TahoeJS

I love code communities; I really do. The first JavaScript community I started eventually became TahoeJS but it did not start that way. Go back a few thousand years in developer time, way back to the days of angular 0.FML.whatevs. These were the days when you could email the angular team with questions. These were the days when Brad Green would send you official angular t-shirts for being an early adopter. Yes, we were super early adopters of this Angular where I was working. I rallied a group of engineers to hangout in a conference room after work with some beers so we could watch google's live stream of their angular meetup to help us learn. Go figure, the live stream barely ever worked so we started learning and sharing what we learned to each other.

One day my dev buddy Garrett told me about BeerJS and I instantly "applied" for my very own repo under BeerJS. Somehow, BeerJS birthed a parent (very unnatural), you guessed it, TahoeJS. TahoeJS turned into the parent community and ran BeerJS events. We made stickers (most imporant part of building community), got a few speakers, a beer sponsor (thank you FiftFifty Brewing), and almost threw a conference. This was great as it really contributed to creating a tech community in Truckee, CA. After I moved to Reno, NV, TahoeJS migrated to the south side of the lake is now located in South Lake Tahoe.

BeerJS

I am the current curator (curator just sounds cool) of the entire BeerJS community. It may look just like a GitHub repo but its actually a JavaScript community that is present in 50 cities around the world. Many many moons ago, there was a request for someone to take over running the community repos. I completely jumped at that chance and have been doing it since. Its totally a Dread Pirate Roberts thing. But let's be honest good code and good beer; you can't beat that.

After moving to Reno, NV, and being the curator of BeerJS, I had no choice but to start one in Reno. This quickly turned into a revival movement for RenoJS too. I would say that the JavaScript community in Reno is now growing and its pretty much great.

Lessons Learned

• Community has to come before code. People need to feel accountable to the other people in your meetup. Its much easier to guilt people for missing a month. I like publicly shaming those that skip an event
• Don't try to do everything yourself. You WILL burn out. Community is not a one man show. Get everyone involved.