SwedenCpp 2021
Over the recent years it became a tradition for me to write a yearly summary about the local C++ community activities. After it looked there might not be anything to report, I am more than happy being able to write a summary also for 2021. So here it is:
Of course, 2021 started like 2020 ended, lockdowns, no event possible, very sad. We were of course hoping, maybe during the summer the restrictions will soften, maybe after summer, and for a long time, it looked like it would not be possible to run an event at all.
But finally, in November it became possible, and wow, how people were waiting for the thing to happen. Some event hosts/sponsors asked us to come, some persons were willy to present, and lots of people were happy to join. So it happened, and not just in Stockholm, but also in Gothenburg. From the East-coast to the West-coast, the local C++ communities had real-life events ;-)
The Gothenburg November event
It seems a lot of people were eager to meet in real life in Gothenburg. And so it happened that Gothenburg had an event. On the same day/evening as Stockholm.
To be fair and frank, they even announced it a little bit earlier and started the evening half an hour more early. So technically speaking, the C++ Sweden community restart happened in Gothenburg
The event was hosted by Zenseact, a very active C++ community supporter on the WestCoast with some awesome developers. I am super happy that we have such companies in Sweden, they are really a gift for the local C++ landscape. And they do awesome stuff, if you are interested in a software platform for innovative and safe self-driving features that will change our societies forever, have a look at https://www.zenseact.com
I was told it was a nice evening, and available photos seem to confirm that. It seems this event was one of the best visited events ever in the history of GbgCpp. Too bad I can not visit GbgCpp more often, but as soon as I have the opportunity I will do it again.
The StockholmCpp November event
It was a long time since I last organized an event and boy, what was I nervous about. Pre-C19 I was doing an event every 4 to 6 weeks, so I had lots of routines that have grown over time. But this time was different.
It started with searching together my recording gears which I did not use for about 20 months and where some parts needed to be found. Then I needed to remember on how to do my intro slides, for which I have of course a asciidoctor to html-slides CI/CD pipeline (🤓) but the tech stack needed some updates after that long time, and I am on new hardware, so that was fun. And when we came to the location, we had some details to fix that caused some small delay, but luckily nothing serious and everything worked out well.
We started with 2 talks from the event we had to cancel in March 2020. Awesome that we have such consistent and supportive speakers! We could even have had a 3rd talk, but 2 filled the evening well and we will hear the other one at our next event.
The event was hosted by Prevas, who recently joined forces together with Tritech, our very first event host ever. It’s great to have such companies in town who care and support the local developer communities. If you are interested in becoming a consultant check them out, they provide great opportunities for you. And of course, also if you need consultants you want to have a look at prevas.se and tritech.se.
The event was well visited, we had about 70 people stepping by. The talks were great and well received. Good discussions about the topics, some reaching deep into the after-event part of the evening.
All the recording, video - audio - desktop, worked well and so I was able to produce videos of the talks for our youtube channel. So you can watch the talks online if you want. It’s of course not the same as experiencing them live. Wow, was I surprised what a difference the live experience makes, I have nearly forgotten about that. Glad we had this event so I got a reminder of how awesome live events can be!
Summary, and looking ahead
Organizing a meetup is a pretty time-intensive task. We always have more than one speaker what requires some planning ahead and we always try to do videos of the talks. If you look at them, you might notice that producing those in the quality we do requires some effort. And in general, lots of communication has to happen with people and event hosts/sponsors, and all that sums up a quite surprising amount.
All these activities became natural routines for me over the years where organizing meetups was my favorite hobby. When Corona hit, and we could not do any more meetups, all of a sudden I ended up with some time left.
That was kind of unexpected nice, and over the last nearly 2 years I filled that space with other activities, mostly development on open source projects. Among those, adding some new features to our SwedenCpp website, see the blog and the video section.
Some of that work and activities I do not want to miss in the future, but it is clear that my time is limited and I can not do all the things together from now on. I guess I have to see and learn how to manage that, and how to set my priorities in future.
The November meetup was an awesome event and a reminder of how much fun it can be to organize a meetup and do videos afterward. And it was so nice to see people face to face I haven’t seen for a long time!
It’s clear that I do not want to miss that in the future, but maybe some things will have to adopt, we will see.
For the next year, … from today’s perspective, I hope the situation in Sweden will not escalate and rules stay as they are. We have already a sponsor and speakers, so everything would be ready for the next meetup in 2022.