SyncRVA comes together

by: Todd Nuckols

On the evening of June 19 several of Richmond's technical education organizations gathered together under the neutral banner of SyncRVA.  I believe the intended end game of the mega meetup will be a web presence of shared calendaring and resources that allows participants in the technical community one stop shopping to find solid networking and career development opportunities.  Groups and associations from IT process professionals to hardware hackers and everything in between were represented.

At the event Dan Costa, Editor-in-Chief of PCMag.com spoke about some major trends in the industry.  Specifically, he highlighted mobility, the stagnation of the PC market and the age of the Internet of Things (connected devices). But beyond that, Dan suggested that we need to get used to living in a share everything world, a "subscription economy".  He highlighted quotes from the founders of ZipCar and Kevin Kelly, Wired, "Access is better than owning."  While I am not sure that is always the case one could make the argument that in regards to co-working access to a fun working environment is better than owning one.  In fact, one new member highlighted that very fact in a recent post as he described not needing to get that permanent office space to get away from the living room table after discovering 804RVA.  So, in certain situations perhaps access is better?  (I could probably chase that rabbit a while from this point -- but, no!) 

What was clear from the event is that collaboration can be a powerful concept and I think this effort to create broad awareness of the technical community in RVA is excellent.  If coworking demonstrates anything, it demonstrates that we can all learn from each other and often need to bring our shared experiences and expertise to bear in order to succeed.  I certainly hope, particularly if you are already a loyal meetup member of a technical group, you will check out SyncRVA.com (which is being built and designed by Shockoe.com) once up and running and plug into the broader community.    It should come natural to 804RVAers!

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