August Meetup Madness in #Melbourne
A roundup of Meetups that JuniorDev (LJ & Luke) attended in Melbourne in August! 💥
Hi! We’re LJ & Luke, and we make up JuniorDev. We both work at Xero accounting app during the day, and at night, we haunt and host meetups! We believe in community and get huge value out of attending meetups, and this is a way to help encourage others to see what’s out there and recap on the month, for ourselves as much as anyone else! August was particularly crazy as we attended two Conferences as well, which isn’t the norm, but was awesome.
Presented in chronological order because ranking them any other way would be insanely impossible! Except for maybe by food quality hahaha 🌮
WebDirections #Code Conference
LJ: Wow. This isn’t a usual monthly meetup! This was the very first conference that I ever attended! Xero sent a few of us to this conference and that was a really cool experience for me. Hearing from exceptional speakers, meeting more Developers from all around Australia, and some internationals, and chatting about what we had heard about from the sessions with my colleagues during breaks, that was all very cool.
The Web Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/the-web
LJ: This was a pretty special meetup for us, as it was the first time Luke’s spoken at a meetup that isn’t JuniorDev 🍒 We were asked by Rick Giner the organiser of the very cool The Web Meetup, to do a talk. It’s a mixed audience at The Web Meetup, with designers, developers, agile practitioners, product owners, so we decided to talk about the value that Junior Developers bring to teams and companies. It was also fun delivering the talk with two people, which was a first time experience for both Luke and I. We’ve got to keep practicing our public speaking for sure, but the message delivered is a really valuable one, you can check it out here:
DDD Melbourne
DDDMelbourne.com
LJ: Another totally outrageous experience for us this month was running our very own JuniorDev Track within the DDD Melbourne Conference. We volunteered working with DDD to develop a stream of sessions pitched at Junior Developers, and worked with them to increase the overall experience-level diversity of the conference. It was months of hard work, and it finally happened! We will share more details in another blog post about this, but let’s just say it was awesome! The day, the conference, the JuniorDev Track, brilliant!
PEAK15 HealthTech: UX in Healthcare
www.meetup.com/Peak15-HealthTech
Luke: Held at the General Assembly meetup space I really enjoyed networking with people who have a range of health tech experiences. I am currently involved in a HealthTech project and it was great to speak with other inspired people in the space.
The New Hustle
LJ: This was pretty cool, we got free tickets through our work as Xero were a sponsor, to the premier of a tech documentary called The New Hustle. It featured the stories of Vino Mofo, Safety Culture, and Canva. It was really great doco and they had a panel with some of the founders, and great networking with drinks afterwards. I met a bunch of awesome people here, we often go to Development focused events so to get exposed to the Startup and Hustle side was really good.
FreeCodeCamp Melbourne
https://www.meetup.com/freecodecampmelbourne
LJ: This is the local chapter for FreeCodeCamp.Org, where you can learn to code for free. I run this one every two weeks at Collective Campus who generously sponsors up, it’s really awesome for anyone just getting into code and doesn’t know anyone else in Dev or Tech yet! It was a special one for me too, as I was away in India for the last 3 FCC meetups, so it was great to catch up with familiar faces and friends and see how everyone was progressing!
JuniorDev Social
www.meetup.com/Junior-Developers-Melbourne
Luke: Not even stormy Melbourne weather could hold us back! The Juniors turned out in force again for our bi-monthly social meetup in what was a fantastic night. Our first speaker, Michelle Tan (@mishmashtan), we only met the previous social. It was so great to have her answer the speaker call so immediately and we loved hearing about her experiences as a Junior so far. Pam Rucinque (@PamRucinque) was our second speaker she delivered a fantastic talk on “Make it work, make it right, make it fast” mantra. And of course there was socialising, it’s cool to see everyone come together and just chat about #JuniorDevLife !
Tech Girls are Super Heros Showcase
www.techgirlsaresuperheroes.org/
LJ: I know I sound ridiculous saying all these meetups are “special” but I tell you this one was extra special. I was a part of a 12 week mentor-ship program working with three high-school girls to build out a business plan and then build an app! The program wrapped up a few weeks ago and this showcase event was to announce the Victorian finalists! I got to see the girls again, meet their families, and show them around my office, as it was also sponsored and hosted at Xero! It was a fun day, it’s always nice to see kids and families running around the office, good vibes and a great initiative. Another group Bully Busters won and they did a really cool app to help stop bullying in schools!
