Welcome to my Portfolio!
Hello,
Welcome to my portfolio!
It's formatted in the general three C's: Community, Content, and Code. I have developer and product-focused reach across a wide variety of platforms: including Meetup, Discord, Linkedin, and Twitter. For more details on each, please click the linked image/link and contact me at stevechenweb@gmail.com; I'll be happy to expand on any of them!
Sincerely,
Steve
Table of Contents
I. Community
A. The Code & Coffee Collective 501c3
Rebooted the Code & Coffee meetups during a pandemic by kicking off NYC Code & Coffee in September 2021.
More details at https://www.codeandcoffee.org
Case Study: Empowering Developers at NYC Code & Coffee
Background
Code & Coffee (www.codeandcoffee.org) is a community that provides a space for developers to meet, work on projects, and learn from each other. The community hosts regular meetups where members can collaborate, share their knowledge, and connect on software topics of their own choosing.
Challenge
NYC Code & Coffee faced the challenge of maintaining a supportive environment and ensuring members continued learning and growing.
Solution
To address these challenges, the following initiatives were undertaken:
Organizing regular coding workshops and presentations to help members expand their skills and stay current with industry trends.
Create highly-engaging monthly (festival-style) LineUp posters and bi-weekly post-event content drops on Social Media.
Encouraging members to volunteer and get involved through a speakers program.
Key Results and Outcomes
These initiatives led to increased engagement and member satisfaction.
5 out of 5-star ratings in over 272 reviews on Meetup from attendees.
An average of 2 talks per event in 2023 from organizations like Apple, General Assembly, Swimm, startups, and 15 individual community members.
A 90% satisfaction rate among members, with most reporting a positive learning experience and feeling more connected to the community.
B. Product & Pastries
I founded and actively facilitated the only community-led product management and product design meetup. We meet monthly :)
Like Code & Coffee, we empower attendees to contribute and volunteer as a retention and sustainability strategy. And it works!
Case Study: Boosting Inclusion and Collaboration at DC Design + Donuts
Background
DC Design + Donuts (www.meetup.com/dc-design-donuts) is a community that brings together design enthusiasts in the Washington, D.C., area. The community hosts monthly meetups where members can network, learn about design topics, and share their experiences in a casual environment.
Challenge
DC Design + Donuts faced the challenge of expanding its membership and re-engagement with members as the end of the pandemic drew upon us.
Solution
To address these challenges, the following initiatives were implemented:
Promoting the meetups on channels and local event listings to increase awareness and attract new members.
Rebrand group to "Product & Pastries" to produce a more inclusive and accessible space for product design AND product Management professionals ensuring diverse and relevant content to a larger untapped pool of members.
Encouraging members to share their projects and ideas during the meetups, fostering collaboration and community involvement.
Key Results and Outcomes
The initiatives led to significant growth and engagement in the community.
A 29% increase in membership within four months.
Improved event attendance, with an average of 50% attendance.
Self-sustaining community-led group of volunteers that run and operate the community without any intervention. Check them out in #product-and-pastries-volunteers-and-organizers on DCTech.chat!
C. FuzhouAmerica DC/MD/VA - National 501c3 Non Profit
Served as volunteer Community Manager for the DC region at a non-technical 501c3 centralized non-profit.
Fuzhou, America is the first 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization designed to empower Fuzhounese-Americans through entrepreneurship, mentorship, and community.
Case Study: Fostering Cultural Exchange at Fuzhou America (DC/MD/VA)
Background
Fuzhou America (www.fuzhouamerica.org) is a community 501c3 organization dedicated to uniting and empowering first-generation Fuzhounese people in the US. The organization hosts events and activities to celebrate Fuzhou culture.
Challenge
Fuzhou America faced the challenge of engaging a diverse audience and ensuring its events were inclusive and appealing to various interests.
Solution
To tackle these challenges, the following initiatives were employed:
Organize events that showcased various aspects of Fuzhou culture, such as dinner parties, bbq's, cultural enrcihing events, exhibitions, and national conferences.
Collaborate with local Chinese-American organizations to reach a broader audience and expand the community's reach.
Engage a FuzhouFirst content strategy across online chat (Facebook Community Messenger) to increase the number of meetups and empower local attendees to self-organize.
Key Results and Outcomes
A 20% increase in new member acquisition in one year.
A current average of one event PER WEEK organized within a 93-person Facebook group chat.
An overall increase in community engagement by an estimated 10x. Creating partnerships that produced highly valuable brand awareness using social media content in collaboration with the restaurant KPot and VC-backed startups like Wonders (See Video - Instagram section.)
