I stumbled on a thread on twitter with tech guys (most were developers) throwing tantrums or Gbas Gbos (as my tweeps on twitter street are fund of calling it) at top tech guys who they accuse of using tech events to chase clouts or show the prowess of their “celebrity” status. While I find this amusing that people look forward to meetups like their wedding day I see it as a total stress and another hurdle to cross. As an introvert who obviously dislikes hanging out in public places I still see tech meetups as a jewel and will acknowledge it roles in the development of a career in tech. I remember reading an article early this year by Prosper Otemuyiwa (@Unicodedeveloper) he captioned “who is speaking for you” and I felt the urge to post a link to that article on every comment under that thread Sideline story; my first meetup
I was already writing PHP for about Four (4) Months after my graduation and I still haven’t met a single soul who writes code. I was searching like someone looking for a soulmate. I made a few post on facebook for anyone who codes around my area but couldn’t find ONE! One evening an idea came to me and I started searching for groups around Kaduna (I stay in Kaduna, Nigeria) for Code groups and voila! I found a flyer about a tech event scheduled to hold in Colab, a place about 30 minutes drives from my place, I was beyond excited and set an alarm on my calendar. On that very Saturday I left home quite late and when I got there I was totally nervous and you don’t want me to talk about how I entered a room full of people, TECH GURUS!!. I found a seat at the back and was busy looking at the “Abroad looking room”. They happened to be talking about React as it was just gaining ground that period with facebook developers circles, it was exciting even though I couldn’t relate with what was been talked about until only when they were talking down on PHP..lol. When I got home I felt like all the code I was writing was a lie and this is real beginning of my tech career and that was the major push for me. In summary
Tech meetup are very important as writing codes. Many people will not acknowledge but tech event has played the most important role in their career even though they would not admit it. It serves as a boost and motivation to be better, it doesn’t matter if the presenter is less of a coder than you or your code will eat his code..lol. Even though he is hammering on a topic that is already familiar to you, there are lots of newbie coders who will definitely benefit from these events. Don’t forget those swags