How Software Practitioners Use Informal Local Meetups to Share Software Engineering Knowledge

TY - GEN

T1 - How Software Practitioners Use Informal Local Meetups to Share Software Engineering Knowledge

AU - Ingram, Claire

AU - Drachen, Anders

N1 - Conference code: 42

PY - 2020/5/29

Y1 - 2020/5/29

N2 - Informal technology "meetups" have become an important aspect of the software development community, engaging many thousands of practitioners on a regular basis. However, although local technology meetups are well-attended by developers, little is known about their motivations for participating, the type or usefulness of information that they acquire, and how local meetups might differ from and complement other available communication channels for software engineering information. We interviewed the leaders of technology-oriented Meetup groups, and collected quantitative information via a survey distributed to participants in technology-oriented groups. Our findings suggest that participants in these groups are primarily experienced software practitioners, who use Meetup for staying abreast of new developments, building local networks and achieving transfer of rich tacit knowledge with peers to improve their practice. We also suggest that face to face meetings are useful forums for exchanging tacit knowledge and contextual information needed for software engineering practice.

AB - Informal technology "meetups" have become an important aspect of the software development community, engaging many thousands of practitioners on a regular basis. However, although local technology meetups are well-attended by developers, little is known about their motivations for participating, the type or usefulness of information that they acquire, and how local meetups might differ from and complement other available communication channels for software engineering information. We interviewed the leaders of technology-oriented Meetup groups, and collected quantitative information via a survey distributed to participants in technology-oriented groups. Our findings suggest that participants in these groups are primarily experienced software practitioners, who use Meetup for staying abreast of new developments, building local networks and achieving transfer of rich tacit knowledge with peers to improve their practice. We also suggest that face to face meetings are useful forums for exchanging tacit knowledge and contextual information needed for software engineering practice.

KW - informal networks

KW - meetup

KW - knowledge sharing

KW - developer communities

UR - https://conf.researchr.org/home/icse-2020

UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.11569434

M3 - Conference contribution

BT - 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering

PB - ACM

T2 - 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering ICSE 2020

Y2 - 23 May 2020 through 29 May 2020

ER -