I hosted a Global Day of Code Retreat in Helena last year. It seemed like people had a good time and learned a good amount.

I think it would be great if we had one (or more!) of these in Montana again this year.

A Code Retreat consists of a day of language independent coding exercises. Each exercise is 45 minutes long and followed by a brief retrospective. Exercises are done in pairs.

The exercises are geared to the skill level of the participants during the day. The emphasis is on good software design practices. Expect to be challenged. Expect to learn a lot.

At least half of the participants will need to bring a computer with some sort of development environment setup. It's best if everyone does. Last year we had participants using Java, Javascript and Ruby.

This event is friendly to people of all skill levels and users of all languages.

The official site: http://globalday.coderetreat.org/

Our official event listing: http://coderetreat.org/events/global-day-of-code-retreat-helena-mt