Laptop Mafia

I’m in the process of planning our first Laptop Mafia CodeCrush session. While we have a great time with the folks at LeanDog, CWSA and various other gatherings, it would be nice to have something just a tad more local.

Rather than focus on talks and presentations or turn this into a code competition, CodeCrush is going to be about sharing code, techniques and tool tips through flash coding sessions and peer review.  Every session we’ll pick a framework (Rails, CakePHP, Django, etc), pick a theme (blog, wiki, etc) and code furiously in groups until the time limit is met. Once completed, each group would present their code on the overhead explaining the techniques/methods they used and why they chose them.

I’m hoping that this will lead to a somewhat quicker dissemination of knowledge compared to people just sitting through speakers or having code judged by some far of group much later.

I’m also hoping that by using different frameworks, maybe even to build the same app in a different session, we can begin to practice our trade (like a musician would…thanks Corey Haines!) rather than just writing something once and never honing that particular skill again over time.
What do you think?