Hi guys, I'll be in Chicago on Saturday May 12, leaving crack-o-dawn Sunday AM. If anyone in or around Chicago wants to grab a coffee, hang out, break some code, fix some apps, or otherwise just shoot the breeze, post to this thread and we'll get a plan together. @gbakakos: Is Schaumburg near Chicago? If so, first beers on me (or coffee, depending on the venue). d.

Won't be in Chicago, but if the California Clipperon California Ave. is still there, I highly recommend it. Also don't think it'll be warm, froze to death in May at a Cubs game. Fred

Good idea! But your next meeting in Spain!!!

After Spain do not forget the desert and the ticket which I owe to you .:) Have a Nice trip

nice! that's the last weekend before T-Ball starts and my weekends are booked. so lets see if we can get an informal BT user 'conference' together! i can probably offer accomidations downtown if we want to geek out in my office with serious bandwidth. or if you prefer Suburbia USA, my house is close to 294 and 94 @ 25 min from Downtown, easy drive. poor mans DSL speed here, but Cold Bells Oberon will be in the fridge. a coffee house, restaurant, bar, train station all work for me as well. it'd be an honor to meet David and talk shop. i've been to the California Clipper before. We have a ton great bars/music here. yes it will probably be cold. it might be snowing or it might be 85 and sunny. more than happy to host/plan. dinner/lunch, whatever/wherever.

if only i was in Chicago!

@David - can you stop by Saint Louis? My family ownes jimmyscafe.com so dinner on me or coffee? Tony

@ATRAIN53: Awesome. I have no idea how to get around Chicago but will learn Saturday I guess? I'll post where I'm staying when I learn (I'll know in a few days) and won't have a car. Downtown seems logical? @MAGIC_MAN: No car to get to St Louis, rats! How far is the drive on our bike with the red lights flashing? Would love to mee you ;-) Stoked to have an ad-hoc meetup.

@David- About 6 without and 4ish with the lights on. Well the offer is always on the table for you and GNW. Dinner and cards game on me! Plus we get to park anywhere in STL! Even where it says not to. Perks of the job are nice. Have a safe trip.

no problem David - once i know where you are staying we can plan accordingly. i know Chicago inside/out, i'll get you where you need to be or want to go. your hotel might even have a meeting room we can utilize. i hope we can get a few folks together, this seems like an awesome opportunity to meet and learn. and Magic - Amtrak does have a 4 hr train up to Chicago, but i'm OK with Cardinals fans staying in St Louis. pretty amazing to dump Albert and Tony and still dominate. grrr......

David - I'm interested in making the drive up to Chicago to pick your brain a bit. I normally work Saturdays but if you're putting something together I would probably take the day and head up. Once you get the logistics worked out just let us know.

@Warren Evans: Sounds great and I look forward to meeting you. I'll be adding a link to this post on the forum so it's easier to keep an eye on the details. I do know that I arrive late Friday night and leave early Sunday AM so whatever arrangements we make (I'm open to any ideas) they for sure will need to be on Saturday. Hope the drive isn't too far, LOL.

About 210 miles... Not too bad, I've driven a lot further for a lot less.

Guys, I won't be in Chicago but I know of an amazing restaurant that I go to every year I am Down there. It's called Maestros. It's downtown and a lil expensive but god damn, it's the best steakhouse and seafood restuarant I've ever been to. Then head Down to the red headed piano bar for drink and relax. Just a suggestion. Chicago is a great city.

if you ever come to North Carolina that would be awesome!

@Rad Doc: Good plan, I'll try to get there before heading home. I especially like the piano idea! @App Master: NC, sounds good, we'll look you up when we get close ;-)

i'm down with Maestros if we can put that on the BT corporate card! that is one of those places they don't even put the prices on the menu. if you have to ask.... Still hopeful we can get a few more folks together - we can make space and pick a location based on where everyone is coming from. so far it sounds like downtown. my office is right in the Michigan Ave/Wacker area. Warren might be coming up from downstate so the loop is easy target right from 57. just waiting to see where David is staying and we'll take it from there......

You are correct... I'll be coming straight up 57 to get there.

Hi gang, I'll be at Embassy Suites: 511 North Columbus Drive, Chicago. Have no idea where this is but it looks like downtown - funny. I'm happy to hangout wherever's easiest. Embassy usually has a good size lobby, not sure about WiFi. I'm thinking WiFi and a fancy meeting area may not be necessary? Dunno, depends on what we end up chatting about ;-)

You are always welcome to hang out in San Antonio, TX...everyone loves the Riverwalk. :-) If any fellow Buzztouchers want to meet up in San Antonio this weekend, maybe we can Skype in the Chicago group. :-) It would be great to have some local contacts, too.

David - what's your schedule for Saturday? I can be in town for a meet-up basically anytime that works for you. We could also trek out to ATRAIN's office if that makes the most sense. I also like ALFREA's idea about Skype if we can set a time up for that to happen.

