How sofware practitioners use informal local meetups to share sofware engineering knowledge

Abstract

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 dier from and complement other available communication channels for software engineering information.We interviewed the leaders of technologyoriented Meetup groups, and collected quantitative information via a survey distributed to participants in technology-oriented groups. Our ndings suggest that participants in these groups are primarily experienced software practitioners, who use Meetup for staying abreast of newdevelopments, 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.