Tampa Devs Survey 2022

Here's our end of the year survey for 2022!

We've asked you how we can make Tampa Devs better, and 38 of y'all responded! Here's the results:

How much did you enjoy going to Tampa Devs?

A lot of you really like coming here and we're glad to hear that :)

What's your gender?

84% male, 16% female. We have a surprisingly large audience of females compared to the general demographic of developers

Are you new to the Tampa Bay area? (within the past 3 years?)

55% of you said your new to the area. I've asked and alot of you are from up north! Either New York, New Jersey, Seattle - those are a few of the popular places

Which of the following best describes you? (Optional)

We have a lot of people from many disciplines!

Did Tampa Devs help you find a job?

2 out of 38 people who replied to the post actually got a job through Tampa Devs!!! That's amazing

I feel welcomed at Tampa Devs - your thoughts?

Many of you said you were welcomed so glad to hear that :)

Tampa Devs meeting topics are relevant and useful to me - yay or nay?

It seems that not every topic is totally relevant to you, but that's okay! We're not trying to go for talks that you can easily access through tutorials, but rather expose you to topics you won't always look up online so now you'll be aware of things you didn't even know about :)

What's your favorite talks this year?

We didn't even do the mobile development talk in 2022 so some of y'all just pushed every check box lol. Intro to DevOps and Automation was by far the most popular topic, probably because it was beginner friendly but also had many advanced topics too.

What kinds of presentation topics would you like to see in 2023?

• React workshop
• Topics for new coders.
• Serverless architecture, react native, docker and kubernetes, react, AI/ML
• Less DevOps, less Security, less Machine Learning, more
• Software Development / Frameworks / Demos
• Iot
• Workshops and lectures are both enjoyable, the quality of the presentations has been top tier.
• State machine / rxjs
• Something with writing a parser
• DevOps
• Burp Suite
• Topics about diversity and women in tech
• Wearable IoT (setting up, how to use well, cool services & applications in the space).
• Node, Typescript, OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, React, DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, AWS EventBridge
• Today we have managed to develop what was fiction. 100 years ago it was unthinkable to produce a smart watch. What will be our next step.
• Career growth - going from Junior to Senior
• The big transition - workshops for junior devs who are transitioning from non-tech roles. It would be great to be able to have an event where more experienced devs can give in person advice on how to optimize resumes, projects, portfolios, etc. by using industry insight to identify important skills juniors have that will help them better there chances.
• Interview Magic - how to respond to the years of experience question when you don’t have it. How to translate years of experience to knowledge.
• Mobile development - anything geared for mobile development is interesting to me. Specifically the red-tape portion and not so much the coding portion.
• Hacks - showcase of awesome things people have learned/created to make their job/coding/life easier. Could be custom scripts people are proud of, VSCode extensions, etc.
• Raspberry Pi builds/projects
• Coding motivation - how to get through the un-motivated times
• Creating bots (Reddit bots, twitter bots, etc.)
• Cloud infrastructure. Cloud comparisons.
• I just moved to Tampa in 2021 and only found Tampa Devs Slack in late 2022. I have gone to a couple of Embarc Collective events but that's about it for my involvement with the local tech community. (I am a startup guy.) My programming background is deep in Python and distributed systems, but I also know Clojure, C, and, lately, a new language called Zig. I used to live in a college town in Central Virginia and in NYC for awhile; in Central VA, I organized the local Python meetup (400 members, monthly meetups) and in NYC I co-organized PyData (big annual tech conference focused on Python + Data). I've also presented at CTO Summit on fully distributed teams. (I've been running one for 10+ years and have also worked for one of the biggest fully distributed companies on earth.) So, these are my interests... and also some areas I could easily present on.
• Data & Infrastructure (i.e. k8s)
• Devops
• Security (Cloud or other), Cloud DevOps, Azure topics, ML,
• IoT, AI.

Sounds like everyone wants something different - from beginner topics, to more advanced topics. Also we had a lot of feedback here too! This is great to know, we'll try and cater as best we can :)

What kinds of fun social/networking events would you like to see in 2023?

