The usefulness of open events: Navigating professional spaces of urban Meetups

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research, this paper examines the burden of search that individuals bear in navigating the plethora of open events surrounding the tech industry. It focuses on one learn-to-code Meetup, finding that attendees are pulled in by the hope embedded in the popular imaginary of coding, particularly the programming language Python, as a way to change their careers. While the gathering’s call labels it as a learning space,the study finds teaching happens rarely, instead drawing individuals who seek peers based on a Python affinity, in part to break the side-by-side-but-not together norms of urban mobile work. This paper argues that the hope of individual professional change spills over into the hope of sharing space with programmers and to find “local Python community”. However, given the porosity of events facilitated by online convening, the gathering falls short of attracting those already pertaining to that community itself.