Charlie Baker on Denver Community & Watir Maintainer | SCNA 2011
Charlie Baker discusses community organizing, Watir maintenance, and establishing the Obtiva Denver office at SCNA 2011.
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Hi, I'm Mike. I'm sitting down with Charlie Baker from Denver, and he's kind of been involved with a lot of the groups out in that area, and he's also heavily involved in the open source software. You're maintaining water and things like that, but not retaining, maintaining. But can you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing out in Denver with the different groups and what you've been observing out there?
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
Sure, absolutely. So in talking about user groups and talking about general community involvement, I moved out to Denver about six years ago from the San Francisco Bay Area. There were a lot of user groups in the San Francisco area. Some of them were well-maintained. Some of them were not so well-maintained. When I came out to Denver, I basically noticed there were a lot of disparate groups, a lot of kind of like splintered factions that didn't actually talk to each other very much. So there are Java user groups, . NET user groups. Two Ruby users. So there's one down in Denver and one up in Boulder. And there's not a lot of interaction between the various groups, so there's not a good sense of the Software Craftsmanship or software community as a whole in that area. So one of the things in building in an office for, I was looking to build out an office for Obtiva, now Groupon. One of the things about hiring people in and doing that sort of thing is building out a community and getting a sense of community that you can actually draw from, so that people know what you're doing. So people know what's happening.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
So you're kind of going, are you going to different user groups and talking to their leadership and trying to say, hey, what's going on? You guys are doing these meetings, but sure, good, bad things. Right now we get a sense of each of the user groups. It's interesting between the different languages and between some of the different communities that exist, so, you know, the . NET community, the Java community and whatnot, there's a different feel to each of the user groups. So it's a matter of kind of figuring. Figuring out what the different feel is, and then we were talking just briefly about kind of an overarching, getting the heads of those groups together so that you've got kind of a group of people that you can talk to about things like scheduling. So, you know, if you're doing Ruby, which are also interested in iOS programming, make sure that those dates don't collide so that you don't end up having one sit on top of another. If you're doing a conference, for example. We just did Rocky Mountain Ruby a few months ago, pulling people from, you know, the iOS community, pulling people from the Java community, getting people from outside the Ruby community interested and let them know that things like this are available.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
So you mean, like, I'm a Ruby dad, but I've gone to Rocky Mountain Ruby, and I don't know that right in my backyard that there's a, and I use an iPhone. And I'm interested. And I thought, hey, there's an iPhone, iOS user group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Why don't you go check them out?
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
You know, is that the kind of. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I find a lot of crossover between, you know, particularly in my experience between Ruby, people doing Ruby development, going to iOS and getting involved in that. So just being aware that those groups are out there, getting people in the iOS groups and saying, you know, why don't you come out to a Ruby group, see how we do things. Get the experience of that particular user. And like I said, each of the user groups kind of has their own flavor. So it's a really interesting experience to go from one language to another. And then even larger scale groups like Agile groups. So there's Agile, Venber. There are other groups kind of like outside of straight technical groups as well.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
And, you know, I've done a few interviews today and a few people who weren't necessarily Ruby developers were looking at the Ruby community and trying to use that. As a model for what they want to, would like to see in a . NET community or, well, mostly it was . NET developers who were looking at the Ruby community. As far as like working with user groups, since you've been kind of cross-pollinating, is it as dire as a situation in the . NET groups as some of the people in the .
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
NET might think it is?
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
And when they're looking over at Ruby thinking, oh, that's the way I want to be, do you have any perspective on whether or not. Maybe it's like, hey, just keep going. That's a great question. I mean, I think in the Ruby community, we've been really fortunate to have strong community builders. I think . NET and Java communities suffer somewhat from not having that. So I think there are lessons learned and vice versa. I think there are lessons that the Ruby community can learn from other groups. In organizing a group, creating a conference, and all of the kind of common themes, I think it makes sense for us all to kind of talk together, right? Kind of on the web. At a level, I suppose. And would you recommend, I don't want to be too leading in the question, but if you have, if somebody is watching and they run a user group, they run a . NET or Java or an iOS or an Android group, what would you recommend they do to maybe become, I guess this is kind of a leading question, better citizens in their community?
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
They're working with their group, but how can they broaden? What's their perspective?
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
That's a good question. I mean, I think attending another group in the first place and just going out to it and finding out what's happening out there is good. If you look at the various user groups, the people running the user groups generally are your community leaders.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right.
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
So it's a matter of, you know, getting those people together to create a broader sense of community in an area. So Java itself has, you know, population-wise, it's somewhere around a million, something like that. I don't know the specifics. But getting a broader sense of community. A broader sense so that we can all draw from kind of a common pool and have common experiences and kind of switch back and forth without having walls between the different communities.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
And, you know, the other thing, you were saying that the, earlier you were talking about how a Ruby developer might be interested in iOS. And even in our conversation a little bit earlier about meeting plans stepping on each other. Like I'm a Ruby dev and I use Vim. It'd be nice if they weren't on the same night.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Right. Right.
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
So you see a lot of that kind of, like, I would like to go to both meetings. You see a lot of people that are appearing at different groups that, you know, you see the same person go into multiple groups. Honestly, I don't see that very frequently, which is, which is kind of surprising. So I know a lot of, you know, . NET and Java people who are doing that during the day and they want to do Ruby at night, you know, so they, so there are different interests and your day job might not necessarily be where you might want to go. So attending or vice versa. So maybe you go iOS group from a . NET group, something like that. But not a lot of cross-pollination. There's not a lot of cross-pollination on it. So it is, people tend to be stuck in, in their various communities and there are no walls between the communities. I think probably one of the better, one of the least walled communities is kind of Ruby and iOS. So I keep mentioning that. Ruby and JavaScript, for instance, as well. Yeah, that would seem. Because I find there's a lot of crossover and there's a lot of interest. By Ruby developers in, in these different technologies. Yeah, and most Ruby developers are also web developers and they have their own Macs. That's right, that's right. So it's a natural, it's absolutely a natural crossover. Whereas I see, you know, I did Microsoft development years and years ago. I find doing Microsoft development is very tough because you do end up kind of caught into a very specific community and a lot of people don't get outside of it. Okay, so, you know, the recommendation is to try to find out what other groups are in your area and if you lead a group, go check out their, some other meetings and talk to their, talk to the people. The community leaders from each group should be talking to each other to create kind of a broader sense of community and have no sense of competition between the various groups. I think it makes sense for us all to collaborate together on building our community and area so, you know, as far as finding people, there's a dearth of software engineers and it's very hard to find people right now. So I think creating a community makes it much easier to find people to figure out how people are solving those types of problems which affect all of our communities.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
▶ Speaking
Great.
Charlie Baker
Denver Community & Watir Maintainer
▶ Speaking
Well, thank you very much, Charlie, for sitting down with me. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. See you, Grant. Thank you very much.
Critical Insights
durable
"The Ruby community has strong community builders, while other communities like .NET and Java suffer from a lack of this."
durable
"Attending and participating in other user groups can help broaden perspectives and create a more cohesive community."
durable
"Cross-pollination between different communities can lead to new ideas and collaborations."