Create Things

Check out the graphic: on 2 MAR 2009, we were well past 1.6 million unique visitors to StimulusWatch.org. That's about one month since we officially launched.

Joshua-Michéle Ross wrote some nice things about the team that built StimulusWatch on O'Reilly Radar and on his personal blog. He played up the fact that we went from zero to awesome in just a few weeks, and that this is mostly possible because of the fact that we're standing on the shoulders of the developers who wrote the vast library of free software that is available to anyone. So the main takeaway from this is that the barrier to creation is very low now and that any sufficiently motivated individuals can build anything they want. And they can especially do this without the backing of some big faceless corporation, which generally means that their final product might actually be useful and be done in a reasonable amount of time.

This is a big deal to me. I've always got a few ideas on the back-burner that could be a big hit or at least very useful to a lot of people. And now that the possibility of creating these kinds of things is attainable to most developers, we ought to be out there creating!

However, I like to work in groups. When you work with smart developers, they will tell you when your idea is stupid and be passionate about the more correct way to do something. This is incredibly valuable. So I realized that I wanted to get some developers together, outside of work, and see what we all might build if we put some effort into it. I was told to do something about it, so I did. I'm hereby announcing that we (a few similarly minded creative developers) will begin meeting at Mayorga regularly* to build things.

If you live in the DC area, are at all interested in software development, have a few ideas, want to build something, have a laptop, and want to get together regularly to hack, then please join us. Our first meeting will be at Mayorga in Silver Spring, MD on Sunday March 8 at 12:30. As I know I don't really have any readers, this is mostly so that in case someone does happen to search for such a group, they might find it.

My tentative group name suggestion: Programming Ought To Suck, after the TDWTF article.

* "Regularly" is as yet undefined. I think in order for this to pan out, it needs to be a stable meeting time that happens every two weeks or so. I think once a week is too often for most people and once a month is too infrequent. So we'll try this out, see what people think, and go from there.