SuperHappyDevHouse
I think I learned two things from the first DevHouse: magic tricks can go a long way in the dev crowd (hey, they’re brain teasers), and you can get away with putting pizza directly on the oven rack. I also noticed something that should have been pretty predictable, the party had three phases.
The first was the getting-going phase where people trickled in. Pretty standard. Lots of introductions, a few conversations.
Pretty soon we moved on to the second phase. This was when the party was in full swing and there was the most social energy going on. I was in conversations that I really enjoyed. While I was in them, I’d hear at least two other conversations that also sounded really interesting. People were yelling out SQL statements. I found myself trying to listen to several people at once (how rude!).
A number of people were back at the tables hacking away, enjoying their own conversations or quietly working on their own. Actually, I investigated and the people that seemed like they were working quietly were having more fun listening to the conversations around them. It was social time. Slowly, laptops started creeping into conversations. People started showing what they were talking about. You got feedback, you got advice, you learned of cool technologies that could help. You had fun doing it.
Eventually, the party started moving into the third phase. Some people trickled out. A good number of hardcore people stayed. This was probably the more productive phase, but there were still good conversations going on. This was the phase in which David Weekly single-handedly developed PB Wiki.
We coded/hacked/talked into the morning. At some point we realized the sun had been up for a while and that it might be a good time to go home. 12 hours had lapsed since the doors opened.
Everybody I talked to (with the exception of Matt) enjoyed the party. And why not? People met cool people. People learned awesome things. Some of us even made some stuff. It was a success.
Now it’s happening again on July 9th.