Meet up 1: TriPython’s Durham Project Night hosted by the Caktus Group in Durham, NC on Monday, March 21, 2016 at 6pm.
The first meet up I attended was TriPython’s Durham Project Night. I didn’t really know what to expect–a few of students from our class actually attended so that was nice. I had expected there to be some presentations and that it would be more of a space for us to see examples of work people were doing. It ended up being a collaborative workspace and folks mostly just worked on on-going projects and were chatting with each other to troubleshoot. I tried to set up Cloud9 during this time and we were all having a hard time understanding how to get it up and running. The cool thing was to see how really proactively supportive people were trying to be. I think it is mildly intimidating to be sitting in a space with people who seem like they are competent programmers. There was coding language that I just didn’t know and I wasn’t sure how to ask questions. I was pleasantly surprised at how patient the people there were and non-judgemental. They were willing to introduce us to other people there that might be of more help.
Meet up 2: Triangle Hacker Hours at Francesca’s Dessert Café in Durham, NC on Sunday, April 17th at 4pm.
The second meet up I attended was Triangle Hacker Hours at Francesca’s Dessert Cafe. I actually really liked this one! It was similar to the TriPython in that people were working on their own projects in the same space. I feel like I got a lot done and became more comfortable talking through coding. It seemed like it was mostly students and it was pretty informal. I ended up going back the following weekend because someone else from class was going and I thought it would be a good space to get more work done. That time was interesting in that we were sitting next to another group attending the same meetup but we didn’t realize it until a lot later on. At some point, they overhead our conversation about programming and introduced themselves. They were really open to answering questions and helping us think through our process.
With both meetups, I wonder how it might’ve differed from other peoples’ experiences who might have attended a more formally organized event. I know some people went to presentations or lectures. I can see myself continuing to go to events like these though. It was nice to have a buddy at them. I wonder how it might’ve differed if I’d gone on my own. I guess if I were working on a project and wanted to attend alone, the first event felt a bit more conducive to meeting people because it was in a contained location where you knew everyone there was there for the same reason.