I would definitely participate in this.<br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 9:27 AM, Matthew Nuzum <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:newz@bearfruit.org">newz@bearfruit.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Hi, I was able to participate in a cool user-group concept called a<br>"code dojo" last week. It was a great idea. The group starts out with<br>
socializing and eating (this is optional, but the socializing part<br>should probably not be excluded), then the premise of the group is<br>explained to newbies, then a plan is set forth. In my case this was<br>the 8th meeting so the plan was to decide how to continue from the<br>
previous meeting.<br><br>Then you split into a number of groups of about 4-5 people to<br>effectively pair program where you pass the keybaord about every five<br>minutes. The goal is to accomplish the agreed upon task in the time<br>
allotted (1 - 1.5 hours), at which point each team demonstrates what<br>they accomplished, why they chose the path they did and what successes<br>and problems they encountered.<br><br>The group I participated w/ on Thursday evening was extrodinary<br>
because each of the four groups actually had a working project at the<br>end. Admittedly, at the actual end several of the groups were so close<br>that they extended the time by 5 min to achieve this, but apparently<br>having working code is not a given.<br>
<br>The point is to learn collaboratively. Each team is assigned at random<br>(i.e counting off) so you're bound to get different skill levels and<br>experiences. Unless everyone in the group is an idiot, I'd expect that<br>
it would be near impossible to leave w/out learning something new.<br><br>I'd like to bring this idea to our area. Here's a wiki: <a href="http://codingdojo.org/" target="_blank">http://codingdojo.org/</a><br><br>
Thoughts?<br><font color="#888888">--<br>Matthew Nuzum<br>newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, <a href="http://identi.ca/" target="_blank">identi.ca</a> and twitter<br>_______________________________________________<br>
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