🦀Welcome to the Baltimore Tech SceneLots of tech folks here, once you know where to find us!
Welcome to Baltimore! 🎉
Becoming Baltimore
There are really two steps to Becoming Baltimore:
- 🦀 consume a gallon of Old Bay seasoning
- 👋🏻 getting connected to the community
In this post I’ll help you with step 2, getting connected to the community 🙂
Why Get Connected?
You might want to get more connected for bunch of reasons:
- Make friends with people with similar interests (tech friends!)
- Find jobs (or hiring candidates)
- Learn things; keep your skills current
- Find projects to contribute to
Big Idea: Relationships Over Transactions
Have you ever had someone approach you with an IMMEDIATE ask — like “JOB PLEASE!!“? Like LinkedIn recruiters lol — it is not endearing!
People who join a community trying to “take” immediately, without forming relationships or “giving” to the group won’t make many friends OR find many jobs (etc). If you instead focus on talking to people as people, you’ll have a much better chance at friendship and jobs — both! I say it this way:
Warm relationships, not cold transactions!
Where to Meet People?
Where can you meet people? There are a bunch of ways!
- In-person local meetups
- In-person local conferences
- Chatting online (Slack, etc)
- One on one “coffee chats”
Local Tech Meetups List
We have a ton of local meetups! Here’s a list I’ve collected so far:
- General
- Project-based
- Topic-based
I also track these in a mega spreadsheet. This one has Frederick and DC events, too!
Local Tech Meetups Mega-Calendar
I even made a mega-calendar for these tech meetups, using my friend Abe’s tool Mergecal.
- Add to your calendar. You can get this into your own calendar by adding it “From URL” using this calendar feed url:
https://mergecal.habet.dev/calendars/ed8657a8-2124-4584-ba4b-1673c72db24e.ical - “Why are past weeks empty?” Past events get pruned, but future ones show up here.
- “You missed one!” If you know about some tech meetups (with an ical feed) that aren’t here yet — please let me know!
Local Tech Conferences
Active conferences:
Inactive conferences (we’ve had them in the past):
- BohConf (none planned)
- TEDxBaltimore (none planned)
Online Chat (Slack)
To meet people, you have to go where the people are! Online, that’s Baltimore Tech Slack — our general tech Slack for the area. There’s a lot of great discussion in here, including:
- First “Invite yourself” using the Baltimore Tech Slack inviter
- THEN log into the app (phone/computer) using the same account.
- Join channels, such as:
- #meetups-and-events - local events
- #coworking - Meet up during the workday (like: work next to each other then grab lunch, etc)
- #jobs - a jobs board (including many that don’t make it to other job boards!)
- #javascript or #ux etc — lots of topic-based channels!
- #code-and-coffee, #devops-columbia, etc — chat with people who also go to these meetup groups
One on One Chats
People are generally very open to meeting people and welcoming folks to the community! More than you might expect (as long as you aren’t trying to get something out of them).
Most people (more than half!) would be totally down to have an informal 30min chat with someone who just moved to the area.
Here’s an example of a “cold reach-out” I might do on Slack:
Hi! I just moved to Baltimore from CT, and I’m trying to meet more people here. I noticed you were really friendly on this Slack in the #javascript channel and I wanted to reach out to say hi!
If you have time in the next week or two I’d love to chat with you on a video call :)
And then sometimes mid-conversation I’ll ask for more connections, something like
I’m trying to find “my people” here. I’m queer and I’ve been doing javascript for a few years. Do you know of any individuals or groups I might want to meet?
Where can you find people to have these one on one chats with?
- Meet them in person and exchange contact information
- Meet them on Slack, LinkedIn, etc
Bonus: Local Non-tech Events
Some non-tech meetup recommendations from tech people:
- Sports
- Improv
- Music
- Volunteering
Thank-yous
Thank you to my Baltimore Tech friends who helped me brainstorm content for this article: Matt Jørgenson, Cornelius Hairston, Michael Knoll, Chase Farmer. And thank you to Abe for making the mergecal tool that makes that mega-calendar possible.
Next Steps
So, what’s your plan? 🙂
I suggest:
- Slack: Join Baltimore Tech Slack and say hello there.
- Meetup: Find a Meetup group above that sounds interesting to you and go to their next event (If you have trouble choosing, maybe try Code and Coffee!)
- One on ones: Reach out to 3 people this week to have one on one chats with.
