Death of Local Tech Communities
Once a quarter, I dedicate a twitch stream to graduating boot camp students! The intent is to share the importance of the tech community in their careers and to hype community involvement. I try to explain that attending local meetups and conferences will help them to get jobs, to improve their skills, and to make more money. Alas, this exercise has become futile. Why? Because local community events are disappearing. This hinders the recent grad (from now on referred to as an entry-level dev) in joining a community and continuing in their career. As a community member, organizer, speaker, and future mentor I am scared that the community is gone forever.
Let’s take a trip back in time to 2019. Just a few years ago, local communities were going strong! There were many active user groups! Attendees would invite friends, share content, and create new groups. There were tons of company sponsors looking for opportunities to give back, and networking came naturally.
What happened? When COVID hit, all in-person events went online, many quit attending due to burnout. Then organizers of online meetups, forums, streams, and conferences started canceling for the same reason. With burnout came the Great Resignation. This had unintended side effects:
- Sponsors lost connections with organizers.
- Organizers and attendees moved to…
