Developer Community And Conference Conversations: Mike Hall Interviews Stephen Anderson

[Music] hi it's Mike with UGtastic I'm here at SCNA 2013 and right now I'm sitting down with Steven Anderson who has up until recently ran the mad railers group up in Madison Wisconsin thank you for taking the time to sit down with me you know I understand that you were running this group for a long time but some life events have come up and you've had to identify how to transition the group over so that way it could still exist well how did you go about doing that how did you identify okay the plan well the the group was passed to me in 2007 my friend who started the group kind of asked me if I would take it over because he was moving on to make some other things happen on his teaching front he started in just like he had started a rails class in 2006 he started an iOS development class in the Tech College in 2007 very cutting-edge and he was just clearing his his plate to make something new happen so I was running mad railers for years but along the way even though I was the kind of the figurehead and the person whose picture was on the the users group there were many other people who were putting in as much effort as I was I was just the point person who who kind of chose who to delegate to on a frequent basis and part of the time the dynamic was kind of a core group of us making things happen and part of the time it was me or someone else in the core group just delegating and making sure that an interesting event happened every month right there was a point years ago when I started not maybe not years ago at least between two and one year ago I'd already started talking about maybe it's time to pass the torch find somebody else to run it who will bring more energy than myself at this point in time my interest is kind of like they do for many of us you know you know what you're passionate about goes through phases and different steps and I've become really interested in the dynamics of running building growing our business which is a different set of skills that I'm I'm really intrigued and and pulled towards and I waited to pass the torch until it was pretty clear this year it was very clear because Zach stepped forward with a vision for content refreshing the content making it more attractive to the most experienced rate rails developers we had made a very successful effort to make the group attractive for new rails programmers and now so jack pointed out that that was kind of causing us to be disengaged causing our most experienced rails community members to be disengaged from the group so let's swing the pendulum back right and he's been doing that and in recognition of the fact that he was doing more for the group than I was I asked him if you take it over so so it was a it was a happy transition and it sounds like he was already somebody that you had been fostering in a community and then having more and more of the other responsibility over is that I wouldn't put it that way Zach is I mean he he didn't need any fostering no he's somebody makes things happen yeah and my business partner Brad is working with him to run the users group it's the two of them currently and I'm sure there will continue to be a larger extended core of people running it I wanted to step back for a couple of reasons one is to let the group refresh with more energy and more enthusiasm than I was bringing to the table and also to clear my plate I'm trying to get things to fall in play into place so that I can teach a night class at UW-Madison in the spring web development with open-source tools so often as professional programmers we like to complain about the gap between what we do and what is taught in computer science curriculum you're looking to find it yeah I'm trying the world to close that gap yes and that's exciting to me it's gonna be challenging I taught five classes of rails at the Tech College and that was a great fantastic experience I think there's going to be I'm gonna take us a bit of a different approach with the University and I'm looking forward to it I hope everything falls into place do you think you well I'm looking forward to it I hope everything falls into place do you think well I'm looking forward to it I hope everything falls into place do you think well one was that it's kind of funny that the last person that handed off the group went to teach and now you're going off to teach so eventually Zach is gonna be a teacher so Zach now knows that his future holds a teaching course at one of the Madison University he would be killer he would do a really great job well in a few years I'll be interviewing him and talking about handing off mad railers to the next generation and it's a it's a it's a very interesting thing to see this community that was started and fostered and grown and maintained and nurtured and then it continues on and I've talked with a few people about that today is that we can build things in a way that's much like our software we can build it so that way it can be owned by somebody else and it will live beyond us we can take that attitude towards our communities and try to build that in a way that when we step away or when we go away for whatever reason it keeps going it doesn't just follow the there's some interesting details as part of that conversation so for example my company Brad and I started the company bendy works but it was an offshoot from the users group from mad railers we've been very closely aligned with mad railers over the years and we have run the events at our offices and bought you know bought the food and the drink and kind of been the de facto sponsor a lot of the time and we've had many conversations about is this a good thing is it you know what are the pros and cons the the pros are you know we make it happen it's consistent people know where to go every month right I think the possible cons are we don't want either in reality or people's perception we don't want people to feel like the users group is about our company because that's not the point the user group should be its own thing and perhaps it's damaging if it's a little bit too closely aligned in people's perception with it with a commercial company yeah if it becomes the bendy works mad railers yeah it can also be damaging for other consulting firms in the area that have developers who would love to go to the user group but it's a competition and they might be afraid that you're gonna poach them or yeah well I never heard those specific concerns but I'm hearing from the people who go to the user group I'm not hearing for the people who don't go right right exactly well consider me their advocate then one thing that's really cool that happened this year is our public library did a huge remodel and they're reinventing themselves as kind of a collection of maker spaces really they've got some gorgeous tech meeting spaces that are larger and better equipped than then rooms that we specifically remodeled space and bendy works to allow the library is a step above that so we've moved the users group to the public library so that that helps as well that's very interesting that the local community would be recognizing that need or desire I do you have any insight into how that came to be I talked to the gentleman who is kind of the impetus at the library and he tells me this is a national movement that libraries are struggling to reinvent themselves and one of the things they're turning towards is providing a public space and venue for for teaching people how to make things and to share skills that's interesting well good luck in your new venture and I hope the class turns out really good and thanks for all those years of putting in the effort on man railers well thank you my friends thank you very much for joining us today and I hope to see you next time user groups with lots to say interviews and more no way sharing great ideas in the tech community fascinating conversations a plethora of information find out for yourself today yet 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