• We visited three great supporters of CocoaHeads through the year – KeyOptions, NineMSN, Roamz and Atlassian
• We farewelled our longest reliable member (and did I mention Acadamy Award winning developer), Alan Rogers, losing him to the cold and unyielding climate of Melbourne
• In unrelated events saw our regular attendance hover around 30
• Some of us were lucky enough to have tickets to go to WWDC and see the last Stevenote (not to mention queuing from midnight and a chair odyssey that ended in dumpster diving for cardboard and bubble wrap)
• We had a sombre night remembering Steve Jobs, meeting the evening of the day we all heard the news
• Many of us got to take part in Swipe Conference down in Melbourne – Australia’s biggest and best iOS and Mac developers conference ;)
• And of course we finished the year with a bang (and a Mariachi hat) with Mike Lee, the world’s toughest programmer, at Sydney’s biggest ever CocoaHeads that sold out at 200 people (and yet mysteriously more than 200 turned up – including some ring ins from the SharePoint users group!) with huge thanks again to the YOW! conference for letting us have one of their speakers for free

We had loads of great presentations. I’m sure no one will forget Manuel’s talk on physical computing involving poking electrodes into a stunned cockroach, nor Tom’s epic series on SQLite, UITableView, and the Core Data sledging that ensued.

Based on the number of recruiters prowling around and the uptick in startup funding, 2012 promises to be a bumper year for both iOS and MacOS in Sydney. The sheer volume of people with a year or so iOS experience is also a lot higher than, well, a year or so ago. So I have great hopes for an expanded and more lively CocoaHeads in 2012.

To that end, this Thursday we’re going to kick off with a slightly different approach. Firstly Craig Stanford is going to give a short (and possibly unscripted) talk about his experiences developing hybrid native/webview apps at NineMSN. Following that I’m going to give a talk on how I prepare ideas and content for talks. And finally I’ll bring up the talk idea spreadsheet and we’ll do some brainstorming, voting and volunteering.

Where: Our location is again the very friendly guys at Roamz: 23 Foster Street, Surry Hills NSW http://g.co/maps/6p6ds

When: Thursday February 2nd, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM

See you there! Don’t forget to let me know if you want any of the books I have to give away. The ones left are:

• Learning the iOS 4 SDK for JavaScript Programmers (O’Reilly)
• iPhone Application Development for iOS 4 (Visual Quick Start Guide)
• Programming iOS 4 (O’Reilly)
• Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (Second Edition – a little old) by Aaron Hillegass
• Head First iPhone Development (O’Reilly, although not the usual O’Reilly standard to be honest)

http://is.gd/pWnNjJ

After last month’s sombre meeting we have a few exciting things to look forward to!

November CocoaHeads

When: Thursday November 3rd, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Where: Roamz, 23 Foster Street, Surry Hills NSW http://g.co/maps/6p6ds

Speaking for November is CocoaHeads regular Manuel Betancurt talking about Physical computing and the iPhone, sensing and actuating  the world. It will include demo’s of a robotic kit and a very awesome neuron measuring system.

You won’t want to miss it!

I’ll keep my talk on the new core data threading model up my sleeve, but I suspect that Manuel’s talk/demo will prompt enough Q&A to fill the night.

And, as alluded to last month:

December CocoaHeads is in November

Mike Lee, World’s Toughest Programmer

CocoaHeads Sydney, with YOW! Conference and Atlassian are pleased to present Mike Lee speaking on Product Engineering. Come early for pizza and beer, meet new people, catch up with old friends.

Legendary product engineer and World’s Toughest Programmer Mike Lee (@bmf) has worked on apps for Alaska Airlines, Delicious Monster, Tapulous, United Lemur, Apple, and Nextive, producing such hits as Delicious Library, Tap Tap Revenge, Obama ’08, and Apple’s Mobile Store.

