A few years ago when I left school and began exploring New York tech, the community was pretty much a hundred people in a room once a month for NYTM. This was before foursquare. Tumblr was a speck on the horizon. In my hometown, finance still reigned supreme. Since then, the community has grown to be thousands strong (NYTM’s current member count is 27K). NY has surpassed Boston as the country’s #2 tech hub. There are now hundreds of early stage tech companies here, and we’ve nurtured more mature players like Etsy and Meetup. Finance guys are jumping ship and trying to get into TechStars.
There’s just one problem.
NYC’s developer community is still a pale comparison of our West Coast counterpart. Our industries in NY have been dominated by the brightest minds in finance and media. That’s a great thing, but engineers here simply aren’t surrounded by people they can relate to. The result is that the developers who are in NY are missing the support structure, the exchange of ideas, and the technical mentorship that their counterparts in Silicon Valley benefit from. In order for developer culture to thrive here, developers can’t feel like the odd ones out.
That’s why I’m co-organizing EmpireJS with Charlie and Luke. EmpireJS is a one day not-for-profit Javascript conference here in NY on October 22nd, run by and for the city’s JS community. We’re shipping in some of the most accomplished minds in Javascript today and featuring them alongside local up-and-comers, to help our emerging talent emerge faster. The event is being kept small and intimate to blur the lines between speakers and attendees. We’re part of the JSConf family, which has set the standard for developer conferences worldwide, and we’ve been privileged to have @voodootikigod as our advisor. Since joining Nodejitsu, I’ve had the opportunity to learn just how critical the right kind of conference can be for creating a vibrant developer community. At the core of this is creating memorable experiences which bring people together. It’s high time we had this class of developer conference in New York.
Want in on EmpireJS?
There are still a few tickets left! Sign up here.
Opening night party is at Brooklyn Brewery on October 21st. See you there.
