The Clojure Sydney Meetup, four years in
In the beginning
Nearly 4 years ago I founded the Sydney Clojure User Group. I had been playing with Clojure for a little while and started a small study group to learn more. Initially this group was private and held at the ThoughtWorks office.
After a couple of meetups and conversations I decided to open up the group to the public and then realised we weren’t the only ones interested in Clojure and, even more important, interested in meeting like-minded people, share experiences and help each other.
Back then none of us used Clojure for anything serious. Apart from Steve. Steve is a brave man and was building his new startup on top of Clojure. This was a great source of inspiration and learning for all of us. Steve hired Harry and Harry told us first hand what using Clojure for work could be like.
For all of us hobbyist Clojurists, this was a great start.
Since then we’ve held 37 meetups with an average of 22.25 attendees per meetup. These numbers won’t impress many people, no doubt about that. What is impressive however is how it’s changed over the years.
Where are we at?
Last December I sent out a survey and the result for one of the questions made me smile. The question was: Do you currently use Clojure in your day job?
This is absolutely amazing. It’s great to see how much the community has matured. Nearly 50% of meetup attendees currently work with Clojure in Sydney! I’m fortunate to say I can include myself towards this milestone!
Going forward
We’re now in 2016 and the group shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, we’re picking up the pace a little and starting the new year with a new venue: from now on we’ll be meeting at Atlassian!
I would like to thank ThoughtWorks for all the support in starting and running the meetup. I wouldn’t have been able to do it if it wasn’t for them.
See you at the next meetup!