Where Did the Cincom Smalltalk Product Team Share Smalltalk?

The Cincom Smalltalk Product Team has the unique privilege of working with all aspects of the Smalltalk product line globally, while being actively engaged in customer, partner and user relationships. This includes frequent users who have used Cincom Smalltalk for years, as well as new users who come in looking for a new option for their application development needs.

These sessions, meetups and events are very important for us to attract strangers to Smalltalk and grow the Smalltalk community.  As Suzanne has said many times, we cannot grow if we keep talking to the same people. 

It’s not easy to get non-Smalltalk user groups and conferences to let us in on their agendas. We’ve been fortunate to secure three recently. Here are the first two:

• CharmCityJS Meetup – This meetup brings the Javascript community of Baltimore together once a month for talks, hacking and networking, regardless of experience levels. At the CharmCityJS Meetup, Vlad Degen, a Cincom Smalltalk Engineer, and Arden Thomas, the Product Manager for Cincom Smalltalk, presented and shared the message of Cincom Smalltalk with these Javascript developers. Vlad was actually the one who brought us this opportunity.
• Seattle Software Crafters Meetup – This is a diverse community of software professionals who are passionate about making great software together and are committed to continuously learning better ways of producing software, sharing with and learning from each other and setting the standard for ethics, quality and mutual respect for all. This is the meetup that Carl and Suzanne went to in late July that we discussed above.

Arden Thomas and Suzanne were able to attend the third of these meetups, the Orange County Java User Group (OCJUG), in Irvine, CA just a few weeks ago. This meetup was for anyone interested in Java development and gives opportunities for networking and presentations on topics of interest to Java developers. Just like the Seattle event, Suzanne did her usual, “thank you” to the group, followed by a Cincom Smalltalk and Cincom intro before she handed it over to Arden who presented the benefits of using Cincom Smalltalk to this Java User Group. 

Events like the OCJUG and the Seattle Software Crafters Meetup are not traditional events. At these developer meetups, we have the opportunity to go right into our sweet spot of established groups of programmers, draw attention to our products and messaging and bring people to Cincom and Cincom Smalltalk. As Mr. Nies has always encouraged all Cincomers to do, we’re sharing our stories, and we’re listening, learning and growing from the conversations and feedback we’ve been receiving.

Can you imagine how the Smalltalk community could grow by taking this approach? Imagine if we came together and promoted the beauty, productivity, and value of Smalltalk collectively!