On the Discussions at Meetups
A few years ago when I was neck-deep in contract work, I always wanted to make more of an effort to attend developer meet ups in Melbourne. I'd always kick myself whenever I put off going. I mean, why would I go and talk about code when I could be coding! Nevertheless I always wanted to attend them; if only to see what new ideas I could extract from the people I would meet.
Having now landed a steady (and less stressful) job at LOKE Digital, I found myself attending more and more meet ups; made all the easier with having coworkers to go with. Having now been to a few (including MelbJS and Cocoa Heads) however, I find myself more often than not walking away from them somewhat dissatisfied.
This isn't to say that the people were awful, or that the speakers were weak in their presentation, or even that there wasn't enough alcoholic beverages to go around. It was more that I found the topics discussed to be somewhat limited in their scope. Specifically, most of the discussions seem to revolve around the tools we use; showing samples, running through demos, or live coding demonstrations (heaven forbid).
While these kinds of conversations are certainly useful in their own right, I feel there is a significant lack of discussion regarding the more high level concepts we face as software developers. How should our requirements be dictated? What challenges do we face when it comes to communicating with different departments? What impact will a particular development pipeline have on our team?
Not only do I feel these discussions to be lacking, but they are so universally fundamental to how effective we are as developers. It doesn't matter what programming language you use, the conversation on communication is one that we can all relate to. And it's subjects such as communication that form the basis for everything we build, that any shortcomings can have catastrophic repercussions throughout an entire project, development team, or even a company.
So why aren't we having more of these conversations?
