This past weekend I experienced my first Super Happy Dev-House convention/get together. I must say that never before have I met so many people that put me to shame. With this said however, I have learned more about online technologies from this than I have from any online tutorial or book. One of the biggest eye-openers for me was that I felt I was investing too much of my time learning PHP when instead I should be concentrating on learning Javascript-based technologies (most notably AJAX) and maybe Ruby/Ruby on Rails. Being around so many developers at once opened my eyes as to what is possible and how to get there.

With everyone working on their projects, it gave me the opportunity to begin filling in the gaps of my knowledge. I began researching new (to me at least) concepts, ideas, etc. Some examples are microformats, JQuery, and JSON. On top of that, I began going through AJAX tutorials, something I should’ve started a long time ago.

One of the unique things about being around this many people with similar interests are the conversations had throughout the night. Most of my conversations focused on web technologies: something I never have the opportunity to talk about at home. Topics included Ruby on Rails, the manageability of PHP in large projects, peoples’ current projects (including personal and business related). Most of all, I was able to network with people in the industry. There were a variety of people including CTOs, bloggers, and even someone from google. Hollywood has celebrities, but the bay area has eCelebrities.

This event has inspired me to form this sort of community back at home, but will it really be worth it? If I plan on moving in January (oh please make it happen), my efforts will be wasted in San Luis Obispo. I feel I should instead wait till I move to Camarillo for this sort of thing.

Anyways, can’t wait for Dev House 14!