CoderFaire brings out Nashville's up and coming tech talent
One of the many many things I love about my gig as an API Evangelist at Mashery is the privilege to travel and discover new places full of developer talent. My visit to Nashville for CoderFaire last month was just the latest addition to that growing list.
Spread over two days, CoderFaire is a two day event designed to provide Nashville developers an opportunity to connect with fellow developers, learn new stuff, and create awesome stuff. Attended by 200 developers, it'd be an understatement to say that the event was but a huge success. This tweet from Brendan Wovchko probably sums it up best -
Day 1: involved a number of technical + cultural sessions, ranging from APIs to how to build culture at your company.
CoderFaire Lab - Also available along side the sessions was the CoderFaire labs - an informal area where developers can just walk in and speak/seek technical assistance from Lab Partners like Mashery, Twilio, Amazon Web Services, SugarCRM, Foxy Cart and more. I thought it was a good way to encourage developers to have casual conversations about products/APIs without having the reservation of being "sold", which is usually the norm at conferences. This was a welcome getaway from that.
Day 2: was the much awaited Hackday. About 70 developers showed up, which it turns out has been the biggest hackathon in Nashville ever. Full day of hacking on APIs, frameworks and some Arduino magic.
Best Mashery Hack
Citi Info: Best app built using Mashery's API Network was CitiInfo, which used Active.com, Jambase and WeatherBug's API to find things happening around you
Other Hacks
88FIGHT!
"Fisherman's Log"
"Place Corgi"
"Zombie Alert System" It' involves a "Remote puss dector".
"Hubot Box Office"
"Shakespear"
"Twilio SMS with Asterisk"
After Party at the Zoo
That's right, you heard that right. The amazing Jaques came up with the idea of hosting the after party at the zoo. There were drinks, snacks, prizes. Oh and some beautiful elephants within 15 feet of us. It was so cool.
Thank You Nashville
It's so amazing to see new developer communities emerge. Nashville's got a budding developer community that will only grow given events like CoderFaire. Kudos to the unmistakeable Cal Evans & Jacques Woodcock for pulling off a fantastic first ever CoderFaire at Nashville, Tennessee.
Thank you for your hospitality Nashville. CoderFaire, you were awesome. Can't wait to be back soon!
