Post first written in 2017, but updated to reflect changes in the local tech community in 2018 & 2019. I’ll continue to update as changes occur.

New to Birmingham and want to know where to find the techies? Or you’ve finished a first degree or training course and you want to know how to connect with other people in your field? In Birmingham, here are the three places you need to start looking to find them.

TechBirmingham’s community listings

TechBirmingham, the region non-profit coordinating and promoting the growth of the regional tech sector, has listings of the local tech organizations on its Community page. These include chapters of national organizations, such as the Project Management Institute, Infragard, and Women Who Code .

You’ll also find local tech-focused groups such as the Red Mountain Makers and Steel City SQL.

Magic City Tech

MagicCityTech.org is the signup page for the Magic City Tech slack, a chat channel used by tech community organizers to coordinate events, share information and post jobs. An informal water-cooler-style back channel, you’ll see everything from good React tutorials and case studies. to job postings for Scada and R programmers. The number of channels grew significantly in 2017 & 2018. Activity has been a bit slower in 2019. 

Meetup

Most of the local tech interest groups list their meetings on Meetup. (most of these are on the TechBirmingham community page). These interest groups range from language specific interest groups (javascript, .NET, to interest groups focused on startups and development)) A new group forming up, CSBhm, is looking to connect the computer science and technology educator community. 

Co-working Night

In January 2018, Sanjay Kumar started up a weekly coworking night at the Innovation Depot. This is a good time for those working remotely, at home and in small startups to get together and compare notes, work on some common projects and talk shop. 

This has evolved into a cluster of events on Tuesdays at the Depot, including BASE’s once-a-month code co-op night. 

Groups needed

We really need a CompTIA chapter, or Spiceworks group (for the IT professionals), black and latino programming interest groups in Birmingham*, in addition to the existing ones – who is available to get this going? Helps to have a core group of 10 – 20 individuals identified to start.

*Kudos to Jackie Whitehead for organizing the first Black Tech Alabama conference on Friday, July 28th, 2019. The next one in 2020, will be held in Huntsville.