Web Dev Network - My Accidental International Group

Before reading this, you should be aware terms may be used that will not be explained, but the group I reference will do just that. If you want to know more about the Dev Meet Up hosted by ESRI coming to Decatur, you should read Part I.

With so many resources online, in an effort to tame the beast of information; resources have been created such as twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more. There have even tools to bring those resources together like Tweetdeck. But with all of the resources and integration tools that highway of information can still become a blur.

The benefit of connecting to the world allows for access to a great deal of information. Unfortunately there is a lot of bad, outdated, incorrect, and copied or you pick problems that you have run into. The negatives of increased information access will quickly become visible if you are a programmer like me. But there are other options.

Sign up for a social network account; I like to call them Pro Networks as it relates to the main purpose as to why I use them. My twitter account is basically made up of people that I follow in the field of GIS and programmers. When you want to interact with your peers, your tweet can be swept away by the tweet fleet. These are people that post so much you may miss most of the posts that you follow. Again, we narrowed the internet information, but it is still not effective. What is the best way to share information that is quality? There is a way to do that too.

People. Meet the people behind the icon. At conferences, training, and professional meetings; we have the chance to talk to our peers. There is also a chance for us to present to many at one location. So, we have a solution for acquiring good information. But where are the people in your own area and professional field. So, here we are good information without the ease of locating our peers or mass information that may be bad that makes our peers more visible. Which do you pick? By accident, it has become very clear. The one you pick is - both. We will look at that in just a moment as I will bring all of this together, but I have to add one more piece.
I am a web developer, programmer, gadget geek. If it's tech, I want to learn. But as a web developer in GIS, there is another dynamic. GIS is not all I use for my development. What happens when you go outside the scope of support for any organization? And welcome to the gray area of programming, the neutral zone of support. When support steps back, it's time for us to step up. Remember how you are told to write efficient code. How valuable is efficient support?

As a web developer and I am including mobile, we all have to resolve the issue of finding the starting line. The more you integrate, new starting lines pop up and then you stop in the middle of the race and ask; what am I supposed to do now? In web development, there is something call the separation of content, presentation and functionality. Now these three areas can actually be broken down even further. So we are now in a new area, but a very similar concept. Now we need to know all of the pieces of web development, but we also need to know the details. If you try combining this with professional interaction and are either confused or frustrated and want to stop reading - WAIT! What if there was a way to resolve these issues and someone was attempting to offer genuine help. Well I am. Now that I have gone through a few issues that you may have run into, I know there are more. But I think we can work together and knock these barriers down. Let me tell you about the Web Dev Network - My Accidental International Group.

The Web Dev Network is nothing I ever considered starting. I have a lot of ideas, good and bad alike, but this one came to me out of a series of events. And yes, Needs - Mother of Invention.

All I really wanted to do was Meet Up with my peers to discuss programming and there is one happening in the city I work. We are having a GIS Dev Meet Up. The great part about this is that it has a narrow focus to maximize content quality for GIS development and it's in my geographic areas. But there is the other issue; I think there should be more events like this in other areas. For this to ever happen, I depend on the developer community. As far as the meeting for brainstorming on code that I wanted to have, I posted it on Twitter so others in Illinois could come to the meeting. After posting, I was asked if the meeting could be online. With the idea that it could be accomplished and not necessarily having the resources, I said yes. Fortunately, USGS came to my rescue and with the help of Shelley Silch of the Geospatial Liaison for Illinois in Urbana; we had our first online meeting in May 2010. Shelley connected us from Urbana and I presented from Decatur. The meeting was live with screen sharing and "hot screen" sharing and the opportunity for the group to communicate just like you would at any meeting. Not only that. Audio and screen recordings were made for others that may not have had a chance to attend.

To announce meetings, I initially started announcing on twitter and Lone GIS Pro; a group on Google and e-mailing. If you don't have a GIS team and you want to be connected to your peers, you may be interested in Lone GIS Pro. Please let me know if you are. But as far as notifying others of meetings, I needed a better way for sharing. I joined several groups with areas of focus that I am interested in individually, but to get the word out, I started the group Web Dev Network. This would help me get the word to the attendees from several states. But I received requests to join the group from Canada and countries in Europe and Asia. With the opportunity to remove one barrier, the Web Dev Network became international. Wait a second. Now this will just become one of those groups that as it grows individuals will disappear and activity will do the same.

My goal is for the Web Dev Network to be the largest small group that facilitates sharing knowledge among professionals. This way we can become part of a group and work together to make it grow, and this should facilitate the visibility of our peers in our own geographical regions. As the group grows, it would help to have volunteers to take the lead at the various levels to maintain the local level person to person interaction. Please let me know if you are a member of the Web Dev Network and you are interested in helping. Together we can grow as small team of professionals while filling a need in the pool of knowledge with integrity.

With that, I know where I want to grow with this group. If you would like to grow this way too, please join us and we will grow together.

Thanks.

Hope to share with you soon.

Chris