Developer Community And Conference Conversations: Mike Hall Interviews Anthony Zinni
🚀 Meet Anthony Zinni and learn about the growth and evolution of Refresh Chicago, a web development meetup group in Chicago. 🌐 Join the community and expand your skills! 🎓 #webdevelopment #meetup #chicagodev #techcommunity #webcraftsmanship
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm Mike. I'm sitting down here with the guys from Refresh Chicago, John, Shea, and Tony. Hi, guys. Thanks for sitting down with me today. The kind of question that we're going to get to is, can you tell me a little bit about Refresh Chicago? What are you doing here? What is Refresh? Why is it Refresh? So, Refresh Chicago, we've been around for, I think, almost three years now?
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
About two and a half. About two and a half. And it's sort of, the Refresh group itself is sort of a loose collection of meetup groups around the country. It's not just here in Chicago. It's not just here in Chicago. It's around the country. They're not really affiliated with each other. They share a common name, but the original goal was to be a way to meet up and sort of talk about these new ideas that were coming into web development, which was like a refresh into how web development was done. This was like ten years ago when web standards were becoming a thing and CSS was becoming more of a prevalent. So, we realized that there was sort of, there was no Refresh group in Chicago and it was sort of, we're trying to fill this gap, which is bringing web designers and web developers together to sort of talk about common topics. Yeah, because we, you see a lot of tech, like hard tech, like there was a Java group, which is a huge world.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. Right.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
There was a dynamic group, but nothing really disturbing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
Designer, UI guys.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
I mean, when you think about web design, it's, it is technical and it's, and it's creative and it's, and it's design, but it's all of the things sort of together, right? You can't. It's messy too. Like there's not one, every web designer will tell you that they do something different. Some do code, some don't. Some do a lot of UI, some don't.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
And then our group kind of fills that void. You know, it's not just like tech. It's not just creative. It's, it's everything. And some weeks it makes more sense to certain people and some weeks it makes more sense to others. But I think that's sort of the niche that we fill in Chicago. So giving that you're kind of like trying to balance people who have maybe very different ways of defining what they do.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Do you, do you have like a lot of flux between attendance, between meetings?
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
I think we're kind of lucky. I think our, our membership, I think it's at like 1,300 people or something now. So we keep a steady number, but, but we're seeing different faces. There's, there's the people who show up regularly, but we do see a lot of different faces coming. Which I think is actually a benefit to the group because you're going to meet new people every time when you come, which is something that's pretty unique to this group.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And also like a lot of it depends on the speaker too, right?
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
Like that, that speaker development heavy, we tend to get more of like a rails crowd and development heavy. And then when we have like a designer come out, it's more of like a designer crowd.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
But there's always quite a bit of overlap too.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
And our goal, I think our goal overall is to sort of have, um, have our members attend talks that they're not necessarily comfortable with. Or like, yeah, give them some experience in some area that they don't necessarily know about.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
And I, I know you guys have done some stuff with some of the startup. Um, I, cause I, I, I had associated and refreshed with some of the entrepreneurial startup movements in Chicago. Is that, I think it's just like a natural side effect of the market that we touch. Um, you know, in Chicago, it's, it's kind of different than like the Valley. And it's, it's kind of different than like New York in terms of like startup culture or creative culture. And they're, they're a lot more entwined here, I think. Um, so out of that we get speakers who are naturally part of startups and things of that nature. And it, it just kind of spawns out of that. So it's kind of like a natural evolution for us.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. And so kind of what is your schedule for meetings? Is it monthly? Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
We meet the fourth Wednesday of every month right now.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah. And do, do you sponsors or how do you fund your group?
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
I mean, here, we're, we're here in the ITA.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
So, uh, Groupon is one of our main sponsors. They basically sponsored food and drinks every month. Um, Devmine helps us out. Um, they're one of our good sponsors. They sort of kick in and help cover costs for like meetup. com domains, things like that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
Just miscellaneous costs. Uh, ITA helps us out with the space. Okay, cool.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And, um, what are, what are the plans for the future? Are you looking forward at like, uh, Chicago and Coke is coming up?
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
This month. But, uh, uh, you, you know, we, we've grown a few, uh, conferences out of some group environments.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Are you guys looking forward?
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
I mean, cause I'm 1,300 members. You've got a large base.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
Um, yeah, we're looking to, we are actively partnering with another company to throw a conference in the fall. Like a large web conference that covers the same sort of topics that we want to cover here. Yeah, it's the same general mix of just web craftsmanship. Um, so we'll be involved with that. I don't know what we can say about that yet. Since we, we're not really announcing anything else. Uh, we can say, we can say it. You're working on it. It's Chicago Web Comp.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
It's Chicago Web Comp. So, Deb and mine did it last year.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
Oh, yeah. This year we're teaming up with them to basically both partner on it and do it together. Okay, great. So, I'll make sure and, uh, put that link into the, into the show notes. Sounds good.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Uh, is there anything else you'd like to say about Refresh or community?
Anthony Zinni, Jon Buda, Shay Howe
developer community and conference conversations
I would say if you haven't come out yet, come on out. I mean, it's a pretty welcoming group. It's not, you know, we don't focus on one topic, so. Yeah, and I'd say, uh, you know, if you want to talk in front of the group, that's always an awesome thing, too. Yeah, definitely. We, uh, we've been a little lucky lately and we've got a great lineup started, but we're definitely have room to fit people in the future, too. Um, so, the more ideas, the better that we can share.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Great. Well, thank you very much for sitting down with me. Thank you for the meeting. Thanks a lot.