Software Development Apprenticeships
www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Software-Development-Apprenticeships
LJ: This was the first meetup from this group and it’s a interesting idea that sits close to our heart. This Meetup is more about companies getting together and having an ongoing discussion to help solve the talent pipeline of Developers. Hosted at MYOB and with members from other big tech companies here in Melbourne (including CultureAmp, Hooroo, and Xero) this first discussion centered around what initiatives these companies have to get more Juniors into their teams. If this sounds like a discussion your company would like to be apart of please sign up. Luke and I have unique insight into the problems that Juniors face, we’ve spent over a year now talking with Juniors, hearing about their issues, and it was great to get involved in this discussion.
StartupVIC Pitch Night: HealthTech
Luke: Just like the presenters on the night I was blown away by the attendance of StartupVIC’s HealthTech pitch night. Four companies pitched their amazing tech to the packed house. The companies pitching were NextGHub, My Cancer Pal, MUVi and the winner, NAVi. The team NAVi have created an amazing system to help premature babies on their way to a healthy start in life. While this was my first StartupVIC pitch night it certainly won’t be my last, and hopefully I’ll be doing the pitching soon enough.
FreeCodeCamp Melbourne [#2]
www.meetup.com/freecodecampmelbourne
LJ: You know what I love about the Free Code Camp Melbourne meetups? They are low key, but the crew here are loyal. We have a recent regular member get accepted to be a part of the Thoughtworks Level Up program for the next 6 weeks, which is also on a Tuesday, so Namibia brought in cake to share with everyone! How awesome is that.
Break Into Coding
generalassemb.ly/education/break-into-coding
LJ: This was a really fun event! This is a good one that is run semi-regularly by General Assembly which is all about how to get into Coding. I had the pleasure of hosting the night as MC, with four incredible panelists. This time was awesome, we had Will from Movember, Milly from Estimate Work, Brooke from Dius and Nina from Letterbox! They were awesome with attitude, insight, and information. So many great chats afterwards, it’s always nice to talk with people who are only looking at getting into the industry now, as it takes me back to just over a year ago when I was in the same position as them!
Girl Geek Dinner at Xero
LJ: This is such a great meetup, different tech companies host a “dinner” and have people from their company speak on different topics. This time it was at Xero and it was all about Product. I got to hear from some of the really incredible Product Owners and Product Managers that I work with. Some favourite points made.. (there were so many but I only caught a few that I wrote down!):
“Innovation happens in three years, four years, not a quarter, it’s what keeps you from being redundant in five years” — Georgie Smallwood Product Manager
When asked about MVPs, Nicki spoke about how an MVP is getting the customers to “taste the future”, keeping them engaged and taking them on the journey.
And of course, there was questions about changing careers, Virginia on finding the intersection between “What you love and what you are good at”, you already know what interests you, focus on that and you’ll find the right role!
Rapid Prototyping for Growth
www.meetup.com/Growth-Hackers-Melbourne
Luke: The night involved a presentation and workshop by psychologist Dave DiSipio. Dave led the group through the principles of guerrilla user testing. It was so interesting to hear about how easy it is to unconsciously influence the user in these scenarios. Key takeaways for me were to not ask leading questions, and to not take notes as you’re testing as this can influence the user’s behaviour. I got the chance to put JuniorDev.io to the test and saw some interesting results! We’re going through a redesign at the moment and the feedback will be super useful for that.
And that’s a wrap! 🌯
What an insane month for us, there was a week there where we were out at meetups nearly every night! With such varied interests between us, Luke with his HealthTech startup, both working on JuniorDev, and our general interest in going to Dev and Tech meetups, we can sometimes have a hectic schedule. All these meetups added valued to us in some way, knowledge, networking, so just plain good times, we hope to meet you out somewhere soon!
Cheers for taking the time to peep what we get up too!
LJ & Luke
