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Introducing a New Initiative: IRL.DEV

Ben Halpern on June 26, 2019

As was discussed in this post yesterday, meeting up irl is awesome. DEV Conference? Andrew (he/him) ใƒป...
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Frederik ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ’ปโžก๏ธ๐ŸŒ Creemers

Would it be possible to use this site to gauge interest?

For example, I could enter that I live in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and I'd be willing to travel up to 100km. Then, someone wanting to organize a meetup can see how many people are interested in a meetup in that area, or if they're close to several cities, can think about which cities make sense to have a meetup.

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Katie Adams

Second this idea; it's a good'un.

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Ryland G

Great idea! I might be interested in organizing some events (live on sunnyvale/cupertino border). Are you guys open to having another company run some events (for example my startup might be interested)?

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Ben Halpern

Yep. Yesterday's event was run by TheSkimm, and they gave a spiel before things started about who they were and why you might want to come work there, etc.

That seems like a great pattern for this kind of thing. I'll add that to the site right away.

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Ryland G

Very cool. Think there would be a lot of interest in my area. I'll talk to my team and we'll be in touch :)

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Peter Kim Frank

Yeah, to echo Ben, we feel like having companies involved with these events is very natural and mutually beneficial. After all, businesses have established access to space (especially after regular working hours), they'll oftentimes be in a position to sponsor food/drink, and they can benefit from a tasteful "pitch" during the event.

As the project evolves, we'll be outlining more guides and best-practices, but my Connect Inbox is also open if you'd like to chat before then.

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Ryland G

Makes a ton of sense. I think my team would love to support a community event like this. We'll talk soon :)

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Sarah-Jane Morris

OMG I love this! Boom - hey hey to fellow Montreal dev.to members! I'm waiting till September so we can really make this as awesome as possible.
eventbrite.com/e/dev-irl-montreal-...

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Ben Halpern

Awesome! I don't think I'll be able to come even though I've been meaning to go to Montreal (I have two siblings who live there).

September 18th is my birthday ๐Ÿ˜„

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Ben Halpern

Thanks to @dangolant for hosting the first irl.dev event at The Skimm btw. Awesome stuff!!

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Daniel Golant

our pleasure!!! Thanks for letting us try out the first one :)

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Matteo Joliveau

Awesome! We at Mikamai already foster a lot of community-led events, providing the location and logistical support communities need in order to organize successful meetups. I already got in touch with my colleagues over at community support in order to try and organize an Italian chapter here in Milan, it would be a great opportunity for everyone!

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Ben Sinclair • Edited

I think it's a good idea, but I have a few comments.

First off, I know it's early days, but it's unclear from the site whether it's about:

  • specifically creating events in the name of dev.to
  • organising other events and listing them if they may be of interest to dev.to members
  • cataloguing externally-organised events that may be of interest to dev.to members
  • something related to development in general but not specificaly dev.to

We have existing projects sharing open data, like open tech calendar for example. Is there likely to be data fed to and from dev.irl in some standard(ish) way that other services supply or consume, or is it going to be about members curating their own events?

What's the purpose of it being on a separate URL? That adds to my confusion, as a naive visitor, as to whether it's intended to be a separate entity.

The word "dev" is very general, and (like you can see with things like the comments on the D&D alignment tweet from a few days ago) it doesn't have the recognition of names like Reddit or SO, which might muddy the waters a little if people think it's a generic site when it's actually tied.

Is it going to be fed back into the main dev.to site as part of people's feeds?

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Ben Halpern

I think this is all valid feedback and we'll try to take it all into account.

specifically creating events in the name of dev.to

This is the closest to what we intend. Less in the name of but more for those people specifically involved in our community. We will have more tie in with dev.to itself as we flesh this out but we felt like standing up a new website would help this initiative have its own special kind of weight which wouldn't be hampered by needing to fit it into the main product right now. We will be looking to create more interesting integrations as we make these work but have to start somewhere and we didn't want to be too top heavy.

The choice of the other domain is as much an experiment as anything. If we are able to create an ecosystem of fun, healthy events one way or another we have accomplished the goal. In terms of the difficulties with DEV, dev.to and naming this thing in general we're still trying to find the right answers there.

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Ben Sinclair

I think it's going to be cool.

