OpenCoffee Club Pula Meetin One Review

The summer air was full of heat and sweat. It was heavy, oppressive and devoid of people. The streets were empty. No one was out except from those unfortunate enough to work on the hottest day of this summer or those stupid enough of not having anything else to do that included the sea or something where the air conditioning was turned to the lowest cooling option available and then some.
And there was I sitting on the therace of the "Cvajner" caffee in Pula nervously waiting for the attendees of the first Istrian OpenCoffee meeting. I came twenty minutes last and sat in the coolest spot I could find, ordered my white coffee with sweetener and water , please, and started reading the eight edition of the Software Engineering book.
And then it dawned to me.
How am I going to recognize all those people. And most importantly, how are they going to recognize me? I didn't know the answer to that question. I started to look around. Two tables east of me a group of girls, mostly hot, sat around a laptop and discussed firewire software. Hmm, I thought, the don't look the web developer type. Should I approach them? I decided not. And so I waited.
The first to come were Lucijan Blagonic of PolarNorth.org and Emanuel Blagonic of emanuelblagonic.com/ and Extendis.hr, two brothers who professionally work in web design and user experience design areas of the business. As I feared they didn't recognize me at first as a fellow attendee. My fears were found. I noticed them. They stood on the entrance of the Cvajner cafee and darted open looks around as if searching for Richard Stallmans ghost who, as the popular legend says, developed sometime ago in this same caffee where our first meeting was to be held. I thought they must be fellow attendees, but I was to shy, scared of a public debacle and most worst humiliation to openly approach them so I used the most sly tactic possible. I closed the book I was so pointedly reading almost a moment ago in order to show the cover.
And it worked.
Lucijan and Emanuel noticed me and approached. Thus the first Istrian OpenCoffee meeting kicked off. And it was glorious. Soon others arrived.
First of the rest was Tomo Krajina digresije.info/ and panoye.com and puzz.info. He was followed by Toni Milovan of fwd.hr and mackorisnik.com, and
We started talking almost immediately. What is your specialty? What are your interests? It was the same for every other attendee who came later. The themes were a legion and our knowledge extensive.
I forgot about the oppressing heat, the girls two tables away. We talked until nightfall and then some. We covered a lot of themes , but only a scant few stayed in my memory:

• Best web development platform


• Open source content management frameworks


• UI test automation (I even developed an example on my laptop)


• High traffic site optimization


• Gimp Vs Photoshop


• Tables vs. Divs

Everyone had his own opinion and freely shared it. We joked and no one was barred from talking. The atmosphere was friendly and interesting and I will definitely attend next time.

I was wonderful meeting. We all agreed to meet once a month, and that all the meetings will be organized through our google group OpenCofee Istra.