The single most important factor at a developer’s meetup

I have been a passionate Java developer for most of my career. My favorite part about Java is its dynamic ecosystem with a proliferation of open-source frameworks, online forums, conferences, meetups and… did I say meetups?

When I moved to Singapore back in 2013, I was surprised to see that there were no local Java meetups.

In case you are not familiar with the concept of developer meetups, we are talking about a large group of people meeting once a month in the evening.

They mingle, eat pizzas, discuss about new trends in technology and attend a conference (typically 2 talks of 45 minutes each). Meetups typically use websites such as  meetup.com or eventbrite.com to interact with their community.

Back in 2013, there were no Java meetups in Singapore, so we decided to create one and to call it the Singapore Spring User Group (Spring being a set of highly popular frameworks for Java developers). Over the years, our meetups have gained popularity and we now have an average 60-70 participants per event. Like most active meetups in Singapore, we typically meet once a month.

The most important thing? Speakers.

When you go to a restaurant, you expect to be served good food. Obviously some other factors are important as well: the staff should be friendly, the location should be good… But you’ll never come back if the food is not good.

Talks (and speakers) are the heart and soul of successful meetups. It is great to have people who speak about their experience and give feedback about building something.

As an example, here are some of the great speakers that we have had in our meetups.

Paul Maritz, former CEO of VMware and Pivotal. Paul has spoken about his exposure to technology throughout his career.

Sergi Almar, organiser of the wonderful SpringIO conference in Barcelona (THE European conference for Spring users)

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