut on the discussions after. We tried to start food early so people can mingle and network and talk about things and just have a presentation at the end. I think that's what most people are interested in saying. It's funny because they are interested in seeing that and they, for whatever reason, they like someone to be there to select topics. Right. You know, the participation. You like to curate it. Yes. You know, it's not. The . NET meetings are very different from the ChicagoRuby meetings. I mean, it's not like people go in the meeting and they offer talks and they volunteer to do talks or discuss what the next topic would be. For whatever reason that I don't know. That just doesn't really work well. Maybe it's just we didn't figure out how to make it work yet. So, I'm in that role of me and Eduardo and trying to find the speakers and the topics that could be in line with the group's interest and has been working. We've been doing this for almost four years now. Okay, great. Well, again, this is Sergio Pereira with Chicago All Time Act. Thank you very much for being my first interview. No problem. Take care.

Chicago Alt.net: Mike Hall Interviews Sergio Pereira | SCNA 2011

Mike Hall

Sergio Pereira

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