The ultimate developers' X-mas meetup 2018

When days are getting shorter, the nights colder and stores are filling up with gingerbread and cookies, you know that the end is near - of the year. In a time of crowded christmas markets, jingling bells and lunatic shopping sprees, we offer you an evening of pure contemplative coding goodness, of merry nerdiness, a pre-christmas evening for you: developers.

In a joint venture of Symfony and PHP User Group Berlin, Mayflower, Turbine Kreuzberg and coding berlin we're teaming up for an evening to remember, an evening standing out of all the christmas craziness, full of surprises and fun. On December 19th Turbine Kreuzberg swings open their gates for us at 6:30pm in Umspannwerk Kreuzberg. We're taking care of all amenities and we got cookies, mulled wine and the legendary Peter & Konstantin bean soup (it's like chili con carne but pork is replaced with onions and more beans, just gorgeous!).

Here's what's going to happen that night:

6:30pm the doors swing open
7:00pm web engineering pub quiz & lightning talks in-between
9:00pm legacy books wichteln
9:15pm socializing = open end

After arriving at Turbine (consider the XBerg janitor policy and Turbine's unreliable doorbell as your first challenge) and getting our first infusion of beverages, a terrific web engineering quiz is going to take off - played "pub quiz" style. If you've never attended one, it's simple: attendees are seated around tables in groups of 6 and answer the quiz masters' questions. The team who got most questions right in the end, wins a prize. We're currently preparing the award and can already state: it's going to be unique, feels like a treasure to possess and might even turn out helpful for your daily business.

Between every round of the quiz we're opening up the stage for your lightning talks; every talk is restricted to 5 minutes + 5 minutes questions / discussion. Think of "hack and tell (TM)" for christmas, prepare anything you want, it should be coding life related but you can also stand up and present your last quarter's big achievement in Wordpress hacking, if you want so.

After the pub quiz' winning team has been found, we're going to play the most famous German pre-xmas game invention of all time: SCHROTTWICHTELN. We're not sure if there's a commonly known translation for that one (scrap gnoming??) but the concept is quickly explained: if you want to participate - and you should :) -, find an old book that you definitely will never use in your life anymore, wrap it in some ugly gift paper and bring it with you. A good choice would be a book from the stone age of software engineering, preferably on a bizarre technlogy that no one's using anymore. After collecting and piling up all your books we're raffling each of it among all other guests. The challenge is to take home a book that's lesser unuseful than the one you brought :)

When the final book has been raffled it's time for the social part: meet other Berlin coders, get in touch or use the time for staying in touch, have more bean soup and enjoy the end of the last meetup of our groups in 2018.

We're looking forward seeing you once again before christmas this year! This is an inclusive and open event for everyone interested in coding; we comply with the Berlin meetups' code of conduct https://berlincodeofconduct.org/ There'll be only friendly people, we take care of that.