Sandro Mancuso

Sandro Mancuso

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Recovered from WITC metadata archive (Interview with Sandro Mancuso___KZQW9oL9Gfo.json).
The Interviewer

Mike Hall

Interviewer, UGtastic

The Guest

Guest

Guest

The Conversation

Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi it's Mike here again at Software Craftsmanship North America. I'm sitting here with Sandro Mancuso. Sandro and I interviewed last year. Sandro was one of the first interviews I ever did with UGtastic or amongst the first and he runs the London Software Craftsmanship group where you you're affiliated with with a team that runs a Software Craftsmanship group but when I first sat down to interview you last year I was I had just launched the idea of UGtastic and it was just basically focus only on user groups and now this year it's grown to be user groups and tech conferences and then also the people that that are interesting that speakers authors FOSS developers and community influencers which is my wall of card for people that are interesting. You know and it's sounds like you know London Software Craftsmanship group is also grown you know so what I've been doing is grown and what you've been doing sounds like from what you described it's grown quite a bit. What what is the state one year on of London Software Craftsmanship?
Guest Guest
Yeah I think that when I spoke last year we had about 420 members. One year later we I checked this morning I think that we have 860. Holy cow. Yeah and also last year we were you're trying to figure out how we would deal with 400. We were going to deal with 400. 800 and then all of a sudden things went out of proportion. So we tried to have more meetings we decided I think that I said that last year that our plan was to have more meetings instead of making our meetings bigger.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right. Because when you say bigger what does that mean?
Guest Guest
For example our roundtable meeting it was limited to 35 people but we had 40 people on the waiting list. Okay so that's that's actually 70 people. You said you have 30 that attend and then 40. Yeah and then so there's always this massive waiting list in the meetings that we were running and so it was clear to me that either we would make the meetings bigger or have more meetings.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Guest Guest
And we chose the latter.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
So how many meetings do you have a month?
Guest Guest
So now we have five meetings a month. Holy cow. Yeah and we decided to make them very different from each other because another thing that we noticed is was that not every person feels comfortable in a hands-on session or not every person feels comfortable on a group discussion or in a social environment. So we wanted to provide different types of meetings in the evening in the morning so we could satisfy the majority of our members in one way or another. So you're trying to respond to what the needs of the group are and provide different forums formats for different. That could include everyone. They feel at least once a month there is a meeting that they feel very comfortable to come along. So that was and one thing that we decided to do is we kept the promise of the first year to never have any technology specific meeting. So every single meeting that we have even their hands-on sessions they are always always language agnostic.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Oh really?
Guest Guest
So you focus truly on techniques not necessarily this is Ruby, this is JavaScript. Yeah London has a very rich ecosystem of communities like Chicago does. So every time that we feel the urge of running a Java session there is a Java community for that. So we direct that to the Java community or to the Ruby community. But in the CrossManship community I don't want to alienate a single member. I think that regardless which language they use, regardless which level of seniority they have, they should feel welcome to come along. It makes it hard to organize mainly the hands-on session. But that's what we decided to do. It has been very successful. And so when you have you obviously the group is getting a little bit older now and one of the things I've heard about is from other organizers is how to keep as people have been in the group longer their experience level increases. So a lot of times the topics are a little more entry-level so they lose interest and move on.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
How do you deal with that in such a large group?
Guest Guest
That's just a very interesting question because I remember one once we ran our hands-on session then we went to the pub as we do in England every session. So this guy came along and said I found this session today very easy. And I said to him the session was not easy. You made it easy for yourself because you came to the session with your default toolkit and you used that. So for example if it was easy for you to do in c-shot why haven't you done that in Clojure or why haven't you used a different framework? So there's always something you can be a beginner in. Absolutely. So if it's something that you know so there's no point in doing that. So do something different. Challenge yourself. The session is there as a structure for you to do whatever you want. Kind of like the code retreats. Go in and flex a muscle that you don't use very often.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Exactly.
Guest Guest
If you've done the game of life 100 times in Java start doing Clojure. You're right.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Guest Guest
Start doing other language. So push yourself. So I always say that to people and I think that doing that then they're finally with this mentality and then everything is okay. And last year you did a few different things. You had described that you were starting a mailing list.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
What did you, where did that go? How has that been since then?
Guest Guest
Yeah it's fine to have a global mailing list. For all the community organizers that we met here at the CNA, Europe, it didn't work out well. No one contributed including ourselves.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Guest Guest
I joined it and then within a few weeks I was in, I have to say the, what kind of, it wasn't, there's nothing wrong with the format, well I should say, not the format, there's nothing that anybody did wrong at least consciously or intentionally. It was just that I was in a place myself and I think a few other people. We're, we're, we're social and having a mailing list felt kind of wrong because it was like, it was a closed thing. It was, it was almost like feeling like, oh this is just for the organizers.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
And it was like, why don't we just do it in the open?
Guest Guest
And so, you know, I don't think I, this was no slight to anybody. It just, it just wasn't a natural feeling. Yeah I think that it was like an attempt to bring all of us together.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Guest Guest
Didn't work. So that means that this year we need to figure out something else.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Guest Guest
To do it. But we need to integrate. We managed to do that well in Europe, but we don't use any tools, but we are very close to each other. But it's true there is this big gap between the communities in US and communities in Europe. We are not aware of the communities in the US, all of them, and you guys are not aware of our communities in Europe. Well there's, there's, even in the US, there's there's gaps between, even, even within the same geographic region, there's gaps. It's a little bit more insular. And that, that does bring up, you were working with a few different groups. I remember that there was a Germany group and a pair of, I believe a Paris craftsmanship, Paris Software Craftsmanship group.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Do you know where where they are?
Guest Guest
Absolutely. That's what we decided to do for our second year. Because we had a quite good first year, and we thought that we could do more. And do more meant that we wanted to see more craftsmanship communities in Europe. And I was traveling around, going to many conferences, speaking conferences and all this kind of stuff, and every single conference that I was talking, I was saying, I want to go back home and knowing that at least one of you in the audience, you want to start a craftsmanship community here. And I, and for my surprise, people were interested, and they came to me. And then we shared ideas, and we told them how they, how we were doing, what we were doing, and then we kept this contact going on emails and helping them. And, and they, all these communities were formed in Europe, very connected to us, because that's how the seed was planted by us. And then there is this conference in Germany, the Software Craftsmanship conference, in Germany that's been running for two years. And they are, and this year they reserved some of the spaces for the communities in Europe, so we could get together. So, so it was intentionally, we're gonna, we're gonna keep some space open so we can bring people in.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Exactly.
Guest Guest
So, so they opened a few spaces for some of the communities in Europe, and then they opened to the general public. Oh wow, that's very cool. So it's, it's very collaborative and very much, hey, we're all in this together, let's, let's take care of each other.
Mike Hall Interviewer, UGtastic
Exactly.
Guest Guest
So, so, so yeah, so now I think that in Europe, because we know each other, we go to the same conferences, we, the communities, they were creating the same model. So, so we are far more well connected. Well thanks again for catching up. Well, my pleasure. And hopefully, hopefully we'll catch up again next year. Absolutely. Thanks.