SwedenCpp 2021

Over the recent years, it has become a tradition for me to write a yearly summary about the local C++ community activities. After it looked like there might not be anything to report, I am more than happy to be able to write a summary also for 2021. So here it is:

Of course, 2021 started like 2020 ended: lockdowns, no events possible, very sad. We were of course hoping - maybe during the summer the restrictions would soften, maybe after summer - and for a long time, it looked like it would not be possible to run an event at all.

But finally, in November it became possible, and wow, how people were waiting for the thing to happen. Some event hosts/sponsors asked us to come, some people were willing to present, and lots of people were happy to join. So it happened, and not just in Stockholm, but also in Gothenburg. From the east coast to the west coast, the local C++ communities had real-life events ;-)

The Gothenburg November event

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It seems a lot of people were eager to meet in real life in Gothenburg. And so it happened that Gothenburg had an event. On the same day/evening as Stockholm.

To be fair and frank, they even announced it a little bit earlier and started the evening half an hour earlier. So technically speaking, the C++ Sweden community restart happened in Gothenburg.

The event was hosted by Zenseact, a very active C++ community supporter on the west coast with some awesome developers. I am super happy that we have such companies in Sweden; they are really a gift for the local C++ landscape. And they do awesome stuff - if you are interested in a software platform for innovative and safe self-driving features that will change our societies forever, have a look at https://www.zenseact.com.

I was told it was a nice evening, and available photos seem to confirm that. It seems this event was one of the best visited events ever in the history of GbgCpp. Too bad I cannot visit GbgCpp more often, but as soon as I have the opportunity, I will do it again.

The StockholmCpp November event

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It was a long time since I last organized an event and boy, was I nervous about it. Pre-COVID-19, I was doing an event every 4 to 6 weeks, so I had lots of routines that had grown over time. But this time was different.

It started with gathering my recording gear, which I had not used for about 20 months and where some parts needed to be found. Then I needed to remember how to do my intro slides, for which I have of course an AsciiDoctor to HTML-slides CI/CD pipeline (🤓) but the tech stack needed some updates after that long time, and I am on new hardware, so that was fun. And when we came to the location, we had some details to fix that caused a small delay, but luckily nothing serious and everything worked out well.

We started with 2 talks from the event we had to cancel in March 2020. It’s awesome that we have such consistent and supportive speakers! We could even have had a third talk, but two filled the evening well and we will hear the other one at our next event.

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The event was hosted by Prevas, who recently joined forces with Tritech, our very first event host ever. It’s great to have such companies in town who care and support the local developer communities. If you are interested in becoming a consultant, check them out - they provide great opportunities for you. And of course, if you need consultants, you want to have a look at prevas.se and tritech.se.

The event was well attended; we had about 70 people stop by. The talks were great and well received. Good discussions about the topics, some reaching deep into the after-event part of the evening.

All the recording - video, audio, desktop - worked well and so I was able to produce videos of the talks for our YouTube channel. So you can watch the talks online if you want to. It’s of course not the same as experiencing them live. Wow, was I surprised by what a difference the live experience makes - I had nearly forgotten about that. I’m glad we had this event so I got a reminder of how awesome live events can be!

Summary, and looking ahead

Organizing a meetup is a pretty time-intensive task. We always have more than one speaker, which requires some planning ahead, and we always try to do videos of the talks. If you look at them, you might notice that producing those at the quality we do requires some effort. And in general, lots of communication has to happen with people and event hosts/sponsors, and all that adds up to quite a surprising amount.

All these activities became natural routines for me over the years when organizing meetups was my favorite hobby. When COVID-19 hit, and we could not do any more meetups, all of a sudden I ended up with some time left. That was kind of unexpectedly nice, and over the last nearly 2 years I filled that space with other activities, mostly development on open source projects. Among those, adding some new features to our SwedenCpp website - see the blog and the video section.
Some of that work and activities I do not want to miss in the future, but it is clear that my time is limited and I cannot do all the things together from now on. I guess I have to see and learn how to manage that, and how to set my priorities in the future.

The November meetup was an awesome event and a reminder of how much fun it can be to organize a meetup and do videos afterwards. And it was so nice to see people face to face that I hadn’t seen for a long time!
It’s clear that I do not want to miss that in the future, but maybe some things will have to adapt, we will see.

For the next year…​ from today’s perspective, I hope the situation in Sweden will not escalate and rules stay as they are. We already have a sponsor and speakers, so everything would be ready for the next meetup in 2022.