Well this one came out of nowhere. Webmaster Jam Session 08, “A two day event with some of the best Web designers, developers, marketers and visionaries in the world,” right in my hometown!
I thought it couldn’t get any better than that until I checked out the speaker list… Jeff Croft, Dan Rubin, Chris Heilmann, Chris Pederick, Jina Bolton, Nick Finck… how did they convince all these amazing web professionals to come down to Atlanta?! It makes no sense… But that’s not all! Atlanta brews some pretty hot talented people too who are also going to be there: Todd Dominey, Paul Stamatiou and Christina Warren just to name a few. Okay enough with the name dropping… but seriously it’s going to be awesome!
On another note, I’ve been getting quiet involved in Atlanta’s tech scene recently I almost feel like I’ve been living under a rock for the past two years for not noticing how much is going on. Once my schedule opens up a bit more, I’ll be attending these groups on a regular base:
- Ruby on Rails group
- The Atlanta Ruby Meetup
- Atlanta Web Design Group
- Atlanta Flash Meetup
- Atlanta PHP User Group
There’s also a new WordPress Meetup taking place in 2 weeks! It’s going to be the first so that should be interesting. I’m sure this city’s got enough talented brains to organize a future WordCamp Atlanta. But baby steps… baby steps.
On that same weekend, BarCamp Atlanta 2 is taking place which I really want to attend. The first rule almost feels intimidating giving that “Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. ” Giving the fact that I haven’t the sightless clue what I could possibly bring up if that was ever the case threw me back, but I’ll come up with something!
And finally, Startup Weekend 2! Get a bunch of highly motivated entrepreneurs in various profession fields and put them to the test-Build a startup in 54 hours. The idea has matured a lot since last year when I first heard about it. They’ve recently launched a new successful format (version 2.0):
“…that involves even more launches per weekend, more dedicated teams, recruiting by already established companies, and even no requirement to incorporate a company at the end of the weekend.”
That seems like a wise choice and in fact, it looks like it’s working out pretty well. Over 50+ companies have been born out of Startup Weekend but that number probably doesn’t compare to the amount of new professional contacts built from it. This year I signed up as a front-end developer and can’t wait to get my hands dirty in the next crazy idea that forms out of Startup Weekend! I’ll be sure to keep you posted on that one.
