My Impressions Of devLAB Montreal

Wednesday I went to an event called devLAB Montréal. This is a weekly event that is held in Evocatio offices in the old Montréal. It was my first time there, but it was the third time they held it.

What’s devLAB Montréal?

devLAB idea is to get passionate programmers together and let them work on a small project. This idea is really appealing to me. I see this as a great way to work on something I would not normally at work. It also removes all times constraint. In a setup like this we don’t have to deliver anything. So we can take our time to experiment and try new things. It’s also a great way to work with other developers and learn from them.

How It Went

The event was not quite what I was expected. From what I read and heard from it I though we where going to decide on a project or two and work on them. I know they have a list of projects they want to try from previous meetups. That’s not what happened. Basically, we all sit there and played with different things. Some played with Symfony, some with AdWords. I took the opportunity to try Node.js with another developer that was there. It was fun and a great learning experience, but time went by too fast. I definitely need to dig more in Node.

It’s A Great Event

I liked the time I spent there with this bunch of passionate peoples. I can’t be there every week, I have a family and there are other great tech events in Montréal, but I will go back as often as I can. I want to see how it will evolved. What I would like is to pair with others on a small projects. Something that is different from my day to day. The good news is that they look very open to ideas.

I would really like to thank Evocatio for letting us use their office and making this kind of events possible.