How we built Tampa Devs

So thank you everyone for coming. We're Tampa Devs, we're Tampa Bay's developer community. For this talk, we're going to showcase how we built Tampa Devs, the community over in Tampa, and how it all started. So, just a little introduction, my name is Vincent Tang, that's my co-organizer Charlton Trezovan. There's also Lydia Hendricks and Haritha Adrina, they're not here presently though at the conference, but they're also a part of our board. So, it kind of gives you just a quick overview of a little video of what we are.

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That was actually recorded from our friend Arib over here. Yes, anyone needs videography work, he does a fantastic job. Here's our next video. Is this a sizzler? This is actually our hackathon we hosted last year at the startup incubator.

So, a lot of people that have heard of us for the first time think we've been around for a very long time but they're really surprised to find out that we've only been around for a little over a year. So, to kind of give you an overview of that, sorry, why is that doing that? To give you an overview of that, sorry, just some technical difficulties here. This was our first event back in September of 2021. To kind of give you some context, I'll talk more about it later. This was 2022, we had our hackathon over at the startup incubator in town at Embark. This was our last event, 2023, first event of the year. We had just a huge number of people showing up. So, that kind of gives you a better context of what Tampa Devs is. It's kind of like the big picture overview.

People have always asked us how we did it and it's always a question we've got. Adams, like I, haven't gotten asked us like 100 designs already. So, we're kind of going to give you some insight, like how we, sorry, Tampa Devs, kind of like the principles behind it, and how we scaled it. These kinds of principles are actually applicable to any business in general, whether it's like you're growing your own start for the first time, you're expanding a Division I company. The principles are all the same. I mean, at the end of the day, the community is, we're running a non-profit community but we actually treat it like a business to some degree. So, we're using the same principles of scaling and growing in that aspect.

To give you some perspective, kind of like what the inspiration was. Before that, we're going super meta here because I told you I wrote this literally this morning. I'm just like, okay, whatever. And that's like, well me and Charlton were the lucky ones. Sorry, if you guys can get a picture of Steve, but we were one of the lucky ones. And I'm like, oh my God, this is like a dream come true. Especially for Charlton, it's one of his childhood idols. So, we're kind of going full circle here, just because, why not?

Steve was one of the co-founders of Apple. I like to take this image, I just took it off Google Slide, just last minute. It seemed appropriate so I'm just like, alright, let's just throw it there. It says, "think different". You can go with the status quo, you can go with whatever everyone else does, copy trends, but at the end of the day, you're just copying trends. I kind of want to shed some insight on Apple's philosophy and scaling and branding and kind of how we're emulating some of it.

There's a really famous Ted Talk. It's probably, yeah, you've seen it, you just nod your head right there. Apologies for the misunderstanding earlier. Here is the revised version of the transcript with correct formatting:

"I saw your nod right there. You're just like, 'I know that talk. I know that talk.' So, it's actually one of the most famous TED Talks out there when TED was still a great thing. I don't know if it's still like that anymore. I really don't know. But back then, TED Talks were the thing. It was the inspirational videos that you saw that drove leaders to learn about other leaders. You found out about really interesting concepts about how the world works and people that you would never have dreamed of meeting.

In this concept, he goes over the 'why,' the 'how,' and the 'what.' This is from Simon, 2010, or something. I don't even remember. He goes over the principles of how Apple is using that model for structuring their brand, their vision, etc. This is a summary from Neil Patel who's actually one of the most famous marketers out there.

So, Steve Jobs' perspective is, 'What are we doing? Why are we building Apple?' It's like, everything we do, we believe in changing the status quo. We believe in building better products. We believe in thinking differently. How do we do it? We build it by creating designs that are user-friendly. What do we do it with? Great computers and technology: iPhones, iPods, etc.

I don't want to go over Steve Wozniak because he was there yesterday. But I do want to showcase an actual picture I took yesterday of Steve setting up his first Kubernetes cluster. I mean, you guys were all there. I'm assuming everyone was there. So, you guys got to see the 'why,' the 'how,' and the 'what.' He embraces his inner child. You can see it when he talks. You see that emotional inspiration. He has this drive. You almost feel inspired. Just hearing him talk, you're like, 'Okay, I'm gonna go build the next big thing.'

