Monday 21st January 2008, the start of a new year of NxtGenUG meetings in Birmingham and what a great turnout. A room full of 29 keen as mustard developers and suchlike gathered to greet long distance traveller Craig Murphy and chat about Test Driven Development (TDD).

The evening started with attendees arriving to the tune of "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers that heralded a swathe of jaunty Scottish tunes including "Donald Where's Your Troosers", "Bye Bye Baby" by the Bay City Rollers and the all time classic "Hoots Mon" by Lord Rockingham's 11.

Quite obviously feeling at home especially wearing his Tam O'Shanter, Craig admired and inwardly recited the wonderful poetry now displayed on the screen written by his legendary countryman Robbie Burns. "To a Mouse", "Tam O'Shanter" and "Address To A Haggis", 3 classic poems by the aforementioned poet paraded themselves on the screen adding to the atmosphere of a now buzzing room.

6.45pm and after the briefest of notices, and an awesome introduction by myself (so modest ...), Craig was off and running, and in between posing (see right) for the camera, managed to give us the introduction to his session on Test Driven Development. Craig's aim was to take the mystery out of the subject and he certainly did that, showing that TDD is a logical process, and with the breaking down of larger problems into simple steps, a robust application can be built.

How did he do? Well feedback suggest pretty good. I certainly got the idea, so chalk up one major victory for Craig.

No Haggis, due to catering constraints, but the Pizza was marched in and laid out with dutiful solemnity, and as an impressive display of feasting as I've seen in a quite a while was put on by the attendees. Within the space of 10 mins, 8 family size Pizzas were reduced to crumbs and empty greasy boxes alone ...

So onwards with Part 2 and a straightforward review of FinalBuilder with a number of impressive demos of its capabilities. Time was pressing, but a plea for more time was answered in the affirmitive and with the all round agreement of the gathered throng. I particularly liked the ability to easily interact with the whole build process via simple scripts. Nice!

With the final Questions and Answers done, it was on with the 'Swag-Out' and another outing for the now legendary 'Swag' Distribute-O-Meter written in XSLT that paragon of languages. Swag was farily and equably distributed although somehow Mr Andrew Maggs of Ridgian seemed to get some swag again, maintaining his 100% record. Rounds of applause greeted swagged members, and spirits were high. Even the deliberate 'bug' in the Swag machine was not enough to dampen spirits and the people departed, full of knowledge, Pizza and Swag.

In all seriousness, a great big thank you to Craig for travelling "500 Miles" to speak to us, it was a great evening, enjoyed by everybody I'm sure.

The PowerPoint slides for both of Craig's session are at the links below.