• As someone who works in IT but isn’t technical, we would love the opportunity to continue to network to help those in IT find employment, share details about the IT market, etc.
• More events at Armature, maybe with some of the other MeetUp groups
• Meet and greet meetups most social
• You guys are awesome
• Happy hour, meetups foused on specific topics, speakers, presentations, workshops
• Wish I had good networking event ideas. They have to be out there.
• More of the same
• Escape Room
• More social events that line up with hockey game nights :)
• Board game night
• I researched the events you guys did, and they were all really good. If you want to bring the Devs closer together, it would be to do events without a structure, just to meet and form new friendships. Like meeting on the Riverwalk, or riding a bike on a Saturday.
• The big transition - workshops for junior devs who are transitioning from non-tech roles. It would be great to be able to have an event where more experienced devs can give in person advice on how to optimize resumes, projects, portfolios, etc. by using industry insight to identify important skills juniors have that will help them better there chances.
• More meetup opportunities
• Local junior/transitioning to tech/internship/boot camp grad job fair
• Team sports/competition-type meetups - bowling, golf/disc golf/top golf, board/card games, e-sports, etc. These would be great opportunities to meet local devs and build a network more organically.
• Come on out to St Pete!
• Think it would be cool to have social meetups at Sparkman Wharf on certain nice days!

Lots of great idea here for networking events! We're doing a career forum in March as alot of you requested this

We try not to delve too far into other things like bowling, esports, etc but we do like to incorporate "fun short game" ideas into our meetings. Always open to those :)

What do you think is the most challenging or difficult aspect of the meetup right now, and how can we improve on it?

• The hackaton
• Everything is awesome
• N/A
• Time/location but that's due to personal circumstances & my location.
• I like the meet ups but it would be nice if occasionally they were on a different night of the week.
• Schedule, can’t do Wednesday
• The parking situation at Embarc is rough. Doubt this is solveable.
• Lack of health and safety protocols
• Getting talent for presentations and I think we will just have to reach out to more people and build more brand awareness
• The events that I have been to have had a male majority. And then, the women that WERE there weren't even in tech. I tried to transition into a tech role for YEARS and that just made me realize that it would probably be nearly impossible for me to break that barrier.
• Engaging the creative side of techies and engineers without becoming uninclusive. Perhaps this could be solved with 'hack nights' or civic hacks which could provide the right scope for people to come together to build things more frequently. Given the sprawl of Tampa, hackathons are more difficult to attend than in other communities I've been in like Boston & Denver.
• Nothing, it’s been great! I’ve just had difficulty finding the time to attend due to life events
• The most challenging for me is they are all in Tampa (Tampa Devs, I know), but I don’t expect there to be many meetups in Pinellas.
• Food. I know it's tough/expensive, but try themes other than Publix.
• I haven't actually attended the in-person meetups yet because I only just discovered the Slack channel.
• It's probably difficult to field talks that are relevant to a broad audience.
• For me, it is time of events. If they are late in the evening it is harder for me to try to make it because I live 1.5 hrs from Tampa area. I like to come to special events, conferences, and training to Tampa Bay area because the commute is not too bad for me and the city is great.

These are all really good inputs and we'll definitely take these into consideration. Regarding food we're kinda broke right now and Publix is super affordable, we'll try and keep new food options once we get more funding

Regarding women in tech, we do have a group specifically for that (WITI - women in tech international), but the vast majority of developers do tend to be male we have no say over the matter

I think with Civic nights those would be a great idea - I think it should be done through slack, but there are actual open-code nights on meetup currently. We're trying to keep the calendar mostly in-person events

Any other thoughts, feedback, or suggestions you'd like to share with us?

• More talks
• No
• Im a non technical founder and am looking for mentorship so that i can up skill quickly... any help here would be awesome! GRATITUDE. Tampa Devs is filling a necessary void and doing such good.
• Next year MIGHT be a tough year with lay offs and everything- anything we can do to help the community.
• Hoodies in the merch store
• Is there any way you might do something in the outskirts of Tamp? Like maybe Oldsmar? Or Clearwater?
• TampaDev is probably the most inclusive Tech group in the City. Please continue the good work.
• Keep up the awesome work!
• All in all I think it’s a great group and the fact it is around and working says something is right. It’s nice having a local group of devs because I feel like the Tampa Bay Area lacks in tech opportunities and I can ask pertinent questions and get responses from people who are able to do be devs and live in the same area.
• Maybe some workshop style meetings? But most important: Keep up the great work guys!
• Thanks for organizing this! I'd love to meet the people behind it!
• Keep it up guys! Thanks!
• I think you all did fantastic this year. I have been following online and via the slack. All the best in 2023!

Hoodies are on the list of swag items to make!! They are kinda pricy though. Thanks for all the awesome feedback :). We'll definitely be hosting events at different parts of the greater Tampa area, we'll partially be doing some events over in St Pete