Last Wednesday, the first CodePen SF meetup happened, sponsored by imgix. There was no major headline speaker or program that was planned months in advance. The speakers and attendees were anyone interested in learning more about front-end development or design, some with no technical background. The program consisted of any brave person willing to share out a Pen they found or created themselves. You can check out our recap email and pictures from the event.

There were mistakes. There were laughs. It was genuine and human. And I’m so glad we did it.

It’s easy to find meetups where the perfect product or advice is provided, but it’s harder to find one that allows anyone—expert or not–to share something, tell a story, fumble a bit, and receive a round of applause at the end.

You see, I don’t know how to code. I only have a basic understanding of a few languages from online tutorials and playing around on CodePen. So when I went to the CSS Dev Conf back in October of this year, I truly felt like a fish out of water. I was the imposter syndrome incarnate.

At the end of the conference though, a CodePen Show & Tell was put on by Chris Coyier himself (the co-founder of the site) and for the first time, I felt like I should be there. The environment was welcoming and nonjudgmental and bits of code here and there started to make sense after seeing it being manipulated live. There was a glimmer of understanding on my part and I wanted others who aren’t developers to have it too and the idea for starting CodePen SF was born.

If this sounds like you in some way, I hope you’ll join us at our next event in February. imgix is proud to have sponsored this first event, and we'll see you there too.

CodePen SF is back and everyone is invited.