Stephen Yeargin

The unofficial end of summer is only a week or so away, with Metro Nashville-Davidson county public schools going back in session on August 14. I can remember always being excited at the prospect of a new year. New stuff, new classes, new faces. I really enjoyed the fall semester in college, with a packed social schedule and near-perfect weather, right before the evening chill starts to slip in.

Of course, once you leave the friendly confines of secondary and higher education, summers start to mean less, and the school year only means that one’s commute becomes a bit longer. But I still enjoy this time of the year. There must be some sociology concept that explains the changes in moods and behaviors associated with autumn. Perhaps it dates back to the pre-winter months being the time for harvest. Then again, it could just be that football and hockey season have returned, and all is right is right with the world.

Lately I have been involved with the planning of BarCamp Nashville 2009, the premier technology conference for Nashville and the surrounding region. The event is scheduled for Saturday, October 17, and we hope to be able to announce a venue in the coming week. The meetings are 6 p.m. every Monday in Suite 422 of Cummins Station downtown.

My weekend/post-meeting project has been to dive right into the Symfony PHP framework. I have been developing with PHP/MySQL for well over six years now, but this is really exciting stuff. I did not break out of the procedural programming rut until about a year ago, moving most of my new projects to a modular, object-oriented approach. Learning the framework has the potential to help me build out some really robust stuff, all with the benefit of working in a common architecture that anoother developer can walk in to and know (for the most part) what is going on. I am quickly becoming a firm believer.

Samantha picked up an Objective-C book from Amazon for me a month or two ago, but I have not spent nearly as much time working with it as I had hoped. That will likely be something I tackle this winter when there is less daylight and more time to tinker around in Xcode. Until then, my lofty dreams of being an iPhone App millionaire will have to be put on hold. Hey, a guy has to have some goals, right?

The technology community in Nashville

At a recent social event, I met two guys that were new to Nashville and were looking to break in to the technology community. One knew that was where the best contacts were, the other had just heard about it from a friend. I told them what I tell everyone that asks about tech in Nashville: it is a community effort, and there really is not a power structure to contend with. If you are interested in programming, Web development, infrastructure or even social media, there is a place for you. If that place is not immediately evident, finding like-minded individuals to have meeting or put on a conference is only a tweet or Facebook post away.

I have met dozens of people with a wide array of backgrounds. Some worked in healthcare or entertainment, some at agencies, others in the more traditional corporate environment. All are really passionate about their trade, and they are all remarkably outgoing folks. I think it really shattered a stigma for those two guys at the mixer. The notion that “geeks” are always holed up in a basement, drinking Diet Mountain Dew and being the only one in a 500 mile radius that knows what they do is ridiculously outdated. If you are not out there making new connections or actively participating in ways to further your knowledge, it really is not worth doing at all.

There really is not an “in crowd” for Nashville’s technology community per se. At the same time, showing up for a handful of mixers or seminars is never a bad idea. It has become clear in the last 18 months that everyone must be willing to adapt their skills to remain relevant. Shrinking budgets mean more pressure to deliver even as we get less to work with. Adapting is really the only option for many.

Web designers are starting to become interested in development. Developers can no longer ignore the user experience. Graphic designers are starting to slice up their own Photoshop compositions. In that sense, it is great that many are becoming “jacks of all trades, master of a few.” After all, there are few more humbling feelings than when everything you have worked for must be condensed into to a few 8.5 x 11 inch pieces of paper that you hand off to prospective employer. Flexibility is key.

I know that all of this has spurred me to approach things differently.