One of the things that I'm most looking forward to about my ongoing transition to Boston is getting involved in the development community. I have no doubt that New Bedford has a few developers around, but the [meet-up community](http://www.meetup.com/) is completely dead, and the chances of me making [3 hour](http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Gilligan-s-Island-Posters_i1617189_.htm) round-trip to Boston on a week night just to talk shop are slim. But, now that I'm up there every day for work, you can expect to see me out on the town, [hobnobbing](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=hobnob&searchmode=none) with the [geekiest of the geeks](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=geek&searchmode=none).






I went to my first meet-up last week: [The eXtreme Tuesday Club](http://xtcboston.blogspot.com/). It sounds like it might involve [jumping from a plane with a snowboard strapped to my feet while drinking Mountain Dew](http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/MtDew), but it's actually a group for [Extreme Programming](http://www.extremeprogramming.org/) (XP) zealots. I'm not actually a zealot about it, but I've seen it work brilliantly in the past and it's an experience that I'd like to repeat. That single, trancendental experience doing full XP with a great team was probably the most stress-free, fun, and productive project that I've ever been involved with.






I had a great time at the meet-up. It wasn't heavily attended, but it was great talking to the few people that were there about [continuous integration](http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html), [checked exceptions](http://www.artima.com/intv/handcuffs.html), and [other geekery](http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/I/itcrowd/). There were a couple of guys from [a local Agile shop](http://cyrusinnovation.com/website/), a woman from "a very large company", and a sales guy from an IT services company. The sales guy was a bit out of his element, but he did manage to sit through my explanation of XP. I love trying to explain technical concepts to non-technical people, so I think I may have gotten more out of the experience than he did.






I'll be back again next month, and in the meantime, there are meet-ups for (in order of eagerness) [JavaScript](http://javascript.meetup.com/2/), [Python](http://python.meetup.com/181/), [Web Design](http://webdesign.meetup.com/83/), [Ruby](http://ruby.meetup.com/87/) and [Java](http://java.meetup.com/10/). If you see me out hobnobbing, be sure to say "hello" and hand me the nickel that you owe me for reading this.

*[XP]: Extreme Programming