• Meet some somewhat local developers (the majority of those I know are out of state),
• Find out if the traveling to Columbus was worth the bother (about 90 minutes one-way),
• Learn more about Groovy and Grails.

It was a decent size group, especially considering this was the second meeting of the day (they also meet during lunch on the same day.). I had a chance to talk with several people while there, and look forward to going back.

I think the travel time will not be an issue for me, although working from my home office much of the time has spoiled me — it had been quite some time since I had to tangle with commute time traffic in a large city. I listened to some Mac Developer Roundtable podcasts on the way up and back, so it kept me in the “working” mode.

The presentation by Joseph Faisal Nusairat was on “Spring Web Flow inside of Grails “. He is a co-author of “Beginning Groovy and Grails“, and seemed to know Groovy and Grails well. Since the presentation was on integrating Spring Web Flow and Grails, it was not a lot of detail on Grails itself — Joe bravely did live editing and demonstrations, and recovered well from those gremlins that afflict any live development session. I learned enough from the session to pique my interest in Groovy and Grails, and will probably spend some time in the next couple of months exploring them. I think Spring Web Flow looks promising, but I would need to read more about it before I would commit to trying it.

All my goals were met, and I found the evening worth while. I plan on attending again.

Doug