NoVA Hackers - 3 years old and still going strong
I missed the 3 year anniversary of NoVA Hackers but I did want to make a post about it since we are still going strong and are now at ~150 active members.
Chris Gates and I started this thing together back in October of 2008 which spawned off of Chris’ idea to start a AHA (Austin Hackers Association)-like group in NoVA. It’s ideals merged with the already going NoVA Security Luncheons that I was throwing in Reston VA and DC was where it all started.
The only rule we have is participation, and mutal respect. We wanted to have a place where people could present anything from awesome new ideas and pre-confrerence test-runs to the security settings on a mac. Accessible so that people could learn how to speak and get in front of people, and trusting enough so that people could do those pre-con / crazy idea talks and not worry that it’s going to get tweeted/blogged about.
With that said Georgia is awesome enough to record the presentations of members who do wish to be recorded and posts them regularly to the interwebs here:
you can also find them on the rarely updated NoVA Hackers Blog: http://novahackers.blogspot.com/
We now have 5-10 speakers every month (2nd Monday of the month unless moved for other reasons), we have pizza, beer, snacks and an awesome location (thanks to Lucas Lyon). Out next meeting is July 11th actually, so get invited quick!
Are you in the NoVA / Maryland / DC area? Ask for an invite here: http://groups.google.com/group/novahackers
or if you know someone in the group you can simple ask them to invite you.
Just a word of warning, we do take the participation rule seriously, lurkers and non-participants are cut from the list.
(Our definition of participation means asking questions (think instant access to industry experts), starting discussions, or responding to the questions on the mailing list, or showing up for meetings. But the best way and the easiest way to be able to slack a bit on the mailinglist or attendence side is to present. That is the main reason for the group/meetings)