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Visit profileLast week we hosted one of our largest SyDjango meetups so far. We’re proud to announce that Matt Stevenson, one of the IC’s very own devs, has taken the reins as organiser. We suspect the stellar turnout was at least in part due to his magnetic personality.
The meetup was a big hit with some great talks targeted at different experience levels. Yianni talked about his experience learning Django, Stuart from IC did a presentation on rapid setup for ElasticSearch backend in Django, and Markus told us what’s new in Django 1.9.
We asked Matt a few questions about his experience with Django and why he decided to take over as organiser.
How long have you been going to SyDjango meetups?
Since the second meetup when the group started back in 2012.
Why did you decide to take over as organiser of SyDjango?
I’ve been using Django almost daily for five years, and a big reason why I enjoy working in Django is the fantastic community around the project. Being a part of that is important to me, and when the opportunity arose to keep the group going it seemed like a good chance to put my hand up.
Why are these meetups important?
They’re a chance for the local community to catch up, provide a welcoming environment for new developers, share knowledge and a few laughs, learn some new things and get their questions answered.
What kinds of things have you learned?
I love seeing how Django has been used in all sorts of creative ways, from sports team tracking to education, financial analysis, custom-built commerce and large-scale national news publishing.
What are you plans for the meetups in the future?
I’d like to keep a mix of beginner/intermediate/advanced talks on rotation to maintain a diverse group of attendees. It’s great for the regulars to share hard-earned knowledge amongst themselves without excluding people who are just picking Django up for the first time. I’m hoping we’ll have some guest speakers from other meetup groups or tech stacks to share their stories.
You can read Matt’s recap of the meetup on his website.
In addition to the great speakers and conversations, we kept everyone well fed and watered with plenty of pizza and beer. If you missed out this time, make sure to join us next month.