A talk on building a tech community that I gave at Scale 17x in LA. I covered the meetup and tech conference scene in Austin, Cloud Austin, Devopsdays Austin, and some best practices for meetups orgs and attendees

1. Your
Community
Karthik Gaekwad
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2. Your
Community
Goal: Case study of tech community
building in Austin, and how to replicate.

3. •I’m Karthik Gaekwad
•NOT a DBA
•https://cloudnative.oracle.com/
•Cloud Native Evangelist at Oracle Cloud
•Past: Developer on the Oracle Managed
Kubernetes Team
Hello
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4. Hello
• Been around for a while….
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5. Hello
•In general, I like building stuff with friends.
• Maintainer for Gauntlt- Open source security scanner.
•Love Teaching and building community.
• Run Devopsdays Austin, Container Days, Cloud Austin.
• Chair All Day Devops Cloud Native track.
• LinkedIn Learning Author for Kubernetes courses.
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6. Cloudnative.oracle.com
• Blog, Tutorials and solutions
• Mostly cloudnative “stuff”. Send me a note @iteration1 if you really
want us to research something for you or http://bit.ly/iheartcloud
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7. Community
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8. Community
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“Small or large social unit (a group
of living things) that has something
in common, such as norms,
religion, values, or identity.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

9. Austin Tech Community
• Vibrant!
• Various regular conferences in town (Serverless
Days, Longhorn PHP, Devopsdays, Data day,
LASCON, Keep Austin Agile, BSides Austin,
SXSW, Innotech Austin).
• Many many many monthly meetups
(AustinDevops/Cloud Austin for cloud and
devops stuff).
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10. ATX Tech Events

11. Story of Cloud Austin
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12. Cloud Austin Today
• Coming up on ~ 10 years
• Over 2600 folks
• Monthly meetup
• Average ~75 folks attending
• ~2 talks per meetup
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13. Austin Today
• “Silicon Hills”
• Over 138,000 tech-related jobs in the
Austin metropolitan region.
• $31 billion into the area’s overall economy,
about 35 percent of the total.
• New announcements: Apple expansion
campus, Army Futures Command.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/us/
austin-apple-hub-silicon-hills.html
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14. Things were different 15
years ago…
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15. 15 years ago: Tech Employers in ATX
Primary:
Public Sector:
Major:
Startups:
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16. 10 years ago: User Groups
• Language specific groups for developers…
• Java (Dating back to early 2000’s)
• .NET, PHP
• OWASP Chapter (Since 2006)
• User groups inside companies..
• Java Technical Exchange @National Instruments
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17. Changes…
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18. Changes (2008-2009ish)
• Everyone trying to figure out cloud...
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19. Changes (2008-2009ish)
• Some of us at NI working on building cloud products
• Met some folks doing similar stuff at Pervasive
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22. Birth of a meetup….
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23. Journey
• Google Group + Eventbrite
• Google Group + Eventbrite + Meetup
• Google Group + Meetup
• Meetup
• Random Meetups->Monthly meetups (3rd Tuesday)
• Festive end of the year meetup “12 Clouds of Christmas”
2009
2019
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24. But…not always great…
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25. But…not always great…
• Last minute food sponsor cancelations
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26. But…not always great…
• Jeff Barr Road trip (2013).
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27. Today….
• Group growth to 2600 folks
• 3rd Tuesday of the month
• Always @Rackspace!
• Food/Drink sponsorships whenever we can
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28. Internal Tooling….
• Org Team of 8
• Google group with all orgs.
• Emails go to the group.
• Org Slack for communication.
• Google form for speaker/sponsor pitches
• Zapier integration with slack
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30. What have I learned?
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31. Content is King
What have I learned?
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32. Say NO to Vendor pitches
What have I learned?
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33. Attendees love free food
What have I learned?
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34. Be Transparent
What have I learned?
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35. Have a code of conduct
What have I learned?
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36. Try the buddy system
What have I learned?
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37. Gratefulness for organizers
What have I learned?
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38. Gratefulness for organizers
• Organizing can be hard.
• Mostly voluntary.
• Need to take time off work to do it.
• If you’re an attendee: Thank your orgs, and ask how you can support.
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39. Organizer Tips
What have I learned?
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40. Organizer Tips
• Have a fixed venue
• Have a fixed date/time
• Understand what folks are interested in
• Experiment with format
• Be inclusive
• Have a team!
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41. Organizer Tips
• If you’re an organizer, watch for burnout.
• Get a team, make it fun!
• Try to distribute the effort.
• Give everyone opportunities.
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42. Build great communities!
• Austin is friendlier today than 15 years ago
• Tech folks know each other (ish)
• Okay to ask questions culture
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43. Thank you!
This is your community
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