How it all began
Best stories are written when actors with a shared vision happen to be on the same stage. In this particular story, the actors are Stefan – our colleague and a web developer with a dream of having a web-related meetup in his hometown, and Ropardo, a local software development company working worldwide, with continuous interest in investing in the local community through education.
The open-door culture practiced by our company allowed Stefan to share his intention of having a web-related meetup organized in Sibiu, knowing that there is a large IT community that would be interested in the topics proposed by the meetup. Ropardo came with the logistics and organizational support for the meetup. The actors said “Let’s do this!”…and in November 2018 Sibiu Web Meetup was a new entry in our CSR programs.
What Sibiu Web Meetup is
Sibiu Web Meetup is a free gathering, for anyone sharing an interest in web development, web design, and all other web-related topics. You don’t have to be an expert to participate in the meetups. Senior web developers, Junior web developers, students – you are all welcomed. Even more, you are encouraged to make the switch from participant to speaker if you feel like sharing something from your experience with the community. Sibiu Web Meetup is hosted monthly on the meetup.com platform. Join our community!
Adapting to change
As with any other story, ours had its own turning point and that was the pandemic, and how we needed to adapt to the new reality. It forced us to shift from offline gatherings to online zooms and meetups. We did pretty well since we are still here telling the story. We didn’t have a secret sauce, just an open mind to change. We actually have a saying that we go by: Those who understand that change is the only certainty will most likely thrive.
Fast forward to present day
Offline, online, or back offline, the meetups went on in different formats and now, after three and a half years, the Sibiu Web Meetup community looks like this: 350+ participants, 17 speakers, 17 meetups, 1 host, 1 sponsor, plenty of willingness and enthusiasm, a lot of hard work, prizes, snacks, chit-chat, and serious talks.
While writing this story, we became aware of the diversity of topics covered by our amazing speakers, to whom we are forever grateful. And yes, we got just a little bit nostalgic, so we made a top 3 of Sibiu Web Meetup’s most appreciated topics:
- Running a Public API Do’s and Don’ts
- Typing Biometrics – from theory to practice
- Automation in Code Review
- We’ll add the fourth … Don’t cut the user from the user experience ‘cause we could not decide 😊
Or better yet, you can vote for your own favorite meetup as all the presentations are available on the Sibiu Web Meetup YouTube channel. Your subscription will help all of us stay closer, deliver more meetups, and extend the community.
JOIN SIBIU WEB MEETUP COMMUNITY
Also, MeetUp platform is the place where you will sign up for each gathering, so we welcome you to our community. Or you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for updates, social interactions, suggestions, and feedback. It’s the easiest way for you to learn about upcoming meetups, whens and wheres, what the topics are or who the next speaker is.
The story will go on
Oh, we almost forgot about the happy ending of this story. But wait…there is no happy ending for the simple reason that there is no end. Instead, there is a dream come true – a web meetup is going on in our town, with participants all over the country. We are proud and happy to be part of Sibiu Web Meetup and share ideas and visions, experience, and know-how, all web-related, so that, in the end, we all grow as a community.