Back in October 2003, I signed up as an organizer for the Northern NJ MySQL Meetup Group. I mostly let the group sit idle, since I didn’t have much time to really promote it. Then, a year later, Steve G. contacted me and said he’d be interested in actually meeting up! Thanks to Steve, I scheduled the first meetup in March 2005 and even blogged about it. Four people attended that first meetup: Steven B., Steve G., Mike I. and myself. I was absolutely thrilled, it was a great success.
Almost a year later, we’re still meeting up every month. This past meetup, the February 2006 meetup, we had a whopping 11 people attend! This has been our largest meetup to date. I even posted a few photos from the meetup as proof. Steve G. gave his presentation on the “contact manager” project we started last meetup, this time using Smarty templates for PHP. He’s posted the code up on njgeeks.org, check out his blog entry where he links to the code. In attendance were: Glen B., Steven B., Jim D., Juan G., Steve G., Mike I., Doug M., Nancy S., Bill W., Kipp W. and myself.
At the meetups, we discuss all sorts of things, not just strictly limited to MySQL. We discuss whatever is of interest to the folks who attend, which has included MySQL, PHP, Debian and Ubuntu Linux, various web startups, Web 2.0, blogging, podcasting, RSS and syndication, social networking, writing books and so on. I’m even trying to get folks interested in AOLserver and Tcl, although it’s never easy to do. We’ve been meeting at the Panera Bread on Route 4 West in Paramus, NJ, the one that’s in the same mini-mall as the Daffy and Kohls, across the highway from the Bergen Mall and the Cittone Institute. We meet around 7:00 PM although I usually can’t make it there until 8:00 PM. There’s free wi-fi at the location, so bring your laptop if you’ve got one.
If you’re interested, I urge you to join our meetup then RSVP for the March 2006 meetup. If you’ve got questions, don’t hesitate to contact me, I’ll be glad to answer whatever questions you might have. Hopefully, we’ll see you at the next meetup! Come celebrate our first year anniversary meetup and see what we’re all about.
Tags:
meetup,
new jersey,
local,
event,
mysql,
open source
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
Dossy,
I’ve often thought of starting a AZ bloggers or AZ PHP group however sadly I don’t know as much and alot of my time is taken up with work that is besides my family and PHP, MySQL, Apache (Though I use all of them). That being the case I hope you have a good time and interaction with them.