D. In-person Developer Meetups
With a combined reach of 20,000+ developers on Meetup.com and 30+ tech organizations. We strive for consistent high-quality events every two weeks or month. I run the most prominent non-company attached developer reach on the meetup.com platform, with over 50+ volunteer community managers who operate the community accross 25 cities in the United States.
We're trusted by organizations like Couchbase, Swimm, FormLabs, General Assembly, BrainStation, The Loading Dock, Computer Museum of America, Viget, TechArtista, Computer Museum of America, and many more.
I found and primarily operate
Format: (CITY) Code & Coffees - Member count
The Code and Coffee Organization (Est. Sept 2021) - 20,000 developers and growing.
NYC Code and Coffee - 5.2k (growing at 500/mo)
DC Product and Pastries(formerly Design and Donuts) - 992
DC Code and Coffee (inactive) - 3.1k
ReactDC (inactive) - 2.1k
Secondary Code & Coffee groups operated by volunteer organizers
Austin - 3xx
Atlanta - 1xx
Baltimore - 1,xxx
Boston - 4xx
Chicago - 5xx
Cincinnati - 2xx
Dulles - 6xx
Frederick - 91
Houston - 64
Milwaukee - 1xx
NoVA - 4.2k+
San Francisco - 2.1k+
St. Louis - 4xx
Triangle - 5xx
Ventura - 89
Whidbey Island - 56
*These numbers are not updated.
E. Digital Community
Discord
2,300 developers and growing
Personally founded, design, and architected alongside Open Source community contributors.
Currently, 51 community organizers interact through internal channels.
Thousands of developers, all from in-person event referrals
Members and visitors gain value from our community through #jobs, #career-help, #code-help, and the 25 local community channels.
Github - Open Source
Code & Coffee Organization public repo
Extremely new. October 2023 goal is to get a fully functioning program for new devs to get their first Open Source PRs during Hacktoberfest.
II. Content
A. Graphical - Brand Design and Development
0 to 1 on social media developer brand awareness projects, from vision to execution and sustained iterative excellence. I build the symbiotic relationship between my brand and the Code & Coffee brand involving high-engagement, consistent, and quality events through the IRL medium to produce digital graphics for social media.
Skills used: Product-led growth + Lean Marketing + Design + Community Management + Servant Leadership
Click on images for references to real-world use cases—much more content incoming.
Monthly Global Promo Posters
Music d posters that promote the first event in each city and builds the C&C brand as THE community-run meetup community that's bringing back in-person meetups. Built end-to-end.
Global - May Monthly
Global - April Monthly
Global - March Monthly
Global - The inaugural Feb Monthly
NYC Wrap up posters
Collages that show off the diversity of our members in the most diverse cities in the world, NYC. This inspires 20 other chapters to work toward a feature-fledged local community ecosystem similar to NYC Code & Coffee.
May 2023
April 2023
April 2023
March 2023
March 2023
Feburary 2023
Logo (NYC and global)
B. Social Media
Linkedin & Twitter - Monthly LineUp & Bi-weekly Recaps
Brand Awareness strategy involving using routine unique bi-weekly and monthly highly-engaging content, like the above graphics. Currently focusing on LinkedIn primarily then Twitter secondarily (due to risk and volatility)
Twitter - 100chats with #100devs in 100days #100chats
In early 2022, I had the idea of doing 100 30-minute to 1hr long phone calls with aspiring software developers sourced from Twitter. It also unintentionally inspired 109+ developers to get into tech, with over 20+ asking to volunteer for C&C. Outcome: Increased Twitter following, improved phone communication skills, and improved storytelling ability.
LinkedIn Social Selling Index - Personal
The LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) is a tool developed by LinkedIn to measure a user's effectiveness in establishing their professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn User Generated Content for Code & Coffee company page
C&C attendees and volunteers organically create User Generated Content (tagging @Code & Coffee) weekly with self-taken pictures or shoutouts from the weekend events.
The C&C community generates a consistent stream of high-value Word of Mouth content, growing at 100+ followers per month and creating compounding exponential growth network effects.
See Code & Coffee's Feed.
Twitter Mentions
C. Speaking
Host of FrontRunners Conference 2023
Tech Talk: Getting your first tech job as a college dropout
Matz (the creator of Ruby) and I!
I gave a talk to over 30 attendees, and 19/20 retained at a community-led ad-hoc affair afterward!
