The first Spring User Group (SUG) event was held in Manchester on the 8th April at the Core Technology Centre in Manchester (a superb venue for anyone looking to hold an event in the North West). 46 people attended, which was fantastic for the first event and the feedback was all very positive. Attendees travelled from as far a field as Glasgow, Southport, the Midlands as well as Manchester and surrounding areas.
We were treated to practical demonstrations by Rob Harrop from Spring Source on Building REST applications with Spring Framework 3.0 and Jan Machacek from Cake Solutions on Building an application using the Spring Framework 3.0. The video of both talks can be seen at, http://vimeo.com/channels/opensourcecentral. The code for Rob’s talk can be found at http://github.com/robharrop/restlist/tree/master or for checkout users can simply do: git://github.com/robharrop/restlist.git. Jan’s code can be found at http://www.cakesolutions.net/teamblogs/2009/04/09/sug-source-code/.
The topics most requested for talks in future events were OSGI, Groovy and Spring security, we are actively arranging talks on these subjects. The consensus was that the SUG North West be run bi-monthly so the provisional date for the next meeting is the 3rd June 2009 at the same venue. If you want to be kept in the loop for future events or announcements please join the LinkedIn North West Spring User Group, e-mail me at guy@springusergroup.org.uk or visit the SUG website at http://www.springusergroup.org.uk/.