The Apprenticeship Move: Dave Hoover on GeekFest and Developer Mentorship
🚀 Dive into the history and evolution of GeekFest, the user group that started at Optiva and grew into a packed house at Groupon. 🌟 Learn how they've maintained their spirit and importance over the years. 📚 #GeekFest #UserGroup #TechCommunity 🌐 [Link to Interview]: https://just3ws.github.io/interviews/dave-hoover-geekfest-geekfest
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm Mike. I'm standing here with Dave Hoover from Groupon, named Optiva. He's the founder of GeekFest, a user group, kind of an internal group that started at Optiva and has grown and now has migrated over to Groupon. So, hi, Dave. Thanks for-- Hi, Mike. Hi. Can you tell us a little bit about GeekFest and its origins and kind of where it is today? Sure.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
We started GeekFest in 2007 at Optiva. It actually didn't start as anything official. It was just--it was actually an official study group. We were studying Ruby Refactoring, a draft of the book that was being worked on at the time. And there was about three apprentices and a kind of part-time contractor, Victoria Wang, at Optiva at that point. And it was just a time for us to sit down and get away from our code a little bit. You were doing Java most of the time. Actually, at that time, it was--we were all learning Ruby. So I'd been doing Ruby for a number of years, but that was like my first full-time year in Ruby. This was 2000--actually, I guess it would have been the year before that. But anyway, it started as a study group around this book. But as time went on, it just kind of morphed into more general discussion. And then we'd have people from Optiva who were out at clients come in and give talks. I remember when Andy came and gave a talk on Scala later in 2007. And we got into a habit. We would just all go out and grab sandwiches from like Jimmy John's or something beforehand. And then come back and either like hack on code a little bit, like fun code. Or we'd discuss a book or we would have a presentation. So it sounds kind of like an auspicious beginning to something that's now a packed house in a mini conference.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
I mean like I've noticed that over the years that like lots of development shops have like--it's a healthy thing to have like a lunch and learn. But like you're saying, it's morphed. Yeah, I mean even the years that I've gone, it's gone from being a few people around a table to a filled room to the room is over filling. And that's just when it was still Optiva. It's just kind of interesting though, when you started to open up--I mean I remember coming before I joined Optiva, coming to GeekFest. And it wasn't quite public, but it wasn't totally-- Yeah, I mean so ever since the very beginning, we've always been open to outside people, people that weren't at Optiva and now at Groupon. We've always been open to people coming. It's just we haven't ever had a huge reason to promote it a lot. We still don't because we still don't. We always run out of room.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
Very quickly. So yeah, it's always been available to anybody. About a year after we were doing it, we did a bunch of kind of feedback and surveys for people inside of Optiva and quickly realized that GeekFest had become this very, very important part of what we were. And at that point we were like, "Okay, well this has actually become like this kind of perk/benefit sort of thing. So we should actually start buying lunch. Let's get out of this habit of people having to run out and grab lunch and come back. Let's just get lunch ordered. " Yeah. So we started doing that and that still goes on today. We buy lunch for about 80 people or so or sometimes over that. And some people from the outside, it's not just internal only. And that's one of the things with the acquisition. It went from being a tight-knit group that had kind of formed its own identity around GeekFest. And it was something, I can speak to this, that was of great concern coming into Groupon and getting acquired by a larger company. I mean most outside user groups are kind of independent and they operate, whereas GeekFest was really identified with Optiva and seeing Optiva get acquired. And you persevered through that even though I was really worried. But it has grown. It has changed.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
It's definitely changed.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
What do you think is keeping, that it's still GeekFest?
