Bring Your A(rchitecture) Game (and win big)!  
It's Time to Deal With Technical Debt!

Wednesday, September 24th, 2014
6:30 - 8:30 PM

Want to be an architect?  Think you can handle the pressures and decisions?  Experience is the best teacher, so come find out what it's really like to be an architect (and have fun!) by playing a board game with your fellow HJUG members.  Bring your favorite gamepiece if you'd like!   The winners will each earn an extra door prize ticket!

After we're done with the game, we'll have a Q&A retrospective and Justin Self will share his thoughts with us on technical debt:  Do you know what technical debt is? More importantly, do you know what it isn’t? In this talk, we are going to explore what technical debt really is and how the business should be involved when you make decisions that will impact them later. We might step on a few toes and maybe even start a healthy debate, but after it’s all said and done, we’ll all be a little smarter and better prepared for it.

Justin Self proudly declares himself a developer teammate. He is not a rock star. He is not a mad scientist. He’s not a midnight coder and he’s not the center of attention (well, sometimes he tries to be). Instead, he is dedicated to making teams better by being a better teammate and helping those around him grow. His love of creating better software is seconded only by his passion to help others make better software. He is a Believer and family man, originally from Tyler, TX and lives in Spring, TX with his wife and newborn son. 

Please RSVP

RSVP by going to http://hjug09242014.eventbrite.com We will need an accurate head count in order to know how much pizza to order.

Meeting Location: PROS

3100 Main 
2nd floor 
Houston, TX 77002 
Map

Suggested Parking:

Park across the street in the parking garage on Elgin on the 7th floor, taking a parking receipt as you enter the parking garage.  PROS has stated that anyone arriving AFTER 6PM can also park in the Blue PROS employee parking on the 3rd or 5th floors when attending HJUG.  Parking is free after 7:00 PM, so you won't have to pay as you exit. Take the elevator to the 3rd floor of the parking garage and walk across the sky bridge. The HJUG meeting will be on the 2nd floor on the left just before you reach the elevator bank.

Meeting Sponsor: Improving Enterprises

Improving Enterprises is an advanced software development professional services firm. We challenge the basic assumptions of traditional technology service models. Our people are senior, seasoned professionals who bring years of real-world enterprise development experience to the table in the form of Agile software development process & principles.

Our mission is to offer an esteemed level of quality IT training by using real world solutions, supported by a dynamic, energized team focused on providing excellence in and outside the classroom.

Specialties:
Certified Consulting, Mentoring, Agile, Applied Training, Rural Sourcing, Microsoft, .Net, Java, Networked Recruiting, Room Rentals, Project Management, Quality Assurance

About our venue sponsor: PROS

We aren't your run-of-the-mill software company. We're true to our word. When we say your success is our number one priority, we mean it. We'll work side-by-side with you to deliver on every promise every time. At PROS, we don't just see ourselves building software. We see ourselves as building blocks in our customers' success stories.

Our Core Values:

• Ownership - We take responsibility.
• Passion - We love what we do.
• Pride - We accept only the best.
• Trust - We can be counted on.
• Integrity - We do what's right.
• Innovation - We create possibilities.
• Customer Centricity - We put our customers first.

Door Prizes and Giveaways! - must RSVP on Eventbrite to win

• JetBrains has donated one IntelliJ license to be raffled off at this month's HJUG meeting if we have 30 attendees, two if we have 50 or more
• Hello2Morrow has donated a SonarGraph Personal license to be raffled off at this month's HJUG meeting
• ZeroTurnaround has donated a license of JavaRebel to be raffled off this month
• Headway Software has donated a license of the new Structure101 Studio
• CoderGears has donated licenses of their product JArchitect
• SemanticMerge has donated a one year license of their product to one lucky winner, and another to the speaker.

Meeting sponsored by Structure101 for Tangle free software.