A Quick Spin in Victoria
I’ll be honest: I never took Victoria very seriously before starting at MetaLab last year, but it’s growing on me. Sure it’s quiet, but it punches well above its weight in terms of coffee and food. Plus, it’s beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m still absolutely a Vancouverite at heart, but Victoria is also much cooler (and often straight-up hipster) than its reputation would lead you to believe. To make a comparison to American cities: if Vancouver is the San Francisco of Canada, then Victoria is our Portland.
[Victoria] punches well above its weight in terms of coffee and food. Plus, it’s beautiful.
I was in Victoria for 10 days of training between San Francisco and Osaka, and it was nice to be back on Canadian soil. I didn’t have to convert the money, the units made sense, the letter “u” was back, and I could order poutine.
Remote Team, Assemble!
While I have a personality suited to remote work, having (almost) the entire project’s dev team under one roof was really fantastic. Learning aside, this doubled as a team-building retreat: I feel much closer to the rest of the team now that I’ve met them in person (especially the Europeans), and got to know the Victoria team better.
Does this mean that we should colocate the team permanently? Of course not! There is something to be said for having everyone get to know each other. However, I feel like there would be diminishing returns: I got to know the Portuguese team much better the first dinner out, and got a good sense of personalities, and so on. While I learned more about them as time goes on, the initial face-to-face was the most impactful.
Remote work lesson #3: the occasional face-to-face is helpful
As a result, I’m much more willing to ping other people on the team for second opinions, thoughts, problems, etc. This is remote work lesson #3: the occasional face-to-face is helpful. It’s an investment to bring everyone together outside of the main project work, but it’s going to pay dividends later.
It also doesn’t hurt that the MetaLab peeps are awesome. I mean that about them individually: there is no weak link. I’m very lucky to work with such great people worldwide :)
Functional Programming Scene
TL;DR: What FP Scene?
Despite the fact that tech is one of the top industries in Victoria, and that the first Haskell Symposium was held in Victoria, I couldn’t find any meetup groups focusing on FP. Speaking to several locals — both tech professionals and UVic CompSci students — it doesn’t sound like there is a very active tech meetup culture yet.
One person that I spoke to had some interest in learning this “Haskell” thing that people keep talking about, and he was potentially interested in starting a user group in Victoria. This would be amazing!
Want to start VicFP?
If anyone is interested in starting a Victoria-based FP meetup, drop me a line, and VanFP can help support by sharing how we organize and run events, and possibly even help drum up spaces and funding.
There does seem to be interest, but we need someone to take the reigns and get it off the ground ;)
Next Stop: Osaka, Japan
