Node school, if you’re not familiar, is a little educational program that was set up to help you learn and test your knowledge on Node.js. You can download it here at http://nodeschool.io it’s a really great tool to test your skills. I was really excited and slightly scared to find out that they have node school meetups, where you can get together with like minded programmers and hack away at some Node.

I was excited because I’m really interested in Node.js and here was an opportunity to meet up with some people that really have a strong grasp on Node, and could help me understand things that I’m not familiar with; such as callbacks but thats a whole other blog post in its self. I was a little nervous because I had no idea what to expect, I’ve never been to a meet up before. My biggest fear was that I was going to be the old man in the room surrounded by 20 somethings fresh out of college all wondering what the old man in the corner was doing here. I have to admit I almost chickened out but I’m glad I didn’t.

My biggest fear was that I was going to be the old man in the room.

The meet up was held at IMS Health in South Lake Union. If you are not familiar with the area, its pretty much where all the tech startups are located in Seattle. The views from IMS Health are amazing, you could see right out on to the lake, it was gorgeous. As I walked into the room the first thing I noticed was that I was by far not the oldest. It was probably the most diverse group I’ve seen.

The lady in front of me was probably old enough to be my grandmother and she was a coding machine. Immediately all of my nerves went away. As the room started to dig in I started to feel even more comfortable. The mentors where fantastic and didn’t make you feel stupid if you where stuck or needed help. The event was organized by Seth Vincent you can check him out at GitHub here http://github.com/sethvincent.

I have to say he and his crew did a great job hosting and if they are planning another event I’m going to make sure I attend. If you are on the fence about attending a Node School event, don’t be. Just go. I find it way better to learn with people that actually know what they’re doing than to spend hours surfing the web for your answer. If you’re interested in attending a Node School meet up in the Seattle area you can check it out at http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-NodeSchool. See ya there.