Living with Mangee - Wellington hosts first New Zealand SuperHappyDevHouse event

19:07:00 - Wellington hosts first New Zealand SuperHappyDevHouse event

The Southern Cross bar on the corner of Cuba Street and Abel Smith in the Creative Capital, Wellington, played host to 40 or more developers today, in a pilot of a SuperHappyDevHouse. SHDH is a concept pioneered in the US, where developers gather in a monthly meeting to loosely collaborate and share ideas, or just code in the company of other geeks.
A successful meeting similar in concept to a BarCamp was held and attendees were reported to be keen for more of the "monthly hackathon event that combines serious and not-so-serious productivity with a fun and exciting party atmosphere". Despite the good turnout, it was reported almost $900 was left on the bar tab, boding well for those staying past the 5pm end time.

The Wellington event was a pilot, with invited attendees only due to initial funding concerns, but was well attended. Event sponsors quickly came on board, including Google, Microsoft New Zealand, Mindscape - the Wellington-based think tank, Actrix Networks - the first commercial, leading technology-based ISP in New Zealand and Catalyst IT, the Open Source IT specialists.

Attendees were seen clustered around laptops, wearing distinctive brown and green SHDH NZ Aotearoa T-shirts, and received CafeNet vouchers from Citylink to allow them to freely use the wireless connectivity available at the Southern Cross Bar, a popular hangout for Wellingtons' high concentration of software developers.

The pilot event was organised by Brenda Wallace and Penny Leach of Catalyst IT, along with Mauricio Freitas of geekzone.co.nz and Microsoft developer, Darryl Burling.

Wellington reportedly has the most intense concentration of software developers in New Zealand, with a number of incubator projects, and development firms. Many ex-pats from the US and UK report they moved to Wellington because of the vibrancy and culture the city hums with. Trade Me, the New Zealand auction site, grew in Wellington, utilising the networks available. Wellington has a unique 'world rare' fibre connectivity in the city and some suburbs, resulting in one of the highest uses of internet in the country.

A number of prolific networking groups have seen success in Wellington including Unlimited Potential - the ICT professionals network, ThursdayNightCurry, the Wellington Incubator network WIN and others. Wellington is home to a host of successful ICT enterprises and start-ups

Jo Booth, facilitator for the Wellington Macintosh Society New Media Group, WelMac NMG, founded around the concept of "Meet and Geek", is says he is pleased to see the pilot a success and sees the SHDH as an ideal way to bring together Wellingtons' fragmented developer community:

"I attend a number of networking events in Wellington, each focussed on a small subset of the larger community of ICT workers and hobbyists. It takes something like [SHDH] to introduce the PHP developers to the ASP coders, the Apple people to the Microsoft gurus, and the designers to the developers."
"In any industry, a collaborative environment, free from the competitive corporate hush is important to the growth of ideas and flourish of creativity. Being able to bounce ideas off peers, irrespective of their corporate affiliations, and to discuss advantages and disadvantages, to learn from others mistakes, and to work for common goals across different businesses is what comes of this kind of collaboration" he said.
Jo is keen to attend the next SHDH, admitting he has been wanting to release his inner geek for some time.


By Jo Booth, Mesh|net
superhappydevhouse