SwedenCpp 2017 summary
December, soon a new year. Seems to be the right moment for a small summary of my favorite, non family related, leisure activity. SwedenCpp, the C++ developer community of Stockholm, Sweden
2017, 12 exciting months
2017 was just amazing. When I started with SwedenCpp back 2016, my goal was to have 2 evenings with talks a year. It came much better. Now I am able to look back at a year full of activities, and I am pretty happy with what I see when looking back.
Seven meetup with - in sum 18 - talks, between 40 and 90 visitors each at those events.
Additionally there where some very nice moments and conversations in some of Stockholm’s coffee. We shared a lot of knowledge between us, produced several hours of valuable content, lot is even available on youtube, and many people get known to each other that didn’t know each other before.
January
January started with a meetup in a coffee in Stockholm. More people than expected came and we had a very nice evening. We did some panning for the upcoming February event and had some great conversation.
We also had a winter breakfast in January.
I had on day off and I to visit SUP46, a startup hub in Stockholm.
It was clear to me that not many people will attend this meetup, 10 in the morning on an average working day is not a good meetup date.
But we have nearly been 2 hand full people, I saw SUP46, we had a personal guide showing us the place, and some nice discussions about C++ and various topics.
February
In February we had the first 2017 event with talks, C++ Stockholm 0x02 As you might see on the number, this was our second C++ dedicated event with talks. The very first one was in September 2016. We had meetups, even with talks in between (you can find even videos on our youtube channel), but not C++ focused.
With this meetup I followed my original plan and goal. One meeting with talks, after summer, one in winter.
It was a great event with nearly 50 visitors, hosted at Tritech and I am happy that we have videos of the evening available.
Thanks on this location to Paul, Jonas and Kjell-Olov for producing our videos, I can not say how much I and the whole group appreciate your activities for SwedenCpp!
Mars
In March we met in a coffee at Stockholm center. We where just some more than 2 had full of people, but I remember this evening as one of the nicest one. Great conversations with great people. This evening was a proof that the quality of a meetup does not depend on the amount of visitors. (This is a hint to all people that think if they should become active in their local developer community)
April
In April we. about 50 SwendeCpp members, have been at HiQ office in Stockholm. Great place and the weather was, for Arpil, unexpected nice. So we had the chance to enjoy the roof terrace. But we did not only enjoy the weather and the location during our socializing part, we had also 2 great talks!
Björn gave us a preview of the talk he was going to hold at this years ACCU in England. This was great. I am happy and proud that we have to chance to give speakers in Stockholm the chance to a practice talk if they are going to speak at any other event.
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Creating such possibilities was one of the motivations for me to become active with SwendenCpp. I will try to set up similar events for anyone who is going to talk at a international C++ event or any other event with a C++ related topic. So if you are in need of a practice talk for a C++ - or related - topic, let me know! |
We did make a video of Björns talk, but we did not publish it. But you can find the ACCU talk on youtube. What I remember, the SwedenCpp talk had much more interaction, questions and discussions than the ACCU version.
Beside Björn there was also a short but great and interesting talk from Arno.
Arnos talk on our youtube channel.
May
In May, on her way home from cppnow, Anastasia from JetBrains visited SwendenCpp to give us a presentation and introduction to CLion, JetBrains C++ development environment.
Anastasia was the first international guest SwedenCpp ever had, and she gave a great presentation. If you think you knew CLion, watch the video. You will be surprised what you did not know.
| JetBrains sponsors SwedenCpp by providing one to CLion license per month to the group. I usually give those licenses we receive to SwedenCpp meetup speakers, if there are some left, I use to raffle them out to people that make tweeds about our group. |
| Now you know that if you want a CLion license, one way to get one is giving a talk at one of our events ;-) |
This was also our first time SwedenCpp had an event at King, and over 70 SwedenCpp members visited this evening. It was at the tech test for this event where I had the idea for what we later called distributed meetup.
June
In June we have again been at Tritech. Topic of the evening was Qt The weather was great, and so we had a real cute summer fest ;-) And excellent speaker. We had visitors from Gothenburg and Kumla, what is half way between Stockholm and Gothenburg.
- Some background story
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I found out that there is also a C++ meetup group in Gothenburg, but the group was not active. I asked the organizer of the group if he needs any help, and as a result the organizer stepped down. So I stepped in as organizer, asked for help, found people that are willing to do something, and now Gothenburg has a active C++ meetup group, gbgcpp. This was at the begin of 2017, in January. And this is a greate example how user groups help to connect people.
July
In July Stockholm, as the rest of Sweden, is on holiday, and so was SwedenCpp :-)
August
In August we started with a after summer coffee, in a, due to the weather and season, basically empty Wayen’s coffee in Stockholm city. But we have been more than 20 people, discussing C++ and related topic, and we did some planing with some of the speakers for the upcomming events.
September
Again full house at Tritech with far more than 50 visitors.
September 2016 we had our first SwendenCpp events with talks, also at Tritech. So this was some kind of birthday for SwedenCpp, and a evening I remember special.
End of September was the calculated birthday of my daughter, so I was a little bit nervous that I can attend the event. And since it was the one year SwedenCpp with talks anniversary, I also wanted to give a talk myself. At the end everything went will, I could attend the evening, and it was a great event.
| Petter’s talk from type to concept from this evening should be on the playlist of every C++ developer |
October
The distributed C++ meetup Stockholm && London, hosted by King
We had nearly 100 visitors alone in Stockholm, not counted the visitors in London, so it was the best visited event in our history.
- Background story
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When I first visited King and had some conversation with the persons responsible for their video and presentation system I thought, hey, this would be cool, having a meetup in 2 locations.
King has also a office in London, and I know that there is some C++ meetup activity there. Via Ansastasia from JetBrains I got in contact with Phil Nash, who works also for JetBrains and is the organizer of C++London, the London C++ meetup group.
Isn’t it wonderful how things connect, I love this community work!
More info about this evening can be found at Phil’s blog post about the event.
| Personally I think that, especially in Europa, where you have so many high populated and capital cities wiht active user groups in the same, or nearly the same, time zone the concept of distributed meetup has a great potential. Expect more to come! |
November
The second event with international visitors, and what a great evening!
The evening was sponsored by think-cell and hosted at Tritech.
With about 70 visitors we have nearly reached the limits at our event host.
This evening is again a perfect example why I love this community work. It was Johan Thelin from gbgcpp who brought me in contact with Patricia Aas from Oslo, and through my role as organizer I got contacted from think-cell. The result was this wonderful evening.
December
We will have a last meetup in 2017 in a coffee. Let’s see how many people will come, and lets hope that the coffee will not become to small for us :-)
I am looking forward to this evening, it has been a while since we just met to talk a bit, and I hope to be able to meet and talk with some of our upcoming event speaker.
Summary 2017
A very busy year, no surprise that my blog did not get as many posts as I wished and that all my other spare time projects had just very little, or non at all, activities and updates. But I enjoy to work with the group and the community a lot, so this is OK.
Thanks to all organizers who helped making this wonderful year happening, to our sponsors, and to all visitors! I also have to add special thanks to my wife who supports me by helping me to find the required time to do all this activities,
SwedenCpp in 2018
After such a great year it will be hard to keep the level, but we will do our best.
We have already a new sponsor and event host whom we will visit January 25th , with some talks, expect more info to come soon.
| We have a standing call for papers, if you want to talk at one of our events, just let me know! |
- Thanks for reading
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As usual, if you find any mistakes, please let me know. I am sure there are some, but I wanted this post be done this Sunday evening. Ideas or any other feedback is also very much welcome.