Cleveland & Pittsburgh Community w/Michael Norton

Hi, I’m Mike. I’m sitting down here with Michael Norton, who is involved in helping to run and lead the Cleveland Agile, or excuse me, the Cleveland Ruby Brigade, the Cleveland Agile Group, and the Pittsburgh Agile Group. Okay, so that’s a mouthful. So can you tell us a little bit about, you know, you’re doing three groups. That’s a lot. Yeah, well, it’s not that difficult when you’ve got good help and you’ve got good groups. You know, the way we kind of run them, on occasion we will have a meeting that is basically an idea generation meeting, right? So kind of like you do with an open space. Yeah, like a kickoff meeting. Yeah, exactly. So Pittsburgh Agile Group is the most recent one that we started, and kind of how we started that is a good model. It’s the same pattern we use to keep them running. Okay. We’ll have at a venue, if it’s in Cleveland, it’s on our boat, but in Pittsburgh, it’s usually a venue of one of the members, right? And we’ll have a party, so there’s food, there’s drinks, whatever, and we’ll actually have a few laptops that are set up, and we’ll kick off a discussion about, you know, what is this group about, what do we want to talk about, what’s of interest to the members, and then as people come up with ideas of things that they either want to present or would like to have presented, they go ahead and key that in. They go ahead and key the idea into Meetup, and then folks can kind of vote those up, vote those down by saying, “Hey, I’m interested in attending.” And then in, like for Pittsburgh Agile, we have a couple of folks from Matrix Solutions and Visimo that help to, actually I wouldn’t even say help to run this group, at this point they really run the group, but they’ll kind of look at the topics and then maybe reach out to folks and say, “Hey, do you want to present on this, or do you want it presented?” And we usually try and get the schedule out two or three months in advance, so people know what’s coming up. Okay. And then it’s a matter of just kind of watching that backlog, because it starts to diminish. If you’re not hearing new ideas, then throw another idea party. So okay, so you do these kind of, these idea parties, kind of, I don’t want to say irregularly, but whenever they’re needed. Yeah. And then, “Oh, we’re getting a little anemic on our, kind of our backlog of topics, so let’s have another idea.” And just, because that’s kind of a new concept for me, I haven’t heard anybody else doing anything like that before, where you just get some people that are just from the group together. Right. It’s basically, it’s actually a group meeting. Okay. So it’s kind of, it’s as if we were going to do an open space, but we don’t actually cover any of these topics, we just talk about what do we want to talk about, record that, see that, hey, we’ll do these in future meetings. Okay. And do you, so you’re usually able to have the people that are attending run the meetings themselves. You’re not always bringing in external speakers? No, but often, oftentimes it’s members of the group themselves that are actually speaking. On occasion we do bring in external speakers. Cleveland Ruby Brigade is one where, you know, maybe a member says, you know, “Wow, I’m really interested in, interested in NoSQL database.” Right. Right. And we got the opportunity to have John Newmaker come in. Well, yeah. So, yeah. So we brought him in. But oftentimes it’s the members themselves that are giving the presentations. Okay. You know, we do have, again, for Cleveland Ruby Brigade specifically, I just recently made that a nonprofit. Oh, okay. So you actually have, what’s the type of charitable business? I can’t remember what the status is. It’s not going to, but it allowed us to raise some funds and so we can actually use that to bring in speakers. We can also use that to pay for meals or refreshments at events. So now what happens is sponsors, it used to be that we, at every meeting, we try to get a sponsor lined up to pay for that meeting’s meal. Okay. And sometimes that coordination was very difficult. Now we can say, “Hey, if you want to sponsor, just, you know, let us know.” Throw a few bucks into the… Exactly. We’ll put that into the coffers and then we’ll take care of all the rest of the logistics. Oh, okay. And most of the time, sponsors are fine with that. On occasion, one will say, “Hey, I want to make sure that you, you know, make sure you mention our name.” We’re glad to do that. Yeah. Yeah. So with the three meetings, do you ever, when you do these idea parties, is it just you have the people from the Ruby Brigade at the Ruby Brigade IDN? Yeah. Yeah. So you’re not just the group that’s running the group. You’re the group that’s running the group. Yeah. So you’re not just the group that’s running the group. You’re the group that’s running the group. Yeah. So you’re the group that’s running the group. Yeah. So you’re the group that’s running the group. Yeah. So you’re the group that’s running the group. Yeah. So you’re the group that’s running the group. Yeah. 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• I appreciate sitting down to talk with you.