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owen • Edited

That sounds awesome, maybe one day I'll organize a conference on my campus :)

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Ben Halpern

Awesome! Maybe start by doing a meetup ๐Ÿ˜‰

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owen

Yeah, I'd certainly start with that ! :)

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Ben Halpern

Awesome, submit the form on irl.dev and we'll get going!

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owen

Okay, I'll talk about it around me to organize it, then when it's done I can fill out the form with all the necessary informations :). Or can we become an organizer without necessarily providing all the requested informations (date, Link to event page, ...)?

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Katie Adams

Is this just happening in the US/Canada at the moment, or can friends across the pond participate too? Thinking it would be great if my university knew about this great site and these sort of opportunities. :)

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Amara Graham

Love taking this community IRL!

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Mehdi Vasigh

I've been interested in organizing some type of Meetup sponsored by my workplace in Houston, TX and this seems like good timing! I am very interested in being an organizer in the city and will go to my manager to gauge their interest in sponsoring and possibly hosting.

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Fernando B ๐Ÿš€

I am in Houston too. I too wonder if my company would let me use our conference rooms on the weekend lol we got a whole building to ourselves.

The main auditorium can hold quite a few. I'll ask around, and see what is the proper way to go about it.

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Bruno Paz

Great initiative!

Might try to organize something in Porto, Portugal. Need to get some ideas first ;)

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Gift Egwuenu

Exciting News!

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Maniflames

This is super cool! If anyone happens to be located in the Netherlands, let's try this ๐Ÿ˜„

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Ben Halpern

Fill out the form and we can help you get started and find other organizers if youโ€™re not up for it yourself. ๐Ÿ˜Š

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Maniflames

Definitely!

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John Pham

Any interest for a meet up in Seattle?

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Ben Halpern

That would be great!

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Jean-Michel Plourde

I swear one day I'll come right from Canada down to NYC and spend an awesome night with the crรจme de la crรจme people from dev.to

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Sarah-Jane Morris

If you're in Montreal or nearby Jim, I'm planning this one for September! eventbrite.com/e/dev-irl-montreal-...

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Jean-Michel Plourde • Edited

Yes, I'm very close to Montreal (somewhere in the woods but still). I'll consider it really. Is there a facebook post to follow up later ? The only downfall is it's in the middle of the week and there is some hours involved to get to mtl. During the semester if there is something early the next day, it's harder. I'll try

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El Housseine Jaafari

One day I will come to canada :D

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El Housseine Jaafari

Is this possible in other countries? If yes I would love to set-up an event.

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Ben Halpern

Yes, all countries.

In fact, thatโ€™s probably the biggest reason we want this to be community-driven and not necessarily top-down organized by us. There are so many community members all over the world and we donโ€™t want this to be restricted geographically in any way.

Just fill out the form on irl.dev so we can be aware and help out however we can.

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El Housseine Jaafari

Definitely will organize a meetup, workshop or an event soon. Thanks for the work guys and really appreciate your efforts.

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dAVE Inden

I love this idea! This is a great idea. I will definitely keep an eye on the project. I'd love to help and contribute to the project. :)

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Mikhail Korolev

That sounds amazing! I love the stack, having something as Airtable to back it all up is a great idea. Also, excited to fill up the first issue ๐Ÿ›

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Ben Halpern

Awesome

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Stephanie Handsteiner

Nice one, if someone in the Cologne area, Germany, wants to get something going drop me a line. Iโ€™d be happy to help. ๐Ÿ‘Œ

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Aaron Powell

Ooo nifty team!

If someone in Sydney (Australia, not Canada ๐Ÿ˜) looks to start one up drop me a line as I'd be happy to help but I'm not in a position to run it myself. โ˜น

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Bรกrbara Perdigรฃo

Can I feel out the form even though I don't have specific ideas for events yet? I'd love to organize a meetup group in my city (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), but I still have to think about the details.

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Desi

This is great! I'd love to run/be part of a Chicago group!

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Hugo Torzuoli

Thinking about bringing it in France.. ๐Ÿ‘Œ

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Omri Gabay

Are we encouraged to organize meetups within our workplaces?

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Ben Halpern

Thanks Liz!

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Bhupesh Varshney ๐Ÿ‘พ

Can we organise it as a Local Chapter ?
(We are thinking to make a github organisation for this)