Last week Nearsoft brought a couple of us out to the great city of Hermosillo in Mexico to hang out and help them pilot their first SuperHappyDevHouse. Nearsoft is a software outsourcing shop full of young hackers just waiting for something like DevHouse. So we brought it to them! And they had a blast.
Nearsoft bankrolled the whole thing while respecting the non-marketing aspect of these events. Like our DevHouses, their event was non-exclusive and anybody interested or curious could show up. Without much promotion, a good number of locals outside Nearsoft found their way to the event. Even with both the Internet and the power going out separately throughout the event (these things happen!), everybody had a great time nonetheless.
We spent 5 days in Hermosillo with the Nearsoft guys and girls, and enjoyed with them Carne Asada, paintball, the beach, and excellent food. They invited us to give talks to share the values of DevHouse and I think they really understand what it’s about, especially now after experiencing it. By the end of the event, 8 people volunteered to start planning the next HermosilloDevHouse in September. It looks like this could be the start of something big!
Wow. Since we started SuperHappyDevHouse in 2005, not only have we had 26 amazing events, but witnessed 11 other recurring DevHouse parties spring up around the world on their own. Not to mention being influential in Yahoo! Hack Day and BarCamp, both of which have been imitated by many more. We’ve been featured in the San Jose Mercury News, News.com and countless blogs. We’ve been host to technology celebrities from Kevin Rose to Douglas Engelbart. At SHDH, people have found jobs, started companies, met friends, made games, and of course, learned new things. Valleywag even suggests somebody got laid at DevHouse!
We’ve learned a lot about social organization and creating these kinds of social environments. We’ve done a lot of experimenting within DevHouse and we’ve been involved in many of the other types of technology and business related events that have just exploded onto the scene since about 2005. I’ve gone off with the help of a few close friends and colleagues to explore other types of events. We’ve even theorized about a couple types of events that have never been tried, and how they would work with these existing events to create an interesting feedback loop and become more than the sum of the parts. I’ve also started breaking down the elements of all these events and started putting together, in my head, a pattern library for events.
To stay focused on SHDH, I do spend a lot of time thinking about making SHDH better, identifying problems, and exploring solutions. I’ve also wanted to help more people put on these kinds of events, and help share information between organizers. We gained a lot of insight bringing Lee Felsenstein from the Homebrew Computer Club in to give feedback. Lee’s actually been to most of the events since he first heard about it when somebody described it as the modern Homebrew Computer Club.
Anyway, for a while I’ve wanted to start a blog to talk about all these things. To talk about stories and lessons learned. To talk about ideas and problems to solve. To let all DevHouse organizers have a place to talk and reflect on their experience. That’s what I think this blog is going to be about.
