About Craig Webb

Rocking with Astoria Tech Meetup

February 22, 2025 2:20 pm | by Craig Webb | Posted in Polis, User Experience

Last week I participated in multiple events with the Astoria Tech Meetup. I have attended Astoria Tech Meetup for most of 2024 and this year too.

Astoria Tech meets weekly Thursday mornings for coffee at a local shop and holds a monthly event at night at a bar with short presentations and a chance to network. Astoria Tech has also started to have a monthly hacker session on Saturday afternoons where people can share what they are working on. People pair and work together. Last week I did all three events.

I had an opportunity to give a presentation at the Wednesday night meetup event, held at Klatch Bar in Astoria Queens. Astoria Tech Meetup sets a 10 minute limit for presentations to keep them fun.

I gave a presentation about loading variable fonts on a local server. Variable fonts are easy to install but there are a few pitfalls to know about. They need a conversion and I have a collection of converted fonts on my Github to give away. I made a brief slide deck and aced my presentation in just nine minutes.

I enjoy meeting friends at the Thursday coffee Meetup. We chat about how we are doing and share tips. I always come away with new suggestions and websites on my phone from other members. It is great to learn cool new things.

This Saturday I came to the Astoria Tech Hacker Event held at Klatch Bar. I have a JavaScript project that I have worked on for a long time and I brought that to work on.

We paired together for three 5-minute rounds to see each other’s projects and then we switched partners. Some members are working on very advanced applications.

One member suggested that I try using Claude AI with part of my project. I tried Claude with middling success. Meanwhile another participant built a partial replica of my application using the D3 JavaScript library. I came away with parts of programs and code that I can study and move forward with my project.

I am very glad to have a local Meetup where I can meet fine people and learn about programming. There are so many avenues to explore. Everyone is on their own journey but at least we get to touch grass together over coffee.



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