At the beginning of 2016, a group of Making Sensers came up with an idea: “to create a community with the aim of bringing new generations into the world of development by sharing knowledge, to make the community grow”. That was the beginning of By the Sea.

What is this all about?

Our main idea is to create a community with the aim of bringing new generations into the world of software development and increasing interdisciplinary interactions. We hope that, through this community, we’ll be giving the local software industry the visibility it deserves.

We think that it is very important to share knowledge and help the development community thrive. How do we aim to do this? By inspiring people to be more passionate about software and providing a space to learn about different topics.

By the Sea is for those who are already involved into the software development industry, or those who are not actively working into the software development world. That means not just coding but also design, QA, UX, marketing among other disciplines.

We held 45-minute talks, in which several concepts are explored. We present IT related issues followed by a question-and-answer session. Debating is one of our favorite activities in the group. We’re always coming up with new topics, but the essential part of this is sharing our experiences with people who have the same interests.

Why it is called By the Sea?

Despite the fact that this project originated here at Making Sense, we wanted to integrate and interact with people like a community and not like a company. Because of that we decided to create a new entity with which people can identify. We want our community to feel “by the sea” as if it was theirs (and of course, it actually is :D ).

Our city is right next to the sea, so we basically work by the sea. We code by the sea, we design by the sea, we QA by the sea. Thinking about that, we decided that “By the sea” was just perfect to describe our new community.

So we got the name, then we needed an identity, an image, a colour. Sticking with the “By the Sea” theme, we came up with the logo, which is a seashell in a blue colour.

How was this carried out?

Among other things that we took into consideration, the channel through which the meetings where going to be held was the most important factor. Thus, we decided that the best way to do this was by implementing the “Meetup” approach.

Meetup is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers, technology or hobbies.

This approach allows us to invite people from different areas, mixing them to get amazing results because of the interaction between people from different areas, who work together in the software development world.

The model is based around one talk per month, where the speaker receives all the support needed to prepare the talk. This is all about having a good time, learning and sharing, so we make sure to get some snacks and sodas to make the meetup even more enjoyable for all of us.

Making Sense is a big part of By the Sea, since it provides us with not just the supplies but also the office, part of the internal team for communication proposes and all the required support for almost everything (We are lucky :) ).

We are so happy to be able to use Making Sense’s offices to meet with the community. It is an environment where everyone works together making software, so it is really comfortable, and we have all the elements required to make the talk even better. This includes speakers, a screen to show the slides, chairs, tables, etc.

So, having all those facilities, we only need to schedule a date when we can all meet together. For those who can not make it because of geographic reasons, we are always streaming the session via hangouts so everybody can listen/watch the event from every location. You can also find our talks on our Youtube channel in case you miss them or you want to watch them again.

We also provide the community with all the content of the talks for review and our Github repo is also available, so people can find all the material together there.

What has been done so far?

This year was absolutely great for By the Sea! We gave 6 talks this year, all covering different topics. We learned about “Things that no one told me before my first day”, “Hands of the UX process”, and lots of other great stuff. All of them were full house, and our community now is up to 131 people. This is a huge number if we think that we had 0 people just this past July.

We are so proud about the results that we’ve got and also we are so happy to have Making Sense providing the unique sponsorship that makes this possible.

What’s next?

Now we are on break for the Christmas holidays, but we already have around 3 talks being prepared for next year, and another bunch of talks waiting to be scheduled.

We expect 2017 to be a great year full of talks as we share knowledge with a growing community.

If you want to stay tuned with By the Sea, follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Also, if you feel confident about giving a talk please, reach out to me to schedule a meeting and we’ll coordinate your first By the Sea talk :).