My First Developer Meetup

I have been at my first meetup ever last week. It was a React meetup. Even if React is a really new technology for me I thought that this could be a cool idea. And it really was! But first things first.

The meetup was at FOND OF a company that I really like not only because of their great backpacks but also because of their sustainable work. I really would love to work with them someday. The office was great and there were two rooms we spent the evening in. The Meetup format was an open space one so everyone could suggest a topic at the start of the evening and then the group voted. The 4 most voted ones were redux-offline, web app security, Typescript, and GatsbyJS. The latter ones were the ones I listened to and tried to bring some of my little experience in. Timo the developer was the one who presented the basics of GatsbyJS and its files.

At first, I did not really know what would happen this evening but after the first talk about Gatsby where I was able to contribute something to the discussion, I got a lot more confident. The people there were also super frank and I had a lot of good conversations. The insecurity I felt before the meetup was baseless and I learned a lot about „jumping“ right into the cold water. I definitely enjoyed the evening and I will visit a lot more in the future.

So to everyone who reads this: Get yourself out there and visit meetups or other get-togethers. Even if you’re by yourself. There are always people who are nice and willing to talk especially when you have common interests.

Thanks for reading,
Niklas