17 September 2017
Ottawa has recently been recognized as a tech hub of Canada, so in continuation of this topic, I thought I’d list 8 of my favourite tech meet-ups and events worth attending in the city.
NB: they are listed in a random non-ranked order. We cannot rank them because each one of them is different for all kind of professionals.
This is a very informal meetup where all Ottawa developers, tech marketers, and engineers come together for a beer, to network, and to tell everyone about their new jobs, companies, and projects. It has a relaxing environment and, like I’ve already mentioned, a very diverse group of folks.
Tech Tuesdays happen every 1st Tuesday of the month, it is organized by Wesley Clover Foundation, and is my favourite of all. This is a very sophisticated event where a lot of senior engineers, developers and business managers hangout. This event is an embodiment of a true Ottawa’s tech spirit. It’s a must attend event for everyone working in or with the tech industry. Also, the event is free and the food is included in the price.
Being a JS fan and developer myself, I do enjoy listening and talking all things JavaScript. Usually, we have 1-3 talks on the variety of JS topics, as well as jobs and other announcements inbetween. The event is hosted in Adobe’s office, and is so popular, that they have a wait list… every. single. time.
I understood almost nothing from the last time I’ve been to one of those, since I don’t work with ruby at all, but Ruby meetups are well organized, structured, and from what I saw, people seemed to be really interested in what the speakers had been talking about. So I’d highly recommend to come over for a free pizza, beer, and ruby discussion, generously sponsored by FullScript.
This is a meetup organized by a local Drupal design and development agency, Opin, and they are doing a very good job in educating the community on Drupal and related tech. At the moment they haven’t had any new meetups in a while since Oct 2016, probably because of the workload (they are very popular), but do signup for the meetup group, and hopefully we’ll have another one soon.
This meetup has been advertised to us on JavaScript meetup. I haven’t been there myself yet, but there they’re talking about data collection, storing and analyses, and cover such topics as “Social Network Analysis, link Analysis, Graph Databases and the theory and practice surrounding them.”
This is a Microsoft focused meetup, targeting .NET developers. There they’re talking about Azure, Microsoft Server, databases, and other things Microsoft. Attendance looks good, so I think you’ll get to meet quite a bit of people working in the same area as you.
I wish I haven’t missed this one! It happens once a year (at least, I think), costs CAD$15-20, happens in a pub (what else can be a better place, right?), and this is where we can be ourselves, i.e. nerds. So this is a must-attend event for every tech nerd. I’m not sure if they are going to organize more of these, but be on a lookout for it!
If you know more meetups or events that I didn’t mention, please, let us know about them in the comments below.
Cheers, and hope to see you on any one of those events/meetups! :)