D. Video
Short-form (Instagram)
4.8% of all impressions engaged with the video. I likely won't use my personal Instagram for any prioritized technical content in 2023; instead, it will foster closer connections with existing brand and developer relationships.
Our largest meetup (ever) for Fuzhou America DC/MD/VA region!
Youtube
Here are videos from Code & Coffee and me as a Featured Meetup organizer for Meetup's marketing campaign Meetup Meets. Additionally, there are pieces of cross-promotional content we provide for our sponsors with the help of the Code & Coffee community.
The origin story of New York Code & Coffee
Meetup Meets: Feature spotlight by emmy-award winning Thomas C Knox
NYC Code & Coffee video at General Assembly Venue
NYC Code & Coffee video at BrainStation Venue
E. Podcast
Guest star on Chat With Hackers
Coming 2023: The Code & Coffee Podcast
Name pending. A podcast hosted by me with guest co-host Casey Watts, a former lead dev at Heroku and SrPM at USCIS, and author of Debugging Your Brain. Confirmed for a 4-episode series on community-led community building.
F. Written
Openbase Newsletter
At Openbase, one of my core responsibilities was solo-writing a weekly newsletter for 55,000 developers with a unique 65% open rate and a <1% unsub. With my product-minded thinking, the content and newsletter product got better and overall metrics improved to over 80% open rates.
Click on the images for the full article; if you need a copy of the original email, please email me at stevechenweb@gmail.com, and I'll happily forward them!
Personal Developer blog (2016-2019)
Random topics from technical support architecture at startups, JS learnings, and the ease of using Jekyll.
Check it out here 👉 https://www.stevechen.me/
III. Code
A. Open Source Projects with Code & Coffee
I play around with code occasionally, fiddling with our C&C websites. The projects below are projects that I empowered other developers to make open-source and personally advocate on their behalf.
Code Contributions
Default Code & Coffee localized website template - Led and Maintained by me.
Clean Slate DC - Website for making legal forms for expungement easier to file. Built during HackForGood DC hackathon.
Ruby For Good - 4-day un-hackathon at the GMU Smithsonian Conservatory focused on improving the world, somewhat hackathon.
Product Management
Code & Coffee Speakers Program - Led and Operated by Dana Lee
Code & Coffee Barista Bot - Led and Maintained by Abe Hanoka
Code & Coffee Serverless Layer - Led and Maintained by Brian Towne
B. Web
Full-time Professional Software Engineer (2016 - 2022)
I was an early employee at a unicorn called Arcadia, acquired by Grubhub, exited with a startup called Framebridge, and worked with the non-profit, KaBOOM! Additionally, I was the Head of Developer Relations at a seed-stage startup.
You can find those details on those on my LinkedIn.
Below are individual personal projects that I'm still very proud of.
KaBOOM! Map of Play (2016)
KaBOOM! Map of Play v2
KaBOOM's Map of Play is the largest playground locator in the world with 50,000+ unique visitors monthly, a RESTful API and mobile apps that use it. KaBOOM! a national non-profit that builds playgrounds for kids and promote plays in low-income adverse communities.
My role in this project was to spearhead the rewrite of the backend implementing new features, testing, database design, integration with multiple libraries and gems. The entire goal of this project was to move away from their unopen legacy app riddled with incompatible technologies, unsolvable bugs, lack of tests, and general code smell due to 3rd party developers. All work was done during my Software Engineering internship at KaBOOM! within an agile team with daily pair programming and code reviews with the software engineering manager to ensure ideal specs were met. Key skills used included Test driven development, Continuous integration, Job processing, and git workflow.
SteamFriend.me (2016)
Steamfriend.me is a gaming social networking service that allows gamers to be matched up with other gamers based on games they own on their Steam account with the ability to rate matches.
In this project I learned how to build a full Web Application within a 3-person team, increase productivity through the implementation of Agile, and pitch it to 150+ South Florida Tech community members. Built with Ruby on Rails as the backend, PostgreSQL to manage database, Heroku for deployment, Github for Version control, CSS, HTML, and various libraries/gems such as animate.css for animations, omniauth-steam gem for authentication of users, in-conjunction with data parsed from the Steam API.
Web Design (2015)
Koi Asian Cuisine
Implemented design of an Asian fusion cuisine restaurant built with Adobe Muse. Learned how to communicate effectively with clients and propose on-the-fly website designs to successfully capture the feel and decor of the business within a set deadline.
Blue Star Veterans Network
Learned modern web design practices alongside editing web content to create the design of a Veterans tech startup eCommerce website visually appealing to retired United States veterans and their families.
More details on my Linkedin and Resume.