The Future of Pehapkari Meetups and Training - You

2020-05-18

Last 2 months gave lot of time to reflect my activities, work and hobbies. One of the topic I think about a lot is our Czech PHP Community - Pehapkari. I felt like last year I'm not giving it as much energy as before. But why?

Why were Pehapkari born?

In 2014, the only place to talk about PHP in the Czech Republic, was Nette forum. A place to bring all people of PHP, regardless their framework choice was missing. That's why Pehapkari (first year Symfonisti) were born.

Today, in 2020 we have Pehapkari Slack with 1600+ members, where you can ask about anything you want. Instantly. Now. In Czech.

Online works on itself, that's great. It took a huge effort of 25 people to get there. But what about offline? In 2019 we've organized ~10 meetups and 14 trainings, both in Prague. The rest of meetups is handled by companies themselves, e.g. PeckaDesign and Oxyshop in Brno by or DigitalSolutions in Pardubice.

Thank you all for your participation in our meetings over the past 5 years.

"That looks good. The most IT communities could dream of such activity. So what happened?

My Priorities Have changed in Last 3 years

When I started community in 2015, I worked as part-time programmer to fund it. I got few open-source projects, mostly Czech Republic-related.

Now, 5 years later, I got a bit more on my plate.

last 3 years I work on Rector - PHP community likes and uses it more and more (recently Drupal officially announced - it a upgrade tool for 8 → 9) - it takes almost part-time to maintain project on GitHub
contributing to open-source and writing posts takes more time to make it beneficial to world PHP community
I travel abroad to conferences and meetups, that bites off another piece of time and energy cake
also, my main language switched from Czech to English

Saying that, I don't have as much time and energy to keep community running, as it needs. I won't be organizing more meetups or trainings, except those pre-contracted.

Do you want Meetups and Training to Continue?

I do, that's why I'm writing this post.

I could continue in stand-by state for another year or two, make meetups now and then. I could say it's due to Corona. But I don't think that's responsible to the PHP Community, that you helped me to build - to you. I've seen few communities to slowly vanish in history, because founders were focused somewhere else, but didn't offer community member to take over.

So I'm offering you to take over my place and continue to grow, where I can't.

Do you want to take over meetups?

Let me know. I'll try to pass you my know-how and give access to website, Twitter and Facebook.

Do you want to take over training from me?

Same thing, contact me and if we match, it's your direction.

I hope Czech PHP community strives in online or offline, and we continue to meet each other, find friends and help each other grow, as we did till now. I really wish that.

Do you learn from my contents or use open-souce packages like Rector every day?
Consider supporting it on GitHub Sponsors. I'd really appreciate it!