Geeks eat more pizza in smaller groups

Back in 2008 or so, I got involved in DC’s burgeoning tech meetup community. Fast forward a couple years to 2010 when my office moved into a new space with a great venue for hosting my favorite meetups. We started with DC PHP and immediately after, WordPressDC. Then DCjQuery (now DCJS), followed suit.

With three related meetups going, we were getting a lot of traffic and cross-pollination of members. There was also no shortage of sponsorship for food and beverages—though we were typically, BYO. Pizza is common fare for a meetup, just because it’s easy and doesn’t require too much in the way of incidentals like plasticware. Continue reading →

OSS BBQ 2013: Setting the bar high for summer fun

This summer we held the 3rd-annual open source software barbeque (#OSSBBQ) in DC‚ an event many in the local tech crowd (including myself) get excited about ever year. It’s a social event for the DC PHP, jQuery, and WordPress meetup groups borne out of convenience (or inconvenience, rather).

In the spirit of open source, this post should give you a behind-the-scenes tour of how we pull it off. You can do it too! Continue reading →