Folk,

It was good to see nine people at our first meeting.  And I'm looking forward to having even more of you at our next meeting.  Also, thanks again to Avanade for supplying the space and food – it's good to find a suitable place in downtown Seattle.

Next month we are meeting on the second Monday (July 9) from 5:30pm – 7:30pm.  At same place: Avanade Inc., 2211 Elliott Avenue, Seattle.

Here are my notes from last night's meeting.  If I've misspoken or omitted something important, my apologies; send us corrections.

Attending: Bart ? (whose last name I didn't get - sorry!), Brian Henderson, David Anderson, David Socha, Dragos Dumitriu, Geoffrey Heller, Jason Clark, Jason Marshall, and Jeff Marrow.

Action items:

• (David Anderson) Send out email about group charter
• (Jeff Marrow) Ask about hosting for our website
• (David Socha) Send out reminder emails about July 9 meeting
• Start a backlog of meeting topics
• Suggest good software for our website / wiki / forum / etc.  Is the technology that Construx uses suitable for us?
• Decide upon and procure a domain name for our website

Decisions:

• We'd like a website for this APLN chapter.  At a minimum, it should stay up, have its own domain name, contain meeting information, have a calendar of future (and past) events, and be spam proof.
• We are going to work on a mission statement and group charter for our APLN chapter.
• Continue to meet on first Monday of the month, from 5:30pm – 7:30pm at Avanade Inc.'s downtown Seattle office.  (Except for next month when we'll meet on the second Monday in order to avoid the July 4 issue.)
• We'd like to have an Open Space at each meeting.  Next meeting we are planning to start with food at 5:30pm during which people can suggest Open Space topics, then do Open Space conversations until around 6:30pm, and then meet together until 7:30pm.
• When we have invited sessions / speakers, advertise widely to bring in a good crowd.

During the meeting we discussed "What's in this for me?" or "Why will I come back to these meetings?"  Here are the answers that we wrote down:

• Forum to discuss management aspects; agile versus traditional
• Do agile development to develop agile tools
• Invited sessions / speakers
• Find new ideas / tools
• Broad base of membership (not just PMs)
• Support group
• Practical application of agile skills (apply immediately)
• Networking
• Social networking
• Practical application (Let's Try It!)

- David Socha