On Saturday 30th May, Namespace hosted a public coding session. Public coding mirrors the coworking experience, a style of work where persons do independent work in a shared space.
The idea behind coworking is that there is inherent value to working alongside other individuals even if you’re not all working on the same things. It’s an effort by remote workers, freelancers and the like to preserve some of the benefits of traditional office work such as socializing, building relationships and fostering a sense of belonging outside the company walls.
The Namespace team felt that the coworking model could be useful for software developers who often work on projects on their own in their spare time. So members of the team met on the Indian Arrival Day holiday for a public coding session. Five of us occupied the M12 study room in UWI’s Student Activity Centre for five hours, temporarily converting it into a workspace for software developers.
The session was quite productive work-wise. Happily, we were also able to have spontaneous and productive interactions. Having had the experience, we now have a better appreciation of the opportunities it offers: Introductions and networking - Everyone at the session already knew each other; however, it would have been a great way for anyone else to meet with members of the local developer community. Feedback and help - It was easy to reach out and get feedback on problems we were facing. Developers trying out new tools or programming languages will find it very handy to have someone nearby willing to lend a hand when they run into trouble. Exchanging ideas - What’s that great D3.js wrapper I wish I knew about? Why is loading 1000 items into the DOM at once a bad idea? We also got to share and exchange ideas with one another that would prove useful in future.
Because long periods of focus are important for creative work we had to discourage group discussions as they would often become noisy and distracting.
We had a genuinely productive coding session interspersed with friendly conversation and the occasional banter. It reminded me of the good times I had with my coworkers at my old office, which was probably more fun that it ever should have been. We know that other developers out there are using their weekends to work on new or ongoing projects and we hope that they join us for our next public coding session.