Let's try something new!

This Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern, 11:00am Pacific, and some other time for the rest of the world, we are going to attempt our first LIVE CHAT. This will be structured chat that we will do on the third Wednesday of every month if it works. Additionally, if this live activity works, then we'll try out some other cool, live interactive things as well.

I'm going to follow the approach that eWeek (our sister site) has used for chats. We'll have a topic -- for this month it will be "Does Visual Basic Have a Future?" The chat will center around the topic. I'll have a number of questions ready around this topic that we can use to frame the discussion. In general, the approach will be six core questions, with one posted every 10 minutes. Of course, if the topic veers off course, but is good, then we'll be flexibly. If you have questions you'd like to see on an upcoming topic, send them to me in advance! If you have a topic you'd like to see us cover, post here or send it to me in advance!

The plan is to try to make these discussions interesting and potentially fun. These work best, however, the more people that attend them!

I know June is a rough month to start something like this (the eWeek chat last week had very few participants and they are established in doing these chats). Hopefully the nice weather and vacations doesn't give us a slow start! You can help by joining!

Sound like something you'd join?

To participate, you'll need a Twitter handle. You simply tweet with a hashtag to particpate. For a couple of links to Tweet Chat pages where you can follow the conversation easier, see http://www.codeguru.com/chats/ . The tools linked on that page automatically add the hash tag. You can also use Twitter tools like TweetDeck, but you have to remember to use the hashtag.

We are using #CodeGuruChat as the hashtag. Feel free to pass the word!