Why Wossat?

“Wellington has plenty of tech meetups, why do we need another one?”

Wellington has been very well served by tech meetup groups. As you can see in the adjacent list of links, we have groups for different programming languages, frameworks, CMS platforms, databases, operating systems, and methodologies to name a few categories. However this diversity is a two-edged sword. Each group can form its own “silo”, isolated from similar groups, and with members operating in their own tech bubble.

For example, if one person presents to say the Python user group about a particular web security topic, it's likely that the bulk of the presentation would be just as relevant to attendees of Javascript, PHP, Perl or Ruby groups.

Another problem is when a group finds its attendance numbers dropping. With a small pool of members it becomes very hard to find speakers for each meeting. Without a range of speakers and interesting topics, it's likely that attendance numbers will drop further.

WOSSAT is not intended to replace all the tech meetups, but rather to be a place for cross-pollination between groups. We'd be delighted for people who have presented to their specialised group, to come along and do a re-run of their talk to a more diverse audience. Rather than preaching to the choir, come and see if you can win some converts.

“Is that swearing in the logo?”

In the spirit of Open Source, the name “WOSSAT” is borrowed and adapted (with permission) from OSSAT (Open Source Show And Tell), a group who used to meet in London.

The speech bubble motif was added around the name to signify that it's a place to come and talk — both prepared presentations and informal networking/mingling.

The second speech bubble was added as a tie-in to scripting languages, which have long been the mainstay of tech meetups. As any long time scripter will know, the first line of a script usually starts with those three characters and is called the shebang line.