Welcome

SD-GTUGers,
In this, the first of several inaugural posts to the new SD-GTUG blog, I would like to introduce myself and give a brief overview of some of the things to come in the near future. I am a software engineer at Sony, and have been working on server-side webapps-specifically in the eCommerce and marketing space-for the past five years. The majority of my professional experience is J2EE and Ruby on Rails, but my extracurricular passion these last few years has been mobile applications; specifically native Android clients. About a month ago, I took over as manager for our chapter of GTUG, and have been meeting with the other organizers to begin planning some events that I hope you will all attend.

Enough about me. I am certain that if you made it this far into the post, it's because you want to know when the next event will take place. There is a social event that we are planning to host in Rancho Bernardo on June 15th at a restaurant called Urge. We are still hammering out the final details, but check back here in the next few days (or on the official SD-GTUG Meetup page) for more details. Then, in August, we are planning to start more regular meetings that are more technical in nature; bootcamps, tech talks, hackathons, etc. The reason for the gap between the social event and the start of the tech events is that we are working on the logistics of lining up a space that can accommodate us on a regular basis, as well planning out relevant topics and peer-pressuring people into speaking about them. Stay tuned for details on all of these events.

I am excited to be helping to drive this group. I use the term drive loosely; being new to managing this group, I rely very heavily on the other organizers for their input. Google has a lot of technology for us to explore, and San Diego has a wealth of talented developers that I am looking forward to meeting. If we can also drink some good beer along the way, it will be a fun journey!

Regards,
David C. Sainte-Claire