Breakfast at Gambini’s
A casual mixer celebrating Eid and beyond
August might be a slow month in Jeddah. In no ways, however, it could slow down our idea flows within the Facebook Developer Circle: Jeddah nor dampen our desire to meet new friends. Yesterday, we gathered at an Arabic (yes, don’t be fooled by the name) cafe and had a long table breakfast.
Faces old and new mingled, where defense contractors meet sophomores in college, dancing around topics from camel milk to camelCase, to everyone’s favorite TV series, and a rift between the Ruby aficionados and Pythonistas.
Jokes interspersed by power shortage at the cafe. We met new friends, probed into their latest projects, favorite stacks, and most importantly, how we can support each other in our developer and professional journeys.
I’m pleasantly surprised by the many college students who joined our meetup for the first time, and the insights, and interesting problems they face in their courseworks.
In our interwoven conversations, a few themes seem to pop up frequently that I’d make a note here:
Developer Circle Jeddah as a launch platform
Abdulaziz is working on a developer networking web-app that he briefly demoed to his tablemates, and Abdullah pinged me earlier this week of an CMS he’s working on. There seems to be a need of a communal announcement and feedback space where members can showcase their latest creations.
Developer Circle Jeddah as a collaborative space
Multiple members voiced their desire to work on challenges that are technically interesting and locally relevant. Many would love to form self-organized teams and work on projects as a 1~2 week sprints, and showcase them at our regular meetups.
Developer Circle Jeddah as a source of motivation
In our post-event review, Usman related that some members have raised concerns on how to stay motivated and on track in their side projects. Motivation essentially is the reminder and kick that you need from ones that you trust. As our community grows and builds projects together, there will be a lot of rooms in providing support for each other.
It has been stimulating to explore new directions and ways we can morph our community towards one that we want to be. And it takes every single (and married) one of us!
Your next steps
JUNCTIONxKAUST hackathon is coming to town September 27–29, 2018. Read more and stay tuned on https://kaust.hackjunction.com
Read up on our short history
Until then, keep sharing, keep coding, keep learning.
Comment below on what you want to see happen next with our developer community :)