Mike Lee talks on Product Engineering

The plan for cashing in on a “million dollar idea” tends to start with step 1, an idea, and end with step 3, profit. The mysterious step 2 turns out to be the hard part, both because it is mysterious, and because it is much, much more complicated than one bullet point will allow.After having a doctor with a flashlight explain where ideas come from, we’ll explore step 2. We’ll start with presenter Mike Lee’s $1,000 an hour idea refinement service. Then we’ll lay out the steps necessary to turn a refined idea into a product…

As space is limited and we expect this to be very popular outside CocoaHeads, you need to register for your (free) ticket. Here are the details:

When: Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 5:30 PM

Where: Atlassian, Back door entrance 173-185 Sussex St, Sydney http://g.co/maps/rvs5x

Rego site: http://yownightmikelee.eventbrite.com/

More info: http://www.yowconference.com.au/YOW2011/general/details.html?speakerId=2275

Exciting news for this month is a new venue — we’re back in Surry Hill thanks to the Roamz guys!

The usual date and time, October 6th (first Thursday of the month), 6:30 pm.
The new address is 23 Foster Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010.

Map: http://g.co/maps/6p6ds

I’m might roll out my /dev/world talk — it’s more core data, specifically the new stuff in Lion and iOS neutrino (abstract at http://auc.edu.au/DevWorld+Sessions+2011).

I have a few feelers out for another talk, but I think they are going to be away. If you have something you’d love to talk about let me know, or we can finish up with a hack night.

Come and let’s welcome the Roamz guys into the Apple fold. See you all there!

So that leaves us (ie. you) without an organiser or a venue. Perhaps
people want to discuss a social get together at a pub somewhere? Sorry
for the late notice. Please discuss on the list ( http://groups.google.com/group/cocoaheadsau ) since no one reads the comments on this blog!

In any event, there will be plenty of post-Swipe excitement for next
month’s meetup!

And it’s Core Data month, with Craig Stanford doing a talk on MagicalRecord (taking the pain out of Core Data) and Alan Rogers doing a short talk on how he takes the pain out of multi-threaded Core Data.

It’s also giveaway month!

Firstly we have 5 (count them, five!) tickets to giveaway for Mobile YOW! Night Sydney, August 24. YOW! Mobile night is a once a year event – last year our own Nathan de Vries spoke, this year yours truly is speaking! Those who miss out, the Mobile YOW! night is only $10. http://yownightsydmobile.eventbrite.com/ (YOW! Conference is a developer conference you should check out – it’s in December and despite all the Microsoft people in attendance it promises to be awesome with speakers like Simon Peyton Jones, Chad Fowler and Mary Poppendieck. http://www.yowconference.com.au/ )

You might also be interested to know that there will be 1 (count them, one!) Swipe Conference ticket being given away, and details will only be available at the YOW! Mobile night.

But wait, there’s more! While talking about Magical Record, by Saul from Magical Panda, Craig will have Magical Panda pins and stickers to give away.

And finally, I will give a an excellent vinyl Pumptheory.com sticker to the first 5 people to correctly tweet to me (@markaufflick) how many exclamation marks there are in this message, with a link to http://sydneycocoaheads.com in the tweet!

Craig Stanford will again be hosting us all at NineMSN. NineMSN is the building above Australia Square. 264-278 George St, Sydney.

Thursday, August 4, 2011 18:30 at NineMSN, level 7, 264-278 George St, Sydney, Manhattan room

Google Maps link: http://is.gd/u2nVip

We are meeting on Level 7 in the Manhattan room. Level 7 is public access and the room is directly in front of the lifts. The lifts do lock down level 7 at some point though, so if the lift won’t take you to level 7 give Craig a buzz on (0431 019 676), or me on 0438 700 647

Mark.

Unfortunately I will miss out on these excellent talks, so Craig Stanford will be hosting you all at NineMSN as per the previous few months. NineMSN is the building above Australia Square (which is ironic, since the building is round). 264-278 George St, Sydney.

Google Maps link: http://is.gd/u2nVip

We are meeting on Level 7 in the Manhattan room. Level 7 is public access and the room is directly in front of the lifts. The lifts do lock down level 7 at some point though, so if the lift won’t take you to level 7 give Craig a buzz on (TBA). Don’t call me because I’m in Scotland!

Mark.

In unrelated news, I am making a belated attempt to get up to date with slide decks on this blog. The first of Tom’s epic series of talks is available in the github account:

https://github.com/cocoaheads/sydney/tree/master/presentations/2011

And David’s talk on iOS UI testing are on slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/DavidReidy/automated-ui-testing

http://www.slideshare.net/DavidReidy/aui-testing-scripts