Working in a Winter Wonderland
Published: February 2009
Mix Well and Enjoy...
12th February 2009
Mix Well and Enjoy...
Last night I went to the 12th DotDorset get-together in the Duke of Wellington Pub at Wareham. This informal gathering of people working in IT-related businesses in Dorset has become a really enjoyable fixture in my diary.
Each month, usually on the 2nd Wednesday, we gather at a real-ale pub, taking it in turns to visit Dorchester, Weymouth, Wareham and Poole, usually somewhere not too far from the railway station.
The evenings are a good chance to talk to a diverse group of people who are involved in a wide variety of IT businesses. Some work in hardware supply and infrastructure development, building digital connections for Dorset's business economy. Others are programmers; software and website developers of all hues. There are those who are (like me) a bit of a jack-of-all-trades and there are those who are expert in particular development frameworks or languages; Django, Perl, Joomla, Zend and others.
There's a website about DotDorset here.
Apart from being interesting to hear what people are working on, and hearing of new developments in the sector, the conversations range far beyond geek-dom. Growing vegetables, sea-fishing, local food, and enjoying the fabulous county that we find ourselves living in all crop up in conversations in the course of the evening.
But almost the most enjoyable part of the evening is being able to talk about what you do for a living without everyone in the room glazing over!