So, let's go over the 'why,' the 'how,' and the 'what.' Why Tampa Devs? Why do we even bother doing this? It goes back to 2020. I was moving out of my apartment, actually my parents' house because I was with my parents at the time. Yeah, I'm a late bloomer. I had all this stuff everywhere. I was moving in for the first time. I'd never moved into a new place before. I was like, 'Jeez, this is a crap show.' But then I thought, 'Alright, I need to make friends. I don't know anybody.'

So, I threw a house party. I threw a house party in 500 square feet with like 30 people. People were complaining about the noise being so loud. They couldn't even breathe because it was suffocating. I had all the windows open, the AC running. This was right before COVID, so I didn't do a good job limiting that aspect.

This was my first time actually throwing a party. I was like, 'Wow, this is fun. I like doing this.' I met one of my best friends after Hi-Tech Connect, which you guys have probably heard of. He's a Latin dancer. He got me into dancing. Believe it or not, there are so many people in the tech scene who are actually dancers. Why? Apparently, because we talk to computers all day, we want to talk to people after work. Fun fact, by the way, a lot of the core members of Tampa Devs are dancers.

This person's important because I'll get to it in a bit. So, COVID hit and everything shut down. All the meetups died. All the events were canceled on Meetup, Eventbrite, what have you. When things were starting to pick back up, there were reunions. I brought Jonah, the guy I mentioned earlier, and my buddy Haritha, both dancers, from Atlanta. They were like, 'Wow, this is amazing. How many smart people in tech are here? This vibrant community of young, international, and fun people.'

Then, my buddy Haritha is like, 'Why don't you do something like this in town, Vincent? Nobody's doing anything. Everyone's been virtual.' I was like, 'Alright.' At the time, I did have a huge network. People in Orlando and Tampa just because I was learning to code for the first time. I had a lot of mentorship and was giving back mentorship at the demo, the community, the code camps, and the boot camps in town.

But then, I also thought about how do you keep up with a lot of people if you have a lot of friends. That's just me, I like being friends. Everyone's different, though. I was like, 'I could invite people one-on-one to talk about career stuff. Or, I could just throw everyone in a room and call it a day.'

So that goes into the 'how'. Except for something as I go on there in the 20s and 30s groups, I meet a bunch of people in town and like, I just throw up an event, call a day, and I don't have to do anything. It's actually less work to maintain contact with people in your area if you just throw a meet up and just like, you don't have to meet them one-on-one. You just meet like 20 people one-on-one at the same time. It's like great. I'm already introverted already, but I am extroverted sometimes. But I want to like get all my extroverted stuff done and then go home and play some like Call of Duty or something, I don't know.

Then I threw up in an event and I was like, 'Okay, I'm gonna throw this event, a meet up whatever,' and like you know, I got all my friends at RSVP, like even the ones in Orlando even though they weren't showing up. I was like inflating the numbers because I'm like, 'Dude, I gotta like fake it till you make it.' You know, just like fake it, pick the numbers, like blow it up a little bit, and say like, 'Alright, look how big we are, our first event.'

This was our very first event which I was going back to the original picture and like, I didn't tell anybody but like everyone here, I actually knew already and they're like friends of friends except this like one guy right here. And he didn't know though.

And yeah, Chris. Chris didn't know everyone. Everyone was like, 'He's like bro, that's not a developer. She's not a developer. There's like developers here, like what gives?' Like and I'm like, 'Yeah, those are all friends of friends I just invited. I just called a party.' So I'm just like, 'Yo, just come here. There's a Food Truck Thursday over like Thursday over in Channel Side, let's just whatever.'

Then I'm like, 'You know, going back a year later, I saw our one year anniversary and I just took a picture.' And you know, I don't know if you guys can tell what I'm wearing right now. I made a meme out of it. You know, Tampa Devs.

But it's just how it is. Anyways, I took a picture, have my friends design it. It was just for fun and I haven't seen him since then so I'm kind of bummed out. I haven't given them the shirt yet, but I am promoting today so I guess it matters.

So what now? So what now? You know you're thinking about branding right? You can have McDonald's, you know Shell, Starbucks, PlayStation, Apple, Instagram. You know like, they spend like billions of dollars and like branding right? But I'm like, 'We're just, so you know, we're just throwing events. Like, we're not gonna spend that much money. We're cheap. That's how that's like big living as developers right? We're just cheap. We save money. We pay, we're like we're always stingy and everything, but we made like six figures. Like, you know what? Whatever.

