the importance of community

It’s been a few days since VisionDevCamp wrapped up, and I finally have a moment to reflect on the epic weekend. After several weeks of collaborating with the organizing team, it was amazing to finally put faces to names, and get to embrace a whole new cohort of people.?

Early in my career, I went to meetups, conferences, and BarCamps all the time. As my career and life obligations evolved (and/or as COVID made introverting socially acceptable) it became too easy to let that part of my life languish.?

This weekend was a stark reminder that I truly love being around curious, smart people who congregate around a topic just for the joy of it. The generosity and energy of the VisionDevCamp community were contagious, and I am truly grateful to have been a part of it.

Amazing things got built, like this and this. (There were an unprecedented number of demos, and much of the work was open-sourced.) I was able to sit in some sessions about Swift for VisionPro and Polyspatial and learned a ton. I hung out in virtual spaces with new friends (even though they were only a few physical feet away). I swapped infinite app and accessory recommendations. I had hallway conversations on every topic conceivable.

The outcome was a full brain and light heart.?

A huge thank you to Raven Zachary and Dom Sagolla for leading the way. Dana Ware ?? GDC and James Ashley ???? are my newest old friends. I was thrilled to learn from the likes of Jared Bienz and Nicole Lazzaro GDC ????? . And special thanks to Jonathan Wight for putting up with my stupid questions. ?

Huge thanks to every one of the attendees… keep up the voracious curiosity! Hope to see y’all next year?

P.S. Spatial Personas just launched, and are a nice expansion of functionality. If anyone needs a friend to try it out with, holler!