In this episode, I speak with Domitrius Clark about his experience supporting online communities in gaming to building a successful local community of web developers in his home town of Philadelphia. We discuss the benefits of having a strong local community, how to deal with the challenges and logistics of running meetups, and much more.

Topics:

• Domitrius’ career 
• The importance of boot camps.
• Why Domitrius started his own business.
• The successes of dev communities.
• Being cooperative and a good listener.
• Responding to hate
• One thing Domitrius has learned this week

Quotes:

“I took one of the three month immersive bootcamps. I came out of that and started moving onto actually creating a startup.”

"Not everyone has the luxury to feel safe or confident that [interactions at our meetup] might go well. Facilitating a place where they do feel safe at all moments, when people tell me how comfortable our environment is, how they feel like it's a safe space for them ... those are the interactions that stick with me."

“When you are a meetup organizer or any type of community organizer and you find yourself dealing with some type of hate, you have to just address it immediately…”

Resources:

• Learn more about Domitrius’ Meetup
• Follow Domitrius on Twitter
• “Intent does not erase impact.” -@TatianaTMac
• Look into Tatiana Mac’s Systems of Systems Presentation