Gatsby Community Events and COVID-19

Caitlin Cashin
Caitlin Cashin
April 15th, 2020

Getting folks together to learn, grow, and connect with each other is the lifeblood of any community, and especially Gatsby’s community. In-person events have always been something that our team has worked to support and encourage. Unfortunately, with the spread of COVID-19, those in-person events have become a major health risk.

We love that you love getting together as much as we do. But in light of the current situation, we ask that you please reschedule all in-person Gatsby community events or find a way to hold them remotely until the World Health Organization and/or your local authorities say it’s safe for people to meet in groups again.

What can you do instead?

The good news is it’s easier than ever to interact with people online and host remote events. Here are some ideas for engaging with the community and sharing your Gatsby expertise while still safely physically, if not socially, distancing:

  1. Host your own Gatsby webinar. Invite the folks who usually attend your in-person events to a live stream or online call, and give a Gatsby presentation.
  2. Do some live pair programming. Get together with one of your Gatsby buddies on your preferred remote interaction tools and stream on Twitch or YouTube. You can also sign up to pair with someone from the Gatsby team. You might even make it onto our Twitch channel!
  3. Chat with other community members on the Gatsby Discord server.
  4. Hang out on the Gatsby Twitch channel. Check out our channel for info on our upcoming streams.
  5. Plan to attend Virtual Gatsby Days, June 2nd & 3rd!

Some great tools for remote events

We have the technology! There are lots of free tools and applications you can use to host an awesome remote event. Here are a few that we’ve used at Gatsby:

  • Lightstream Studio for streaming on Twitch and YouTube
  • Zoom for remote calls and meetings
  • Glitch for building apps, sharing projects, and learning to code
  • FindCollabs for hosting online hackathons

We’ve got big plans for the Gatsby community and events coming down the road! You can follow Gatsby on Twitter for up-to-the-minute announcements and updates. So stay tuned, stay healthy, and stay home—so we can all be here to gather together when pandemic restrictions are a thing of the past 💜.

Caitlin Cashin
Written by
Caitlin Cashin

Marketing woman-of-all-work, collector of hobbies, very opinionated about opera.

Follow Caitlin Cashin on Twitter

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