One year of Meeting C++

published at 27.06.2013 12:58 by Jens Weller
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Today, one year ago, this project went live. Time to celebrate! Its roots go far more back in time, but at the end of June in 2012 I did go public with Meeting C++. First the focus was on the conference, today also it is also on the blog, the user groups and events + more. I also want to thank everybody who has given me feedback or contributed to this or last years conference!

This year was a year of great success, last years conference went very well. In 2013 I had the chance to focus on Meeting C++, and did bring the site to what it is today. The blog has been a huge success, the series on C++14 brought till today almost 45000 hits to the website. I'm not yet certain, if will continue this series for the next C++ Committee Meeting in Fall. The next blog posts will probably focus on boost 1.54 and Qt5.1.

The Idea for Meeting C++ is more then only a conference, but also being a local platform for C++, not another web forum or another already existing references. C++ user groups are a very important part of this project, so I try to support the existing user groups and promote the founding of new ones. Within one year I could help to get 3 other C++ user groups in Germany getting started (Berlin, Dresden, and Hamburg). Also some activity has started in France and Italy. This is one of the best success stories with Meeting C++ for me so far, not kicking of the conference. My dream is a (european) C++ network of Users and their C++ user groups, and currently its looking good for this dream coming true.

When building a  network, one does not get around Social Media in our time. So I started with twitter last year, added Facebook later, and after the conference youtube. Before announcing this years conference I also added a Page on Google Plus. Looking at the numbers today:

• Twitter: 916 Follower
• Facebook: 182 Likes
• Youtube: 325 Subscribers
• G+: 188 Follower

In total added up that's 1611 possibilities to reach some one for C++. Of course adding those numbers is nothing more than bullshit. But, in total, it enables me to share good links and information about C++, and also helps the goals in building a network and reaching out to people locally and globally. Slightly different is Youtube as a platform, its to me not really social media, as Twitter, FB or G+ are. The recordings of last year are pretty screwed up, still a lot of people have watched some of them. I started a video series about BB10 this spring, which was a success, but I also learned from it, that making tutorial videos is a lot of work.

Of course I also have to mention the conference, which was a great success last year. In 2013, I decided to make some changes, and go for more people being able to visit the conference. Like last year, the conference is vastly founded over the ticketsale, in order to stay independent. Also this year there is a 3rd track, which is a theme track, focusing this year on UI & Tooling in C++. In total the conference will offer 2 keynotes and 21 talks in 3 parallel tracks. Early Bird Tickets will be available till the 7th July at the ticketshop.

A week before last years conference, isocpp.org was announced, which was great news back then, and still is. As it does fill a few holes, which now Meeting C++ does not need to fill. The blog series about the Bristol papers was mostly linked also at isocpp.org, which gave some traffic, so isocpp has some reach, and can bring some traffic to any site or blog featured in their news.

For the future, I do have some ideas, but most likely not enough time to follow all of them. One of my thoughts still is, if I can make a living from Meeting C++, the conference pays some bills, and gives me some time to take care of the site. Still, I'd have to raise the ticket price, if I wanted the conference to pay for all of it. Which I don't want to, but there would be some room for this, as other conferences have higher ticket prices. I'm looking for Sponsors willing to support the efforts and my plans for Meeting C++, one upcoming feature is to place banner ads at my site.

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