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
I mean why do you think that, even though it's so much bigger now, that it's still, how do you keep in the spirit is what I'm trying to say. So yeah, I think the spirit of GeekFest has always been a place, it grew into, the spirit of GeekFest started off as just like some people learning some stuff together. But over the years I think the most consistent theme or spirit has been a place to go, a fairly safe place to go and practice presentations or use this group as a sounding board for ideas or open source projects. I think with the size now it's more intimidating. I've always wanted it to be a place where a new presenter could come and do their first talk to kind of get some of their jitters out. It's, it's, there's still people willing to do that as first time presenters or as young presenters. But that's certainly more intimidating nowadays.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
With like a room of 80 people.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
Like I was saying, it's almost like being at a mini conference now.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
But I mean that said, like we have an 18 year old presenting next week.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
So I'm happy about that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
I'm also happy that people like Chris McAvoy and Adrian, how do you say his last name? Holabadi? Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
Came over the last, in the, in the last month and kind of presented either, well they presented their, their projects.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
Their open source projects where they're open badges or Django. And, and Adrian came and I loved Adrian's talk because it, I, it wasn't fully baked.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
He was like saying, this is something I'm working on. I'm interested in people's reactions to this. And that's the perfect use of GeekFest as a place to like get your ideas out there and, and engage, you know, community interests.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
And it, that's one of the histories of GeekFest I remember is that people weren't afraid to give their opinion.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
And say, I don't know about what you just did.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
So I think that's one thing we need to like, now that it's been about, how long has it been? Eight months I think since the acquisition.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
We need to do a little bit better job of people speaking up more and interrupting and asking questions and giving their opinions. Like, like we had a pretty good, we had a pretty thing, good, good thing going with that.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
About a year ago.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
And I can say, you know, kind of one of my favorite memories was Brian Merrick coming out and doing his hands-on or we pretended to be a computer program. I was a button. I said click. And, and we had messaging and things and it was a lot of fun. And it was a practice for him to go to, I think it was one of the Agile conferences where he was going to work with business users. So, so they could understand some of the complexities.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
So that's like a favorite memory of mine from GeekFest. Do you have any like that kind of. Oh, favorite memories. Um, good question. I mean, Adrian's talk, um, a week ago was definitely a highlight for me. Like there's literally people standing outside of the room, looking through the glass wall, um, hoping to pick up what he was talking about. Um, and the fact that like probably 95% of the people in the room were all Rubyists listening to a guy from, from the Python community, obviously, uh, was great. Um, I mean, just thinking back, I remember, uh, our old friend, Fred Polgardi, just being like a superstar.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
Of GeekFest in terms of like being a critical thinker and asking people to think through things and asking tough questions.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
He's, he's, he's tough like that. So I'd love to see him at a GeekFest again soon, but, uh, I'm trying to think, I don't know. It's just, I'm just proud that it's just continued to go. Um, I think a lot of that comes from, um, what we, we have our apprentices, uh, or organize it. Um, and I think they, they provide a lot of enthusiasm about the whole thing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
And that is an interesting thing to bring up that it's, it's not just, uh, uh, something that you manage or, or somebody else. It's something that helps bring the apprentice, apprentices, gives them an investment in the community. I think that's kind of, it's, I, I, I'm interested that, you know, uh, you have like Ethan who, you know, now runs and helps with the Windy City TV. Um, I, I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to be interviewing him, uh, next week. Cool. Cool. I'm going to ask him about GeekFest and how maybe that might've given him an introduction to community leadership.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Sure.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
So now, yeah, when he was doing it, I don't know if, if he was responsible for it back then. And I think we might've. He was.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh, was he? Okay.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
Um, yeah, it all blends together. But actually like thinking about one, I, maybe the, the easiest for me highlight would have been, we had three of our past apprentices, uh, kind of go, come and give a talk to future apprentices.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
Um, which actually I guess Ethan didn't, wasn't there for that. But, um, anyway, uh, that was definitely a highlight to have that kind of full circle sort of talk.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Dave Hoover
Geekfest
And just so people know that it's, uh, GeekFest is here at Groupon, uh, in Chicago 600 West. Uh, every Tuesday you can go to the Gathers Us site to sign up for that or follow GeekFest on Twitter and see what's coming up. Yep. GeekFest. GathersUs. GeekFest. GathersUs. I'll have a link. Cool. - Thanks very much, Dave. - All right, appreciate it. - Thanks, Mike.