Skills Matter was a towering institution
My first proper day at Skills Matter was on April 17th 2012, handing out name badges at Scala Days. Around 400 people gathered at the Barbican for this two-day love-in for a programming language I’d never heard of, a sub-culture I didn’t know existed. It was, for me at least, bizarrely inspiring.
After the first day of conference, we all went to some evening do. There were red London buses waiting to pick up attendees for a site-seeing tour. From memory we were just stuck in traffic at Tower Bridge for half an hour. After we completed the short loop, dinner was held in some mad grand hall in central London, where Wendy Devolder — SM’s CEO — and Martin Odersky — Scala’s creator — addressed the crowds like it was an inaugural Freemasons meeting. It was all so strange.
But Skills Matter was able to create these kinds of moments. It was chaotic, free-spirited, energetic. It was that essence, personified by its leader Wendy Devolder, which attracted many trainers, communities, staff to join in.
I worked there for three years, almost to the day. In the end, it was enough. Those who worked there will probably know the feeling. But I met lots of brilliant people there; colleagues, community leaders, speakers and even my future bosses.
What always kept me believing in the company was its ability to attract, support and grow all these sub-cultures within tech. That, at 6.30 PM, on a cold, wet Tuesday, 60 people would file in through 116 Goswell Road for a talk on Clojure, or CQRS, then another 12 people would go upstairs for a Kotlin workshop. That was always somehow, even as a non-techie, just a beautiful thing.
Skills Matter was a towering institution. It never seemed to get the attention, or appreciation, it deserved. But tons of communities that relied on it will miss it.
I hope the staff are paid out and find new work soon. And I hope something new will emerge which champions OSS and new tech like SM did.
