No new video for this week. Should have on next. My cadence has been shoppy with some assorted illnesses, travel, etc. It will also continue for a bit. My  attempt to buffer a recording session for the coming weeks was brutally murdered by a misconfigured autofocus on a camera. Imagine that.

As per usual, a big thank you to West Arete and Bzzt for supporting my work. You can find their opportunities (US and Sweden respectively) on the jobs page of the Underjord site. They are hiringElixir developers so reach out to me through that jobs page if you are curious.

If you company should work with me on finding more colleagues for you they can find more details here or reach out directly. I’d love to talk to them.

Where do you meet Elixir developers?

This one needs your feedback on an idea, let me clear my throat for several paragraphs and then give me your thoughts.

I have a number of watering holes for vaguely different purposes that I use to keep in tune and up to date with what happens in tech, software dev and specifically Elixir.

So Hacker News is mostly read-only for me, Twitter is a mixed and wide net, not just tech. Podcasts are inherently me consuming. Then I have some very particular ones that are high-value. One is a swedish programming Slack centered around a podcast that I appreciate immensely because it has about the right number of people and a good feel. I spend time on the Changelog Slack which is pretty quiet but occasionally good. I pay attention to specific channels on the Elixir lang Slack. Particularly #nerves is my people though I’m pretty quiet recently.

I don’t spend time on the Elixir Forums when I’m not looking for something in particular. I don’t want to invest my time that way. I keep an occasional eye on the #myelixirstatus, #elixirlang and #erlang hashtags on Twitter. I’m in the Elixir World group on Telegram but don’t really participate.

Then there are private groups of particular individuals that I value immensely but is something for another time.

Critical parts of my most active communities is the feel of the place, the volume of communication, the sense of commonality or purpose and the sense of value I get from interacting.

There isn’t actually a general Elixir community watering hole I spend much time in beyond Twitter. I don’t know where I’d suggest someone start at this point. I think constraints and some clarity of purpose is important and many of the general Elixir spaces are too wide to appeal to me. This is not unique to Elixir, Elixir is the first community I’ve found traction with at all. It’s already ahead by virtue of not being massive and ancient.

I think connecting to other developers with common interests and ideas that are still different people, not your colleagues, not your closest friends, is powerful and valuable. I think it’s important in keeping up exposure to new ideas, new technologies, etc.

The high-value connection in many spaces is competing with the needs of the masses to get help. Any general Elixir community space will be full of communication around helping beginners. That’s fine, that’s good. It’s a positive. I like helping people too. It isn’t what I need from those spaces though.

This has awakened an idea I’ve now had for a few years. I figured I’d float it and see what you think. A community space for professional Elixir developers. A place where you can interact with other developers that do Elixir professionally. A place of peers. Most of us don’t have open source projects, most of us don’t do significantly public work. Many of us still benefit from talking to others about our experiences.

It would be a paid  and moderated community.

Why paid? Because it sets a mild threshold to joining which filters out low-effort participation and members without intent. Paying for something immediately places value in it. It also supports moderation efforts in that there is something to lose.

Why moderated? Because every community I like is good because it maintains a good culture and environment and I’m not interested in operating a social free-for-all. Also, for a professional community of peers it makes sense to establish some kind of level of decorum and ground rules.

Why Elixir professionals only? Because of the space I  want to create and conversations I want to engender. A space for peers to exchange experiences and ideas, a place for discussion with minimal public performance aspect. I think I can usefully facilitate and serve that group, I think they’d benefit and I know I derive beneit from connection with more professionals in my field.

Constraints are part of making things good. This is a fairly specific thing and I think it could be powerful.

I’m curious to hear if you would be interested in connecting with other Elixir developers in this manner. Establishing that foundation of a professional network in a global community.

Let me know at lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

I appreciate you reading this. Thank you for your attention.

- Lars Wikman