GeekNight returns to Calgary! We'll be eating pizza, drinking beer, and working on something fun. Possible ideas, in no particular order, include:

• Halo league system. MikeMason doesn't know his JSPs from his elbow, but is determined to write a fancy web app to track exactly who is the reigning office Halo champ. Come experiment with the latest fancy web architecture.
• NEW! Anything related to Halo wouldn't be right without an element of competition. Because we can't compete in IntenseIT, I'd like to propose a small intra-office coding challenge for this Halo league system. This would involve defining a minimum specification for the requirements, some simple ground rules (T2: NO RABBIT PUNCHES), and some sort of timeline. I think this would not only be fun, but it would allow us to share some development practices, architecture and technology too. Both .Net and Java are welcome. I recommend teams with a minimum of two developers. Don't be afraid to hop on a .Net team even if you're a Java developer, as those .Net folks might need some help with such stiff competition. If there are other ideas for the application (other than the Halo league system), please share. You non-coders have a role too. We'll need judges, referees and bouncers!
• Project Infrastructure night. Plan, set up, figure out and implement all the bits of glue you'll need on your project. This will include at least version control, continuous integration, unit testing and build scripts, but not necessarily in that order. Have fun getting all the pieces to work and play nicely together.
• CruiseControl.NET feature fest. With a concerted push currently going on to get CCNet ready for a 1.0 release, let's get some of that work back to Calgary where CCNet was originally started. Got a feature you want? Come implement it!
• Berkeley DB JE. There's now a pure Java implementation of BDB, the high performance database used by tons of really serious applications, including Subversion. We'll need to get our heads around a non-relational DB model to use it, which will provide for an interesting twist in thinking.
• Project X. Come tell the rest of the gang about a cool project you're working on, or an idea that's just a twinkle in your eye but will become the next big thing. Fun, but with learning. Like Kindergarten with jello.

Every Wednesday, 6pm onwards in the 10th Avenue office, pizza and beer provided. Timing experimental for now – if another day's better we can change it in future.