"Hi everyone!" @ #netbeans irc

From blogs to Twitter to Facebook to mailing lists to forums... there are many ways in which you can participate in the NetBeans community.

But nothing beats live chatter! During the last few weeks, the #netbeans irc channel on FreeNode has become a lively place, where tips and tricks are shared, while tricky questions are asked and answered: 

Not only that, but the two Dutch members of the NetBeans Team, Ralph Ruijs (a member of the NetBeans Java Editor team, where he works mainly on refactoring tools for NetBeans IDE) and myself, have started hanging out in a cafe in Amsterdam more or less once a week, during which time you can ask questions live and interact directly with us and with others from the broader NetBeans community:

The above is a pic taken of us yesterday, during which time we chatted on-line with many NetBeans users, including Timon Veenstra the lead developer from AgroSense at Ordina in the Netherlands; Jens Hofschroer, who works on a gear analysis system in Aachen, Germany; Glenn Holmer, working as lead developer of Java EE projects at the Weyco Group in the US, and Hermien Pellissier, the new NetBeans Dream Team member from South Africa, with a lot of experience in NetBeans Platform projects.

So, join us at #netbeans on FreeNode! Note, though, that you might not find someone active in the channel all the time and every day. Give it a chance, come back now and then, and you'll be sure to strike up a conversation with someone. All it takes is for you to take the inititiave and say: "Hi everyone!"