Boston/New England Area User/Developer Group Interest?

General
1

I decided to throw this out here as the New York Group thread started to move northward and I didn’t want to hijack it. I’m curious to know how many users are in the area and if there is interest in starting a user group.

2

Well, you saw my comments there. I’m about 30 minutes east of Hartford. Springfield would be ideal for me personally, but it’s a bit too far for Bostonians. I think Springfield or Worcester are the only practical options given that they’re on the Amtrak line. I just hate Worcester.

3

We are located about 20 minutes south of Worcester (formerly in Worcester), so Springfield, Hartford, and Boston are within a reasonable distance. This could be a good opportunity to build the Xojo community.

4

I’m in Portland, Maine. Worcester is about 2.5 hours from me, which is about as far as I could consider driving.

5

Peter et al,

Have you had any more interest in pulling a New England group together? I work with Tom above who replied to this in May. We work in Central Mass. which appears to be well central.

This is something we would like to pursue,

Cheers,

Arthur

6

Not a nibble besides what you see here.

7

@Dana Brown can help you by sending an email to everyone that has a license within # miles of where you are going to meet.

8

@scott boss I’d be happy to!

9

Thank you Dana. That would great. Do you need anything from us? Based on the response so far, we probably don’t need to rent a venue or anything. We could host it in our offices.

Arthur

10

Well, if you guys define a meeting date and announce it, I could probably forward it to 50 people around Boston.

11

Thank you Christian.

I will contact Peter and Tom and see if we can come up with a possibility. Between your distro and Dan’s we ought to be able to shake up a little interest.

Arthur

12

I’m in Boston and might be interested.

13

I am outside Hartford, and would be interested.

14

[quote=227178:@Arthur Couture]Thank you Dana. That would great. Do you need anything from us? Based on the response so far, we probably don’t need to rent a venue or anything. We could host it in our offices.

Arthur[/quote]
Oh, I missed that you had decided on Boston. Ok, do you have possible timeframe? I’d like a bit more information to include in an email to people - sometime this month, next month? Maybe a survey for dates? Thoughts?

15

Dana,

I just ran a few ideas past my business partner Tom Rupprecht. Here is what we came up with based on the people who have responded so far. We, ICAL, seem to be roughly centrally located. We were thinking that an office environment might be a better place to talk than a restaurant. Our office is located in Whitinsville MA off route 146. Unless we get a much bigger response than we have seen so far, we could host a group here.

If the group gets larger or people want a different venue we are flexible; we just needed to start with something.

Here is our suggestion:

LOCATION:

  • ICAL Systems will host the first meeting (101 Church Street Whitinsville MA)
  • ICAL would provide basic refreshments (coffee, snacks, etc.) There are also restaurants nearby if people want to dine out.

PROPOSED DATES:
12/4, 12/8, or 12/9 @7:00PM (suggestions only, we are open to other dates and times.)

SUGGESTED TOPICS:

  • Basic meet and greet (who are you; what do you do; etc.)
  • Business development strategies
  • Technology shop talk
  • Specific Xojo Tech. Topic Review (If desired, as an example, we could review how ICAL uses Jasper Reports with Xojo)

Beyond that we are open to ideas. Based on the response we get, we can change and shape what this might be. We don’t know the mechanics of how Xojo handles email from clients, so we will look to you to get the word out. At ICAL we maintain our own SMTP servers, so we can setup a group distribution list if people don’t want to share their address information with everyone.

Thank you,

Arthur

PS - people interested in this MeetUp can also contact us at support@ical.com

16

OK this is good information, I’ll start to put together an email. So, in terms of travel - what states do you think I should include for the email list? NH, MA, RI, and CT? Any others?

17

You might want to add Vermont and Maine as well. They are not as likely, but traveling from the Southern part of either state would be possible as a day run. We have traveled further in a day to check out different opportunities or to meet people.

We, ICAL, are also used to working with people remotely. It’s good to get face time with people, but if this goes anywhere we had also discussed using Google Hangouts as an option to possibly extend it at some point.

Let’s see what we get for responses.

Thank you again.

Arthur

18

I’m in.

I’ll get my email address to you for updates. Depending on the length of the meeting the time might be late for traveling a long distance.

19

Please post the final date decision. Maybe even an announcement which I could forward to plugin users in the area.

20

All,

Here it is, the first official ‘New England Xojo Meetup’

LOCATION:
ICAL Systems, 101 Church Street Whitinsville MA
We will provide basic refreshments (coffee, snacks, etc.) There are also restaurants nearby if people want to dine out.

DATE:
12/8/2015 starting at 6:00PM.
We are planning two hours, but we are flexible unless people decide to camp here.

SUGGESTED TOPICS:

  1. Basic meet and greet (who are you; what do you do; etc.)
  2. Business development strategies
  3. Technology shop talk
  4. Specific Xojo Tech. Topic Review (If desired, as an example, we could review how ICAL uses Jasper Reports with Xojo)

(This is totally new, so we plan to be relaxed about the structure. Suggestions are welcome right up to the last.)

Please confirm by Friday 12/4 by email to support@ical.com so we can make sure to have everything ready…

Thank you,

Arthur Couture
(on behalf of ICAL Systems)