Developer Community And Conference Conversations: Mike Hall Interviews Eric Kingery

• UGtastic Archive
Full Transcript Available
Watch on Youtube
LIVE CC UGtastic Archive

Press play or click any turn in the transcript to start real-time synchronized playback...

Meet Eric Kingery, the founder of the Refactor Chicago group, as he discusses how the group evolved from a PHP-focused meetup to a more diverse community covering a wide range of topics. Eric shares his insights on catering to different levels of expertise, presenting in a language-agnostic way, and maintaining a sense of community. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Eric and expand your knowledge! #RefactorChicago #PHPCommunity #JavaScript #MongoDB #DesignPrinciples
The Interviewer

Mike Hall

Interviewer, UGtastic

The Guest

Eric Kingery

developer community and conference conversations

The Conversation

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
[Music] Hi, it's Mike with UGtastic. I'm sitting down with Eric Kingery who runs the Refactor Chicago group, formerly the PHP Chicago or was it Chicago PHP?
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Chicago's PHP community. Chicago PHP community.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me. We're here at the SCNA conference in Chicago 2013, SCNA 2013. Should have said that in the beginning but that's okay we'll keep going anyways. So the Refactor group, what is the Refactor group and how did you get involved and get that started?
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Sure, so as I mentioned we started at Chicago's PHP community meetup. That was started about four years ago and we had success but it was just hard to retain people throughout the groups because we had a disparate range of fairly in-depth topics.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Yeah.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
And we found a lot of beginners, I think were alienated by some of the more advanced topics we were diving into. Yeah and so we also realized when we were looking for speakers that a lot of the problems that the PHP community deals with and the challenges are not PHP specific. So a lot of languages have web frameworks but more importantly a lot of technologies are outside of the language specific details. So we were interested in MongoDB as well and how to design for mobile and how to use JavaScript effectively. But with a PHP flavor. Exactly but those are problems that people from all communities, all language specific tech communities deal with. So we wanted to broaden the scope and bring in people from all different communities.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Right.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
And then refocus on not just how to be a better PHP developer but how to think in a way that allows you to be a more effective software professional.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Right.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
So were you able to but how did that change that dichotomy between advanced topics that go over the head of beginners to being too low-level and also alienating people who are more experienced. Sure so it's just easier to have a wide range of topics on both of those fronts. So in PHP you can only cover the beginnings of PHP so many times without being repetitive and you can cover the beginnings of a wide array of technologies JavaScript HTML CSS design but then also we're expanding it to include just refactoring ideas so right recruiting you know the importance of diversity and technology. We want to go beyond the scope of just one specific language to cater to more people you know both on the beginner level and a more advanced level. There will still be some meetups that more advanced people will want to attend some of the architecture focused ones and you know we want to there will still be a split I think but there's just a much broader range of topics we can cover.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Right.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
For both both sides. And in as far as like but in keeping with your core membership are you still do you find yourself still doing more stuff with PHP or are you bringing in a different crowd that maybe is totally on something else? We we just rebranded so we've only had one meetup under the One Factor Chicago name and we've got the second one coming up November 16th I believe don't quote me on that. This will be after that. Cool. Okay great so yeah Jen Myers is coming to talk about design and what we found with that challenge of retaining people is that a lot of the well I talked to a lot of the people who had been coming for years and a lot of the core members and they were all open to broadening the scope because oftentimes they had moved on from PHP in their careers as well and so it really just made sense for the core people who were showing up repeatedly and since retain retaining people for me to for me it was a challenge it made sense to just branch on from there.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Right.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
We may still be PHP centric just based on my network that you know and people's networks who they know but the point is now we can more easily engage someone from the Python community or the Rails community come talk about things that you know might not have been as relevant in the past. Yeah because it's it's interesting it makes me think about there was a debate I had heard about what language should we be using to do presentations that if you go and see a JavaScript presentation or a general topic and you might not be a JavaScript developer but it's about solid principles for say for example and and it's it's presented to you in Java but you're a JavaScript developer and you don't know Java so you know how how what should the expectation be? of the people in the audience and some of the arguments were that if you're a decent developer you should be able to just read code and understand the shape and the pattern but sometimes I found that having something that reduced that that impotence mismatch and saying okay you know the the fundamental concept is is X but if I at least present it in something that's a common idiomatic language is it is that something that you're looking at you know your if you do a presentation is probably going to be with PHP is your sure so the way I would look at that is kind of again splitting it into the audience that you want to speak to so if you're talking about the solid principles and you're introducing them you should be able to do that in a way that's language agnostic right and any language that you put up there should be readable things should be named properly if you can do that in a straightforward way even if someone doesn't know Ruby for example they should be able to pick up on the concepts if it's an introductory talk if you're doing an advanced talk then you know you could cater to JavaScript of Java developers or people who are doing C++ that would be fine and then