But how do you go about branding though? And I was thinking about like, 'You know what's the conception of like idea that I want?' And I was less ham. This is actually the first business case I had for Tampa Devs. I didn't call it Tampa Devs at the time. I actually called it Tech Crew because like every time I'd hang out with the crew they're like, 'Yo let's talk. Let's talk tech, man.' So I was like, 'You hang out the crew and then they're talking about tech and it's like okay, Tech Crew.'

Then they can like rebrand it across like different parts of you know, Florida and New York. You know it sounds like a great idea in theory. It's like it's a short word, two words, you know two syllables. And I thought about it and I'm like, 'Man, you know when people say like your first idea sucks? Like it, it really does suck.'

And then yeah, I just wrote like a little thing there and I was like, 'I just moved here. I just turned dirty. I'm looking for friends, whatever.' And you know, I was throwing some concepts out there for like, 'Okay, this is gonna be like the logo design.' And I was like, 'You know, me Formula One race car, you're like you're getting the crew ready and you're like changing the wheels whatever. And you have like the corporate people, they just took a stop and then like you know motorcycle position. And then and then like hair programming and driver and whatever, new pair programming, and like one's a leader and one's a driver, right? And I know I was just, it was thoughts on paper. I just literally came up, threw this up in like five minutes and just like whatever. And it just, I found funny and I just threw it up there. And then I'm like, I thought to myself like I was going out for a run one day and I was like, 'You know, I was running here.'

And like you know like, the people in reality, like dessert. Like I went after one always here. It's just a sharp corner right? Why don't I just like walk this way and then everyone does it, and then my time together right? So I just had this like really random idea when I was running. I know just the stupidest ideas just come when you're doing something random.

And I'm like, 'Well why don't I just make a different logo?' And I was like, 'You know, these are some inspirations of logos I was thinking.' And I just copy this and I kind of didn't really porch off like this lot's a bit.

Or Tampa Bay and then we're also chanting the day over here. And I thought my old community where I first started, called Orlando Devs. And so you know we threw some logos together. They look pretty crappy but that was the first iteration. And then you know this is kind of on our little like, this is one of our first designs. This guy took his naked Lego guys small little party dude and I'm like, 'I don't know, it's a little bit too male-centered. You want to be more unisex, right? And I, um, and I'm like, alright, that guy looks a little bit demented.

I'm like, I don't know about that, and,, you know, more iterations and then, like, hey, what's this look like an ad patch? And I'm like, alright, let me check it out. And I was like, oh god, that looks like Metal Gear Solid, Snake, Snake.

I'm just like, I like that, I like that. You know, we went with like, there and there's like, and then I was like, I was talking to Jack. Jack was here today, actually, he's actually the, the guy who runs Orlando Devs, he was actually here earlier. And then I don't know if you guys saw him, but he, he was part of that thing. Anyways, he gave me some advice. He's like, why don't you do negative space? You know, because he had like so much crap on that logo. And I'm like, you mean like this, like?

Christmas, right? He's like, that's what communicate. You just curl, doodle and throw it up there. And I'm like, no. He's like this, this, and I'm like, uh, yeah, I think that's a good idea, but I, I want to take it further, yeah. And then I'm like, no, I don't know about that. And then, uh, let me get some ideas. I just wrote, print out paper, sent off the people, some tick marks of what people like, and I realized, wow, people do not understand logo design at all.

And, uh, then I'm like, we came up with this. I thought about for a week, and I'm like, wow, this is really solid, I like it. But I'm still second guessing because I left it, I let it sit there for seven days and just thought about it every day. And I'm like, alright. But then like, I thought about it, like look at all the themes. This thing has like, it's so geometrically perfect from like a Twitter mathematical design perspective, in case you want a clear design. Wow, that's like secret. Queens either way, my friend made a 3D logo, you know, this earlier that I was like her resembles, because it's like basketball team.

Here it looks, it looks good on swag. Gy ball, it's like, it's got like all the right themes. It looks like freaking like, snake man. I mean, come on, like it looks like, it looks similar to Gear Solid pie, like the snakes will know your third life. So I'm like, it's like, it's got a badassery to it, you know. But it's not like, it's like too much of anything. It's like just the right balance. It's like, this is like a perfect logo. Like I don't, I don't, I don't see many purple balls out there, but this is like pretty close to perfect. And so we made so much swag off of it, just because we wanted to.

