This post is to say a huge thank you for the wonderful work done over the last three years by the GIST Foundation. GIST (Grassroots Innovation in Society and Technology) is a Sheffield organisation that was founded in early 2010 and sadly closed in December 2012. The aims of GIST were to provide a meeting place for those interested in technology and to improve the role of technology in wider society.
GIST was run by Jag and Hannah Goraya, Chris Murray and Ian Ibbotson. These four worked hard as volunteers and gave up a lot of their free time to build the GIST Foundation into a very successful organisation that played a huge role in the local tech community. The GIST Lab close to Sheffield train station was used by the Foundation as a meeting point for lots of technology user groups. GIST was responsible for many Sheffield geeks first meeting each other and several of these meetings led to software developers finding new jobs.
I first joined the Sheffield tech community in June 2009. I had just finished working as a postdoctoral university researcher in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Sheffield and was looking for work. I’d decided to make a career change and become a software developer. Although I’d been programming for 7 years at that point using MATLAB, Java and Python, I’d never worked in a commercial software organisation. I was aware that writing single-user scripts for scientific computation in academia was quite different to writing software commercially in conjunction with other developers.
I first began attending GeekUp Sheffield in the Showroom Cafe Bar. On my very first visit I was greeted by the organiser Jag Goraya, who took time to welcome me with friendliness and talk about my interest in software. I kept attending GeekUp Sheffield and got to know other developers. I was impressed that these were people who gave up their own time to improve their software knowledge and who believed in teaching themselves new skills. They seemed to have an inner confidence that although the problems that they were working on were difficult, they could resolve them given time and learning. As a former PhD student and postdoc I also believed in independent working and a self-teaching mentality, but I’d never seen this same mentality before in a software context. I resolved that I didn’t just want to become a software developer, but I wanted to become *this kind* of software developer. I found my first software developer job shortly afterwards in August 2009.
In 2010 GeekUp Sheffield was renamed to GIST Magazine and continued to meet on the first Wednesday of each month at the Showroom Cafe Bar. The format had now changed though, with Jag Goraya acting as compere and multiple presentations being given within the two hours. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, with questions being asked in an open environment. I saw some wonderful GIST Magazine talks in 2010 such as Ash Moran and Marc Johnson talking on promiscuous pair programming and my software knowledge grew. I did a GIST Magazine book review on Cory Doctorow’s excellent For the Win in late 2010 because I knew that this would be the audience to appreciate such a book. I was interviewed on the book by Jag whilst sitting on a sofa in front of the other GIST Magazine attendees, which felt at the time like being on Parkinson!
In 2010 I started attending software user groups at the GIST Lab such as Sheffield Ruby Group, Sheffield PHP Group and Open Data Sheffield. The GIST Lab could seat up to 20 people and was an excellent venue for enthusiastic developers to see talks or write code on topics that they were passionate about. I also began attending software user groups at Madlab in Manchester, such as XP Manchester, Python North West and Manchester Free Software. I continued to study new software techniques and programming languages in my own time, motivated by other GIST regulars improving their own skills by doing the same thing.
At the end of 2010 I decided that I wanted to organise a software user group at GIST myself. My favourite programming language was Python, after having using it for scientific computation during my time as a university researcher. I was confident that there was sufficient demand in the Sheffield tech community for a Python group and I confirmed this by conversations with fellow developers and on Twitter. I started the Python Sheffield user group at the GIST Lab in Jan 2011 and was thrilled when there were around 20 attendees at the first meeting. Future meetings then continued to thrive with a wide variety of Python content and regular coding sessions.
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The GIST Lab
It was the GIST Foundation that made this possible. The GIST Lab was freely available for software user groups to use, where this was a dedicated room where developers could learn, code and socialise with their peers in comfort without being disturbed by noise. Every month we had two hours where we could talk about the Python topics that interested us and learn from the experiences of others. One of my favourite Python Sheffield meetings was where core ipython developer Thomas Kluyver gave us a set of ipython bugs and we worked in 5 or 6 developer pairs to fix them and then submit our changes back to the ipython GitHub repo. Other user groups such as Systems Thinking, WordPress, Makers, Raspberry Pi and Open Rights Group later formed at the GIST Lab.
My confidence grew as a software developer and I found that the skills I was learning at GIST user groups regularly came in useful during my day job. I was constantly building up a list of the techniques, programming languages and software books that I’d like to study next, whilst working my way through that list. In mid 2011 the GIST Foundation organised a two-day BarCamp at the Workstation attended by large numbers of developers, with many travelling from outside Sheffield. The Sheffield tech community was strong and was able to represent itself proudly as part of a great UK city.
In mid 2012 I was working as a .NET developer and considered C# to be my main programming language. I had gained confidence from running the Python Sheffield group for almost 18 months and decided to start up a new Sheffield .NET User Group. Again the GIST Foundation was very supportive of this and offered the GIST Lab each month free of charge for our meetings. The Sheffield .NET User Group attracted a different set of developers to Python Sheffield, but both groups were comprised of hard-working developers who believed in teaching themselves new skills and learning from their peers.
In October 2012 I started work at ThoughtWorks in Manchester, a software organisation it was my ambition to work for one day. GIST has played a major role in this, as I firmly believe that if I hadn’t started attending GeekUp Sheffield in summer 2009 and then multiple GIST user groups, I wouldn’t be a ThoughtWorker now. GIST has given me the opportunity to learn lots of software knowledge from a great group of fellow software developers and share that knowledge with others. As an organiser of two software user groups, it’s very rewarding to have an environment such as GIST where knowledge can be shared amongst smart people willing to learn. In the second half of 2012 I was honoured to become a key holder for the GIST Lab and have the responsibility of opening and closing the venue for user groups.
In December 2012 it was announced that the GIST Foundation and GIST Lab were closing. This was sad news and I feel that I owe them a great debt. There are many people I wouldn’t have met without GIST and they’ve helped the Sheffield tech community to grow. I’m confident that this community will continue to thrive and that the connections made through GIST will be maintained.
Thanks again to Jag, Hannah, Chris and Ian for all of their hard work over the last three years and to all of the regular GIST attendees. I’m very grateful and I’m sure that many other Sheffield developers are too.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
