Farewell to Distant Worlds

A special Handmade meetup: one of Seattle’s most popular coffee shops is winding down.

Guest Article by Allen Webster

Seattle area folks,

As the last Saturday of the month approaches, we’re looking forward to our usual Handmade meetup, but a few things will be very different this month. Please read to the end to catch all the details.

The big news:

First and foremost, the venue we have been with since the beginning, Distant Worlds Coffeehouse, is closing on August 31st, making our meetup one of the last events to occur in the space. This news came rather suddenly and saddens us deeply, not to mention the owner and staff at Distant Worlds. Abner has made an effort to reach out to as many people as possible to give Distant Worlds the send off they deserve, and all sales will go towards an employee severance fund, so please buy your drinks and snacks as usual (or splurge!)

Second, while Abner will still be in attendance, he wants to focus at least some of his attention on talking with the staff with whom he has a long standing relationship. So he’s asked me, his backup host, to step in for the month. Many of you may know me, but in case you don’t I look forward to meeting you. I am Allen Webster, creator of 4coder and Mr. 4th Lab, and I’ve been the host of a few meetups before, so you’re still in good hands.

The details:

• Where: Distant Worlds Coffeehouse (in Seattle)
• When: Saturday, August 30th, 2PM-4PM
• Parking: While there is street parking around the neighborhood, the most reliable place to park is “Green Lake Park & Ride”.
• Afterwards those who are up for more time together migrate down the road for pizza and time at the pub.

Submitting Topics:

Many of us in the community work on software projects on our own. The goal of the meetup is to get a chance to get help where we’re stuck, to get feedback on what we’ve built, and to practice explaining our ideas to other programmers.

Usually we gather up topics on the fly at the start of the meetup, but to make the most of our time I am going to try an experiment!

I’m asking you to take a few minutes to write a short pitch of what you’d like to bring and send it to me ahead of time at allenw@mr4th.com. Tell me about your topic, and what questions you might like to get answers to, what new features of your project you might like to demo, or what you’d like a chance to discuss.

I will sort through pre-submitted topics ahead of time to pick an order and see how much time we can give each topic, that way we can dive right in. I want to be sure we pack our last meetup at Distant Worlds with as many opportunities for people to participate as possible, while we celebrate our meetup community. I’ll still take topics on the fly if there’s time, but I’m going to give first priority to pre-submitted topics.

See you on Saturday!

-Allen

Staff Note: Can’t make it in person? Use the Employee Severance Fund button above!