And then at the end of the day, you know, like now we have this brand. We have to have the mission statement, we're a community software developer. So you can eat them together, and that's kind of like what we are. So there's the brand that kind of people rally behind the mission with, and that's pretty much that.

So building branding is like your publication. People want to rally behind it, so like you have to make sure subconsciously, like it, like it makes sense. And so what, what you're all saying, this is what people have said, you know, how much time, what you're all saying.

And yeah, so back to events again. I'm gonna get Charlton. Oh sure, so, I actually joined Tampa Devs about six months after its inception. And my first event was actually here at Armature Works, what, what month was that like August or so? And prior to that I was thinking about running my own meetup. So I adopted this defunct Tampa Bay cyber security meetup, and ultimately decided that I'd like to do something that was a bit more kind of custom and new instead of just taking over the husk of a dead meetup.

So I came to Tampa Devs, and um, you know, I actually formed a really great friendship with Vincent and with, uh, kind of the extended circle there. And over time, you know, I did a talk on application security at Tampa Devs and just sort of slowly found myself, you know, becoming more involved to the point where I'm actually helping organize events and run the organization. And this has been a really fantastic journey for me and also just for Tampa Devs itself, because I've been able to help Vincent with a lot. And you know, we're at a point in our growth that's pretty incredible given our, you know, relative age here.

So we really bonded, I think, over the slide deck. Yeah, so we have this fantastic pitch deck, which is much more polished than this deck that we put together last night. But, we basically were in this flow state where we were creating this slide deck. We didn't even really have to talk to each other, it just kind of came together. Yeah, like we were just in Google Slides and we were just in there and making it work. So, we've developed this really excellent cross-functional partnership where we're able to take our respective strengths organizing communities and putting things together. These are some pictures of us meeting with different sponsors and giving pitches for Tampa Devs. That's Iowa Associates. That's my source, that's a High-Tech Connect event and we've had some incredible success doing that.

Does it go back to you for what? Okay, yeah. So, we're delivering on our mission to just kind of help people connect with like-minded peers, help them get some of the best technical content that they can learn from that's available in Tampa Bay. We bring in speakers from large companies. We do a lot of work mentoring students and engaging with student organizations like UT, USF and we build some very memorable experiences as well for our members. So for example, TADHack which we hosted last year, we had 120 people come out. They form 12 different teams, each of them worked on a unique project and it was an incredible event that people took a lot away from. And we have casual networking events as well. So this is something where instead of our other type of event where it's like a structured meeting, we have people come in and give a presentation.

This is where just people get together and network and form friendships. Yeah, so I'm gonna skip to where you want us to go. There's a bunch of yeah, we have a lot of stuff in here, there's no way... you know what it is. So this is kind of the 'why', 'how' and 'what' just like an overview of the branding strategy where it's like scratch your own edge, the mission statement, brand organizing, hosting events and then Charlton's joining. Kind of like winning the Star Zone but you join us, join Tampa Devs instead and then kind of building this charm from there. I do want to, we have the vision statement as well where we're kind of, with Charlton mentioned, but I want to show the case this video from our COVIDnizer.

'Oh, that belong to your tribe.' I was about half a year with Vincent and we went to Orlando for a very similar meetup but the one we're having today, but without presentation. It was just chilled and have a beer and then on the way back, Vincent was thinking loudly that we don't have this in Tampa. We used to have it before COVID, but we don't have it anymore and an idea was born. And being the hard-working guy Vincent is, I knew that that idea was not going to stay in his head for long, that it's going to be implemented on the ground and sure enough, he did. Only a month later, we were chilling and having a beer in one of the little places in Tampa and that was probably the first time post COVID that something like that happened. And then it was taken to another level and we started having presentations. Nowadays, roughly we have once a month like this and once a month just chill and have a beer. So this is what we aim to and it wouldn't have been possible without you wonderful people coming here. So, thanks for being here.

Yeah, that's all I want to say because we're out of time. But some photos from previous time. Anyways, that's it. Yeah, we're done. There we go, that's connect with us.