more advanced people who would be drawn to that talk probably have either been exposed to those languages or would be able to pick up the context from the presentation and still get value out of something that's not in their primary language I just wanting to take a step back and just go back to how you got involved in the PHP community here in Chicago what what's up how did you get involved with the user group you know way back a few years ago sure so I co-founded it with a recruiter actually and we've kind of moved away from that focus and that was another one of the reasons for rebranding we wanted it to be more about the community and what I was at Sitter City okay and I was the Sitter City a company or yeah so they're a startup in Chicago they've got a couple of rounds they were one of the bigger ones along with Threadless was that like a babysitter service exactly they got parents and babysitters online so I was working with the recruiter to staff up our team there after one of the funding rounds and the best move that we made was hiring one of the core Kohana developers which is a PHP web framework that we used to build out a new version of our product and so we started getting involved in the Kohana community and through that community we found people who are involved in the cake community and so it was very web framework centric at the beginning and then we just kind of branched out from there so the nice thing about having any technology specific meetup is the opportunities kind of come in so Rasmus Lierdorf was traveling through Chicago and said where's the PHP user group oh yeah I'd like to present yeah that's like that's an easy win yeah those are a little tougher to come by you know when you rebrand for generic and for the listeners who's who's Russ oh he's a creator of PHP yeah he's the creator of PHP so that's like being at the Ruby group and having mats come or being at the Clojure group and having Rich Hickey come out so it's yeah significant yeah he works for Etsy now oh okay so making you know home home spun PHP yeah and he made good points about frameworks and you know a lot of the things that he was talking about even were applicable so even if PHP is not your main language I
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
So it poses some challenges because you don't get as easy wins, but at the same time I think getting that caliber of person to present and exposing them to a wider range of listeners is a good thing.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
I'm a firm believer in listening to creators, which is why we're here, and yeah I agree. Even if you're a Clojure person and you have a chance to hear somebody who created a language and framework as ubiquitous as PHP, you need to listen.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Yeah, absolutely, and technologies change so fast that even if you're on the cutting edge of say PHP, you might have missed server-side JavaScript, functional languages, or advances the Ruby and Python communities have made.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Right, if you're not paying attention to any of that stuff you're probably missing out.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Exactly. So for this meetup what we're trying to do is move it into professional software development and software engineering practices, because there's a gap between a formal computer science education and boot camps.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Yeah, exactly, like Mobile Makers where Jen Myers is now.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Yeah, exactly. They teach a lot of valuable things, but the software engineering environment is so complex that a lot of things are missed. Unless you have a good mentor or work for a company that espouses professional practices, you can miss those things.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Right, university classes don't cover a lot of these practical engineering skills.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Yeah, unit testing, continuous integration, HTTP basics, API design, software process. A lot of these things are thrown out there as a professional developer, and unless you go to conferences like SCNA it can be difficult to pick those up. So we want to expand beyond PHP and talk about how to develop software in a professional environment effectively.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Bringing that refactoring concept to your career.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Technology exposure, refactoring ideas like hiring, continuous integration, Jen Myers talking about developers doing design. Getting people away from "I'm a PHP developer" mindset to "I'm a developer" mindset.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Yep, yeah, so bringing that refactoring concept to...
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
So refactoring your career overall, exactly. Everything. So depth from full stack, you know, full stack from the way you think about approaching problems to what tools are now in your arsenal. For sure, because you're missing something if you're laser-focused. In some professions and careers you can go really deep, and we want to learn from those people as well. But most people I've found in the software profession benefit more from having wide exposure, and you need that to operate in an ecosystem as diverse as most software engineering teams in small, mid-range, and large companies these days.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
So how does somebody find out about when your next meeting is, because it's probably gonna be after?
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Sure, yeah. So we just got it on Twitter with the new handle @refactord, as in Chicago airport.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Okay, so R-E-F-A-C-T-O-R-D, okay, I get it, RefactorD in Chicago.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
But we're on Meetup, refactor-chicago.com will redirect to the Meetup site.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic ▶ Speaking
Okay, great. Well all those links will be in the show notes. Well thanks again for taking the time to sit down with me, it's great to meet you.
Eric Kingery developer community and conference conversations ▶ Speaking
Thank you.

Critical Insights

durable
"Broadening the scope of topics beyond a single language can help retain members and attract a more diverse audience."
durable
"Presenting solid principles in a language-agnostic way can help developers from different backgrounds understand and appreciate the concepts."
durable
"Branding a community meetup as more about the community and its members rather than a specific technology can help attract a broader audience."
durable
"Opportunities for speakers and presentations come with technology-specific meetups, such as having Rasmus Lierdorf present at the group."
durable
"Even if a language is not the main focus of a presentation, the principles and concepts presented can still be valuable to developers from different backgrounds."