PROMISES
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I love the Christmas season - the air is full of promises. New toys for kids, new fashions, surprise gifts and unexpected visits from friends and family. With everything that can possibly be squeezed into the last month of the year, a new Meetup Group decides it's a perfect time have its first meeting. After a great response to its initial creation (now at 57 members), the meeting time and place is carefully chosen to make it something we can all remember and cherish - the promise of Huntsville.js fills our head. It's a perfect plan for new beginnings, new friendships, and realizing the promise of JavaScript in every corner of our life. Then, no sooner was the meeting time and place announced, when the flood of RSVP's began arriving and it seemed the promise would come true. Yes, we might even have to move our meetups to the Von Braun Civic Center to handle the crowd! (okay - Maybe I stretched this - so far it's 39, not really a flood but a steady stream that's great for a starting group).
Then out of nowhere, like a fatal error raising its head in a mission critical application executing a line of code I've written, an email arrives from Keith Ford, the Organizer of the North Alabama Web Developers Meetup. It says "I see you've scheduled the JS MeetUp on top of ours". Argh!!!!! After all that planning, the promise to my employer of its benefit, the promise of code to JavaScript developers all across the Tennessee Valley, how could I live with myself. But Keith, being the gracious Organizer that he is, the guy most directly responsible for the fantastic turnout at eLab's bioNode conference in October, continued his email with this, "I will be able to reschedule for December, but I wanted to find out if you had a recurring schedule yet. We have always met on the second Wednesday of the month, and I know we have a big overlap in our membership, so I want to make sure they can attend both MeetUps." WOW! I can't say thanks enough to Keith for rescheduling and I can't apologize sufficiently for anyone that counted on the Web Developers meeting this month. I've definitely learned a lesson here and it's that we are one big community with overlap in lots of areas. And, after looking, I see other interesting meetups you might be interested in including hsv.py, the Huntsville Big Data and Science meet-up and even the Makers Local 256 group for you entrepreneurs. So one of the first topics next week at the Huntsville.js meeting will be the schedule ahead. I've got exciting ideas about what that might look like and can't wait to run it by all of you before I lock it in. I promise!
In case you're wondering what else we'll do for an hour and a half, I'll give you a hint of what's in store. In the tradition of the bioNode event, we'll have giveaways that includes things you'll treasure for a lifetime. We'll be announcing significant events in the JavaScript community, and as suggested at bioNode, we'll be making time for the exchange of both job opportunities and job seekers. We'll have time to set our course ahead, get excited, and oh yes, look at some code - I promise.
Maybe you caught the theme without using Hadoop to do a word frequency histogram. Or you may have whipped up a node.js app to handle the analysis of this small note yourself. But I'll give you a hint (like I haven't already) the theme is PROMISES.
So, without any more chatter, I want to introduce the main event. David Lee, currently working on Respoke for Digium, another great Huntsville company, has agreed to give a shortened version (30 minutes) of his recent Nodevember conference smash hit - JavaScript Promises. I've seen David's slides and you'll be getting more code than you could ever hope to see. I also know David, and can 'promise' you that you'll leave feeling like a developer should - eager to try this stuff on everything you touch. After his talk I wouldn't be surprised to find JavaScript Promises in everything you build before the year's end.
So thanks for waiting on this event, thanks to Keith Ford for being so awesome, and thanks to David Lee for adding the secret sauce (JavaScript). It's going to be fun, lively, and of benefit to all. I hope I see you there and please don't hesitate to spread the word through the social media of your choice.
See you at the Jackson Center on December 10 at 11:30. I promise.
Richard (HooYah)
PROMISES