@ALFREA: San Antonio, way too hot! Kidding of course. I was in McAllen TX a few weeks ago, geez, super south! I did the Riverwalk a dozen or so years ago and remember it fondly. Cool stuff, for sure I look forward to doing it again someday. Who knows, maybe a BT meetup will bring me there? @Warren Evans: I arrive late Friday and have Saturday wide open for our hangout, no other agenda items (that I know of) on Saturday. The purpose of the trip is not the BT hangout, I'll expand on that when we connect...but, I've reserved Saturday specifically to meet some other BT folks. This just means that it doesn't matter when we connect, anytime's OK and I'll adjust the other Saturday fun around our BT hang-out. Looking forward to connecting...We should set a time / place sometime before Friday so we all know where to connect. I'm open but somebody should pick something. Because I have no idea what the environment's like, I can't say what is best...Embassy Suites lobby maybe then go from there?

perfect - Embassy Suites is a 5 min walk from my office. Have done a few seminars over there. Great location for tourists too, a block from the Magnificent Mile. The neighborhood is "Streeterville" if you want to check out landmarks/stuff to do Dave. Easy walk to the lake/Navy Pier too. They have a Intelligesta coffee shop in the Embassy. small lobby but lots of meeting rooms/areas too. Not sure what time you plan to be up here Warren - but this is what i'm thinking: Meet Dave over at Embassy (say 10/11ish? earlier? i'm up) grab some coffee and then walk over to my building - do some 'shop/training/q&a' and then hit up some food. If you want to go later and plan for dinner, I can do do that as well. I just have to co-ordinate with the wife to keep my 4yr old busy and can't be gone all day. The worst part is going to be the parking. We're not as bad a San Fran - but we're up there. $5 an hour on the street and about $25 for a garage for the afternoon. Street parking is do-able, but they max it at 2 hrs. I'm 25 min out coming in from the burbs, so just gonna do a garage and can send you directions to it right from 57 Warren.

ATRAIN - that plan works great for me - about 11 would be ideal if it works for everyone else.

Sounds like 11:00 AM (Chicago time) at Embassy Suites. 511 North Columbus Drive, Chicago. Lobby area. I'm the tall skinny guy ;-) See ya' then, super stoked.

11 am it is. I'll be the guy in the BULLS hat. (with the stack papers and all kinds of questions!) dress casual: my office building is one of these "Green" buildings and they regulate the heat/ac on weekends to save energy. can't open the windows all the way up here either! If you guys want to exchange digits off line just in case any plans change at last min: skompdev @ skomp.net

Sounds great. I'll be the gray haired grandpa-looking one. Are there any other takers out there to meet up with us? It just seems to be a great opportunity to get together and build some valuable connections. The invitation is open...

Looks like only three of us at this point. Cool, save me some $ on snacks! LOL. I'll send you both an email with my cell info - good idea. BULLS + Grandpa, should be fun

Sorry, I won't be able to make it :( But still keep us updated with new areas and locations when and where youre going! I will definently be there next time!

David and ATRAIN - Had a great time meeting both of you. It was well worth the drive - I learned a lot! Thanks again; I look forward to talking to you both again soon! Warren

Wanted to provide a summary of our 'BT User meeting' from Saturday. a fun afternoon, got to meet 2 great people and the time flew by. We could have hung out for a few more hours I bet! We met as planned @ 11 and chatted for a while in the skylobby at Daves hotel. Took time to get to know a bit about each other. Dave gave us an overview of BT and how it came to be. Then he wanted to see what kind of projects we are working on and what he could do to help us enhance them. So we decided to take a walk to my office and set-up shop and look at some code. Dave showed us some of his apps and features they contain that use standard BT code. Very encouraging to see what you can do with BT when you see how he manipulates it. Gave me some great ideas moving forward how I can use my Self Hosted CP more to service my clients/build apps. Next up was Push Notifications and we looked at code/issues using Urban Airship and discussed the anticipated BT Server PN feature. No ETA here, but BT does understand users want this feature and how useful it is. Then we talked about App business plans for our customers and what kind of services/features/support we want to provide to our clients. We touched on Apple Developer accounts and why submitting them for each customer is better then submitting them under your own account. We discussed the issues with setting up Developer accounts for clients, OTA testing and the UDID dilemma to test apps. the last thing we got into was UIImageView. David walked me thru and example of adding an animation to my first plug-in. I was then treated to a beginners BOOL "BEER OBJECT ORIENTATED LESSON" over a couple of cold ones. I've been striving to start displaying my own items/images/code in "my first plug-in" and with directions and notes from David, I now have a working animated screen using UIImageView as my first plug-in! This was exactly the kind of insight and I hoped meeting with David would provide. Learning from each other in a small group was fantastic and quite productive. Meetings like this are a great way to build this growing community. Other users provide great insight. I learned a few things from Warren. Thanks for taking the time to meet with us David. If the opportunity comes up and David is in your area, don't miss the chance to meet David and talk shop. I'd love to do it again sooner than later!

Pray tell more about the plugin. Fred

Nice one, good stuff. Can feel the joy in your post.

^^ I do plan to. it's my first piece of code that i've 're-purposed' from another code sample. i'm still looking at it closer and playing with it. But to have an entry point where i can break out of the BT code and into my own screen that still works in the app - this is a huge step for me thanks to some hands on instruction David. I'd like to learn how to make the screen work with the Self Hosted CP so it can be used like any other plug-in and has a configuration screen. Right now i'm just editing raw code to manipulate it. so keeping in mind the JSON screen approach is BT proprietary, this could prove to be just as hard as learning how to create and manipiulate the UIImageView itself! where to start with the configuration screen....?

I might be able to help you create the plugin. First things first. You need a name for the plugin. The rest is easy. Fred