People I Met: I met mostly new Web Developers that recently completed General Assembly's program. Specifically two that I met are Chad Keevan and Patrick Botkins. They were demoing their most recent projects, an RTD Trip Planner and a Web Based Wine Journal, respectively.

What I Learned: I learned that people overall are friendlier than I give them credit for, especially in the meetup environment. Everyone is generally eager to talk to their peers and network. With speaking to Chad I learned that AWS has essentially its own language which is what is used when working with either AWS or Alexa based systems.

Questions I Have: I should have asked the recent grads more questions about the program they went through. It's interesting to see other similar programs in the area and the differences between them. I'm still happy with my choice of Galvanize over the competitors, but seeing the differences is interesting. Specifically I should have asked more about their overall structure on a program basis as well as what their daily schedule was like. More tech related I wonder what more mainstream languages translate best to the system AWS/Alexa have in place.

People I Met: Kevin (unfortuntately I didn't get his last name) - Dev Ops Randy Ross - Admin for LodgeNet or a similarly named company

What I Learned: The evening was fairly informal. The focus of the group was Linux. Most everyone used Linux either for work or their personal use and there was a very wide array of people. I learned a bit about past iterations of Linux, specifically that AT&T had a hand in some earlier distributions and continues to do so today. I also learned some stories from fellow nerds of what it was like to actually have to make updates to software for the Y2K switch, a real life example of Office Space's Peter's job, updating the date to four digits instead of two. None of the items I learned tonight were necessarily informative in a strictly educational sense, but it was an enjoyable evening with some other nerds.

Questions I Have: Most of the users there were not the biggest fans of Ubuntu. I myself have had an enjoyable time using Ubuntu, but I am now more curious about the experience of using other options such as RedHat.

People I Met: Matt Steffey - A recent GA grad entering the world of web development Christen Hissong - Senior Recruiter for Softec

What I Learned: I learned quite a bit from Christen's perspective which is more on the hiring end of things. The biggest takeaways were that many older companies still need young blood with knowledge of older/less popular languages as well as modern skills. In her opinion as well the market is still in need of new developers so that's a positive about all of our chosen career paths.

Questions I Have: Specifically she mentioned she often has clients looking for developers with PHP knowledge, I wonder how much it would take to learn PHP and I also wonder how often the market still actively requests this? I know that Kyle mentioned this early on during our orientation day as well, that it represents a large amount of the content out there because of companies like WordPress.