A city's tech ecosystem is comprised of local government, business, and tech talent. From the the business-side, Nashville is exceptional in its concentration of successful healthcare companies. On the tech-talent side, Nashville has one the healthiest and most active technical user group ecosystems in the world. This grassroots anomaly has resulted in an unusually vibrant and cohesive tech community. In the past the linkage between the tech community, the business community, and local government hasn't been very strong. There are many reasons for this, and there are several efforts underway to improve the coordination.
Below are listings on Nashville user groups, conferences, and umbrella groups. Many tech events are listed on the technology community calendar at http://cal.nashvl.org.
A user group is a community that forms around a particular technical topic such as Ruby, Microsoft Azure, or Linux. Typically user groups meet once a month on a consistent night of the month (e.g. 4th Tuesday). Many groups meet at 6pm and start with a 30-minute social mixer, then announcements by the group leadership, then the night's educational content, and then close with questions and giveaways from sponsors (e.g. books, software, t-shirts).
User groups are organized by unpaid volunteers and the educational content is delivered by unpaid volunteers. User groups are generally free and open to anyone in the community to attend. There are several companies (mostly recruiters) in Nashville that sponsor user groups by offering meeting space. Most user groups also have sponsors that help cover the cost of food for the attendees (often pizza). Attendence at user group meetings vary from around 10 to 75 depending on the group and on the topic.
The most common format for user groups (around the world) is a 60-minute lecture composed of slides, code, and a demonstration. In Nashville there are several groups that break out of this (passive-learning) mold with hands-on labs and workshops (active-learning).
A partial list of Nashville User Groups
| Group | Description | Meetings |
|---|---|---|
| CocoaHeads | ||
| Nashville Mobile Development User Group | ||
| ID of Nashville | ||
| MidTn Robotic Arts Society | ||
| NashDL | Nashville Dynamic Languages | |
| NashDotNet | Nashville .NET User Group | 2nd Thurdays 6-7:30pm (lecture) and 3rd Thurday 6-9pm (lab) |
| NashFP | Nashville Functional Programmers | 4th Tuesday 6-9pm |
| NashJS | ||
| Nashville AWS | ||
| Nashville Brigade | ||
| NashMicro | Nashville Microcontrollers Users' Group | |
| Nashville Java | ||
| Nashville PHP | ||
| Nashville PyLadies | ||
| Nashville Rails Meetup | ||
| Nashville Women Programmers | ||
| Nashville Wordpress | ||
| Nashville Xamarin Mobile C# User Group | ||
| PyNash | ||
| The Nashville Windows Azure Users Group | ||
| Vandy Mobile | ||
| Vim User Group |
| Event |
|---|
| [Barcamp Nashville](BarCamp Nashville) |
| Coderfaire |
| Erlang Camp Nashville |
| Hack Nashville |
| Hack for Change Nashville |
| SkyDogCon |
| Talk Day |
| Group |
|---|
| Nashville Code Cooperative |
| Nashville Code User Group Leadership |
| Nashville Tech Council |