Pittsburgh.rb

[Dave Paola]

Hi, all! 👋

I have an interesting dilemma!

I moved to a new city (Pittsburgh) 6 months ago, and of course a big thing on my mind was trying to locate the Pittsburgh.rb crew. There was a conference here before covid and while I’ve heard through the grapevine that there aren’t a ton of rubyists in town, I nonetheless wanted to put a feeler out.

Every single person I’ve spoken with in the tech community instructed me to “go talk to X” about it, where X is a local coworking space.

Now, I’ve talked to them. They “absorbed” Pittsburgh.rb a few years ago. And now it’s gone. And while they seem like nice people, they very clearly are not interested in resurrecting "Pittsburgh.rb" as-is.

The response is some form of “pittsburgh.rb is no more, but we just need someone to volunteer to give a talk, and we’d be happy to host it”.

It has a distinct gate-keeper-y feel to it. 

But - there’s no ruby meetup activity anywhere. None. And, I’ve met with a few people who have expressed interest in participating! They just need someone to organize it. And I want to do it.

I'm weary of making enemies in my new town, or of stepping on toes unnecessarily. I’m very much a JFDI type of person, though. I have a keen sense that if I started posting “new ruby meetup in town” and picked a spot, these folks at X may be a bit offended.

Am I being too sensitive? Has anyone else encountered this type of dilemma before?

Thank you for your thoughts! Sorry for the wall of text!

Dave Paola

https://davepaola.com

[Peter]

Just going by what you've written: I would JFDI. Your email suggests you're the right person to revive things because

• You care more than anyone else. In these situations it is usually apathy, not turf wars, that is the enemy.
  
• You're demonstrating you’ve been (and will continue to be) collaborative and thoughtful.
• IMO "X" would be unreasonable to take offense. You can't usurp something that doesn't exist.
  

I like to imagine community building in these situations is sort of like putting an early mvp in front of customers. It’s much easier to get concrete and actionable feedback grounded in tangible experience, rather than trying to launch with the perfect v1. 

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[Adarsh Pandit]

FWIW, I (re)started the SF Ruby meetup from scratch and now we are trying to figure out how to merge the legacy meetup group with the new one. Everyone is on the same team, usually, I'd expect if you started doing numbers at your event, other groups would ask how they could join and help.

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[David Doolin]

On Thu, Jun 13, 2024 at 10:44 AM Adarsh Pandit <ada...@rubycentral.org> wrote:

FWIW, I (re)started the SF Ruby meetup from scratch and now we are trying to figure out how to merge the legacy meetup group with the new one. Everyone is on the same team, usually, I'd expect if you started doing numbers at your event, other groups would ask how they could join and help.

Many thanks to Adarsh for revitalizing the SF Ruby community.

Dave D

[Adarsh Pandit]

I just invited people to a ramen lunch I was already planning to eat :) All the new organizers and Dave are doing all the real work. Thank you!

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[Dave Paola]

On a related note - does anyone remember ruby hangouts? I’ve thought about starting some version of that as well.

(Not enough hours in the day to start everything I want to start!)

Dave Paola

https://davepaola.com

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[Rob]

What Adarsh said kinda casually is really on point. Have a "anyone interested in a Ruby meetup" lunch. Invite X if they want to come. Invite other people. Make it clear that you want there to be a focused on Ruby meetup. If they dont want to do that or think it will fail, no problem, that gives you a simple green light. If they want to help, cool. But assume you are in charge and because it was your invite you will be. Best of luck on it.

Rob

[Irina Nazarova]

Hey Dave,
I'll say: just do it. Bring people together. The rest will follow.
How could anyone gate keep a community event that is *not happening*? 
I shared some tips on org/promotion here https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/lets-have-more-tech-meetups-a-quick-start-guide-to-holding-your-own
The key one: reaching in DMs on Linkedin (filter by location and "Rails" in profile).