Community Building And User-group Organizing: Mike Hall Interviews Tim Murphy | SCNA 2012
Community Building And User-group Organizing: Mike Hall Interviews Tim Murphy | SCNA 2012
Meet Tim Murphy, the founder and organizer of SciTag, a user group for IT architects in Chicago. The group meets monthly to discuss architecture-related topics and has a diverse range of speakers covering various platforms and technologies. Don't miss out on this informative session! #ITArchitecture #ChicagoTech #UserGroup #TechMeetups #SoftwareCraftsmanship https://just3ws.github.io/interviews/tim-murphy-software-craftsmanship-north-america-2012
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, it's Mike with Eukatastic again. I'm sitting here at a SciTag meeting. What is SciTag?
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
SciTag is the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group meeting.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And I'm sitting here with Tim W. Murphy, T. W. Murphy on Twitter, who runs the user group. Hi Tim, thanks for sitting down with me. Thank you. Can you tell me a little bit about what is SciTag?
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
Well, Chicago Information Technology Architect Group, the whole long name that we're officially required to have there because Architect is a protected name within professions in Illinois.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
We have to call it Information Technology, otherwise we can sue. Oh, good. We started in 2008. Four of us that wanted to get together and discuss architecture-related topics. But we didn't want to limit it to one particular practice within architecture. We essentially sit down with Microsoft people, Java people, Ruby, you name it. That's what I was going to ask.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Is it a Focus on a platform?
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
We're very agnostic as far as what platforms we cover. Granted, the group that started the Architects Group was all Microsoft people. We had an architect evangelist from Microsoft, Larry Clarkon, Carl Franklin from Maven Wave, and a gentleman from CBW, Stephen Rylander. Carl and I are the only two that are left from the group at this point, and between shuffling our normal consulting jobs and trying to get speakers so that we can offer the Chicago community We have a view into different technology topics that affect the way we architect solutions. Okay, so your talks are more like kind of higher level, this is how we put together solutions, not so much implementation details. We vary. Some of them are very high level concepts, and other ones, we've had a couple, one that we did last year was Java versus C# in design patterns.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
So we went down into the code and, you know, more of an application architect level, and then we've had ones that were data architect or information architect driven. I've been to one of your meetings before, but it was under a different name.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
What was the, it was the CAG, the CAG?
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
Yeah, it was the Chicago Architects Group. Chicago Architects Group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Now, when you kind of mentioned having to change the name, was that why? Yeah. Okay.
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
We, since we only had architect as part of the name, we got some lawyer cease and desist letters and had to sit down with the lawyers for the architectural profession within Illinois.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
And they allowed us to change the name to Chicago Information Technology Architects Group. So they were, I mean, was it just like a cease and desist or were they like, we're going to sue you? It was, you stop calling yourself architects or we busy. Okay, so at least it was, which is really, it's strange that they would restrict it, but I guess there's union concerns or something, or? It's, architects, physical architects are considered trained, certified people, whereas that's not something that's currently done within the IT architecture space. We don't have a formal process. The ISA, the International Association of Software Architects, has been trying to do that, and that was one of our original options before creating this group was do we become an ISA chapter?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Tim Murphy
community building and user-group organizing
But there were a number of legal things that we would have had to have taken on as an official entity and a board of directors and everything else that we were more interested in. And then supporting the community right away than trying to set up all of that infrastructure. Yeah, and that's cost money and it's time. Well, yeah, and we, you know, we need a whole business plan and everything else that went along with it. So we, we, we just opted to go with more of a free form, um, forum type of environment. Now, uh, what kind of, uh, meetings you have, are they more presentation style or do you have, um, lab type of work? No, they're, they're all presentation style, uh, kind of open forum question and answer. Uh, they're usually about 45 minutes long. And, uh, you know, as far as the presentation itself goes, it will go maybe to about an hour and a half once, uh, questions are factored in.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.