This is something I was going to include in a newsletter-type message to all members, but seemed a bit too long and 'pondering' as was quite rightly pointed out to me. It was important to me though writing it, so I will just put it here:
I spend a lot of time thinking about CodeHub, especially what it can and can't be. Or could become. To me, it is not just a Meetup group, that is just the medium, and in fact it didn't start as a Meetup group.
At the same time I don't want to attribute more significance to it than it has. For a while I had thoughts of really turning it into a kind of school, but I have to recognize that there are limits to both my energy and my competence, and I could not do it on my own anyway. The idea is not completely gone, but for now I rather want to focus on what it can already do now. One role I definitely see for it, is providing some kind of additional support for those who have graduated, are self-taught or wanting to change career to work in web development. In fact, in a case of dog-fooding - I fall into the self-taught category - probably nobody has benefited more from this group than myself.
I believe this works both through meeting people who work in the industry and through the presentations themselves, whether you are listening or presenting. Again, I have experienced all three. And of course, this is not at all restricted to CodeHub! In fact, Gicela and I wouldn't have started it without having experienced many great tech meetups first. The Skillswap event on Linux taught me to love the commandline (although I'm still only a basic user).
Maybe the specific intention for CodeHub is to broaden the access, make it less intimidating than to come to those meetups where the perception is that they are for people already proficient in a specific field (which is not necessarily the case, of course).
[Reply from Gicela:]
Great to have started the conversation here. CodeHub was originally set up with the idea of learning and sharing, and it will fundamentally continue to do so.
Do get involved and tell us what style of learning do you prefer, what has or hasn't worked for you. If you have come to any of the CodeHub meet-ups, what has been the highlight? What would you like to see in the future?
[posted on now defunct Discourse in July 2015]
This is something I was going to include in a newsletter-type message to all members, but seemed a bit too long and 'pondering' as was quite rightly pointed out to me. It was important to me though writing it, so I will just put it here:
I spend a lot of time thinking about CodeHub, especially what it can and can't be. Or could become. To me, it is not just a Meetup group, that is just the medium, and in fact it didn't start as a Meetup group.
At the same time I don't want to attribute more significance to it than it has. For a while I had thoughts of really turning it into a kind of school, but I have to recognize that there are limits to both my energy and my competence, and I could not do it on my own anyway. The idea is not completely gone, but for now I rather want to focus on what it can already do now. One role I definitely see for it, is providing some kind of additional support for those who have graduated, are self-taught or wanting to change career to work in web development. In fact, in a case of dog-fooding - I fall into the self-taught category - probably nobody has benefited more from this group than myself.
I believe this works both through meeting people who work in the industry and through the presentations themselves, whether you are listening or presenting. Again, I have experienced all three. And of course, this is not at all restricted to CodeHub! In fact, Gicela and I wouldn't have started it without having experienced many great tech meetups first. The Skillswap event on Linux taught me to love the commandline (although I'm still only a basic user).
Maybe the specific intention for CodeHub is to broaden the access, make it less intimidating than to come to those meetups where the perception is that they are for people already proficient in a specific field (which is not necessarily the case, of course).
[Reply from Gicela:]
Great to have started the conversation here. CodeHub was originally set up with the idea of learning and sharing, and it will fundamentally continue to do so. Do get involved and tell us what style of learning do you prefer, what has or hasn't worked for you. If you have come to any of the CodeHub meet-ups, what has been the highlight? What would you like to see in the future?