A year ago I got together with Josh Wohle and started a monthly meetup for London-based CTOs (and CTOs-to-be). The short version: it was born from frustration that London’s meetups hadn’t really recovered after the COVID-19 pandemic, and while there were a lot of sponsor-heavy/commercial events, there was very little to simply ‘talk shop’ with other CTOs – face to face! – in a relaxed, informal, environment…
For 2024 I’m hoping we can get attendance to about 2x, while keeping the entertaining conversations, and the broad mix of people with different levels of experience/background.
Feedback
“It was seriously one of the coolest and most useful meetings I’ve ever been to!”
“A nicely different vibe, but cool to hang out in a chilled venue”
“It felt like meeting a bunch of friends instead of going to a meetup officially.”
Purpose
It’s evolved during the year, but a couple of recurring elements:
- Safe place for senior tech people to talk about tech, and operational/leadership, problems – no recruiters, no sales/marketing people, no vendors, no ‘non-tech’ people
- Wide range of experience: from veteran CTOs with 15+ years management experience … through to first-time Founders and Staff/Principal Engineers doing their first full-time management roles
- All conversations are private, using the Chatham House rule
- Deliberate ‘levelling up’ of each other: helping others transition from Engineering Management into effective Company Leadership / CxO roles
Members
Anyone in Engineering who has to deal with the problems that are ‘more than just engineering’. In practice: mostly CTO/VPEng/PrincipalEngineers.
If you’d like to join our future events, email: “adam.m.s.martin+1stwednesday at gmail.com” – generally we aim to be as inclusive as possible, but there is some basic filtering to keep the focus on people working in/on/around tech and leadership (please include your LinkedIn page so I can check this).
Stats
We went from 2 people (myself and Josh) in the group at the start of the year, to a total of 35 by the end. The number of people turning up each month was pretty stable throughout the year – but you can clearly see the three times that UK train-strikes coincided with our meetup day 🙂 (peaks on last-minute cancellations).
…and the fraction of “regulars” vs “first time” attendees is settling down around 50/50:
