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St. Louis Year In Tech

22 Dec 2009

2009 was a tremendous year for St. Louis geeks, techies, and entrepreneurs and by the end of it I was almost overwhelmed by the number of opportunities to get out and support cool events.

First, there were a bunch of intriguing new user groups joining the already robust St. Louis user group scene. I had a hand in the new Lambda Lounge user group, focused on the study of functional and dynamic programming languages. This group started just a year ago and now has 130 local members diving monthly into the hottest areas in software development. It’s a fantastic group and a tribute to the depth of the St. Louis developer community.

St. Louis was also lucky to have Dave Klein, Grails author and guru, move to St. Louis recently and he has been instrumental in getting a new Gateway Groovy group started. Dave recently announced that the Groovy group would co-locate with the Gateway JUG starting in January. Most people aren’t aware, but St. Louis is a hotbed of Groovy and Grails activity between Dave and core Grails committer and Groovy extraordinaire Jeff Brown. There are several companies in the area (Boeing and bioMérieux come to mind) that are taking the plunge into Grails as a simpler path to writing JVM-based web applications.

We also had a brand new hackerspace get off the ground: Arch Reactor. What’s a hackerspace? It’s a place for geeks of all kinds to meet and hack on cool projects with other geeks. There was a great write-up in the Post about it recently. Big props to Bob Ward and all the other Arch Reactors for getting through the tricky first steps of building the momentum for a group like this.

Slightly off the techie track, I also need to mention the Social Media Club of St. Louis, who put together a string of fantastic events all year long. My main link there is Brad Hogenmiller, although I know many others also help in planning.

Besides all those groups that meet regularly, there were also the conferences. Maybe I’ve been under a rock but I think there were way more events in St. Louis this year than any year I can remember.

Just a quick run-down:

  • Google Wave Hackfest – Aug 25 – Matt Taylor managed to get 50 lucky St. Louis developers access to dev sandbox accounts on Google Wave well before the rest of the world and we had our own little hackfest building wave robots and creating infinite loops. Matt has passed the torch to Bill Edney for the next hackfest, coming up on January 5th.
  • Day of Dot Net (DODN) – Aug 28-29 – an amazing 2-day conference for .NET aficionados with national speakers and attendance of over 500 people. Congrats to all the organizers!
  • Flash Camp – Sept 11 – a 1-day conference for Flash, Flex, and Actionacript. Congrats to JP Revel!
  • Coders 4 Charities – Oct 16-18 – a special event bringing coders together to make software for non-profits.
  • Strange Loop – Oct 22-23 – my own baby was the inaugural instance of the Strange Loop developer conference, which brought in over 300 speakers and developers from all over the country for a unique event at the Tivoli Theatre.
  • St. Louis Bar Camp – Nov 7-8 – Wash U was the spot for the latest incarnation of the Bar Camp (there have been others, I just don’t know much about them :). Maybe the first tech event ever called off early because of freakishly good weather. Even so, those who made it had a great time. Congrats to Matt Follett for putting it together.
  • Startup Connection – Jan 21, Jun 23, Nov 17 – this event brings together people that are part of, interested in, or supporting St. Louis tech startup companies. Many thanks to Jim Brasunas, ITEN, and all the other groups promoting St. Louis startups.
  • CloudCamp – Sam Charrington put together a great first CloudCamp here in St. Louis and it looks like there will soon be a new [2009 was a tremendous year for St. Louis geeks, techies, and entrepreneurs and by the end of it I was almost overwhelmed by the number of opportunities to get out and support cool events.

First, there were a bunch of intriguing new user groups joining the already robust St. Louis user group scene. I had a hand in the new Lambda Lounge user group, focused on the study of functional and dynamic programming languages. This group started just a year ago and now has 130 local members diving monthly into the hottest areas in software development. It’s a fantastic group and a tribute to the depth of the St. Louis developer community.

St. Louis was also lucky to have Dave Klein, Grails author and guru, move to St. Louis recently and he has been instrumental in getting a new Gateway Groovy group started. Dave recently announced that the Groovy group would co-locate with the Gateway JUG starting in January. Most people aren’t aware, but St. Louis is a hotbed of Groovy and Grails activity between Dave and core Grails committer and Groovy extraordinaire Jeff Brown. There are several companies in the area (Boeing and bioMérieux come to mind) that are taking the plunge into Grails as a simpler path to writing JVM-based web applications.

We also had a brand new hackerspace get off the ground: Arch Reactor. What’s a hackerspace? It’s a place for geeks of all kinds to meet and hack on cool projects with other geeks. There was a great write-up in the Post about it recently. Big props to Bob Ward and all the other Arch Reactors for getting through the tricky first steps of building the momentum for a group like this.

Slightly off the techie track, I also need to mention the Social Media Club of St. Louis, who put together a string of fantastic events all year long. My main link there is Brad Hogenmiller, although I know many others also help in planning.

Besides all those groups that meet regularly, there were also the conferences. Maybe I’ve been under a rock but I think there were way more events in St. Louis this year than any year I can remember.

Just a quick run-down:

  • Google Wave Hackfest – Aug 25 – Matt Taylor managed to get 50 lucky St. Louis developers access to dev sandbox accounts on Google Wave well before the rest of the world and we had our own little hackfest building wave robots and creating infinite loops. Matt has passed the torch to Bill Edney for the next hackfest, coming up on January 5th.
  • Day of Dot Net (DODN) – Aug 28-29 – an amazing 2-day conference for .NET aficionados with national speakers and attendance of over 500 people. Congrats to all the organizers!
  • Flash Camp – Sept 11 – a 1-day conference for Flash, Flex, and Actionacript. Congrats to JP Revel!
  • Coders 4 Charities – Oct 16-18 – a special event bringing coders together to make software for non-profits.
  • Strange Loop – Oct 22-23 – my own baby was the inaugural instance of the Strange Loop developer conference, which brought in over 300 speakers and developers from all over the country for a unique event at the Tivoli Theatre.
  • St. Louis Bar Camp – Nov 7-8 – Wash U was the spot for the latest incarnation of the Bar Camp (there have been others, I just don’t know much about them :). Maybe the first tech event ever called off early because of freakishly good weather. Even so, those who made it had a great time. Congrats to Matt Follett for putting it together.
  • Startup Connection – Jan 21, Jun 23, Nov 17 – this event brings together people that are part of, interested in, or supporting St. Louis tech startup companies. Many thanks to Jim Brasunas, ITEN, and all the other groups promoting St. Louis startups.
  • CloudCamp – Sam Charrington put together a great first CloudCamp here in St. Louis and it looks like there will soon be a new](http://stlcloudusers.org/) group as the latest addition to the scene here.

I’m not even sure that was everything in 2009 but I think you get the idea that there is a lot of stuff going on! I’m already involved in the early planning for a St. Louis Innovation Camp in late February/early March timeframe, the 2nd Google Wave Hackfest is coming up January 5th, and I’m sure we’ll see a bunch of the conferences like Day of Dot Net and my very own Strange Loop conference repeat again next year. If you want to see what’s hopping, sign up for the lovingly maintained shared calendar from the St. Louis Unix User’s Group.

2009 was off the charts – let’s kick it up another notch in 2010!