If you’ve come to Iprug at all in the past few months (years?), it can’t have escaped your notice that attendance since we stopped doing talks has got a bit … thin. Average turnout these days is somewhere around three, which isn’t really sustainable.

I was going to suggest take a break for a bit, then maybe trying to start it up again in a different format, make more effort to come up with practical things to do, or even figure out a way of going back to talks without having to project slides onto a painting of a fox. However, thanks to an idea from Richard Astbury we now have a better plan!

Starting next month (February), we’re going to co-opt Iprug for a Suffolk Developers study group, starting with Elixir and Phoenix (combined with discussions in the #study_group Slack channel.

If you haven’t come across the language before, here are the resources some of us have already been looking at:

• Programming Elixir book
• Programming Phoenix book (beta)
• Études for Elixir ebook (free!)
• Awesome Elixir – a curated list of links

We’ll still be meeting in the Brewery Tap at sevenish for beer and burgers, but on a Thursday instead of a Tuesday. Keep an eye on Meetup for future meeting details.

So, that’s Thursday 11 February, from around 7pm in the Brewery Tap. Bring your laptop and we can figure out how we can all help each other to learn the next cool language See you there!

After last month’s ruby golf, we’re back to just a social beer-and-chat night next month. Tuesday 12 May in the Brewery Tap as usual.

We’re piggybacking on the Suffolk Developers Meetup site, so you can RSVP there if you want (or just turn up).

Open to suggestions for something to do in June!

After a few months of IPRUG just being a social event, which only seemed to appeal to a few of us (in fact just Leeky and me last month, although we had a few more in March), we’re going to try adding a more practical element back in for April.

We did ruby golf back in 2013 and those that turned up seemed to enjoy it, so I’ll put together some new “holes” and we’ll give it another go. We’ll just be wherever we can get a table in the pub rather than having a room to ourselves, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Bring a laptop or pair up with someone else.

Important: it will make life much easier if you checkout this project first, and follow the setup instructions, rather than relying on wifi on the night!

Tuesday April 14th, 7pm at the Tap as usual.

No meeting this month, as it would have been the day before the FESuffolk Christmas meal. See you there instead!

To reduce the amount of confusion caused by our new “a couple of weeks after FESuffolk” slot (not helped by me usually forgetting to tweet until the last minute), I’ve added a thingy to the header up there to tell you when the next one is due. And to prove how inclusive we are, the code and tests are all in Javascript.