This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.
Dave and I were living and working in San Francisco. With young families we decided to return to Australia to be closer to the extended family to get support for raising kids. He and I settled on a regional area of Australia, Wollongong.
Wollongong was historically a working-class town with a large steel factory. That’s been changing and we wanted to help bring the community into the digital age.
Stephanie; summer Siligong Valley Intern to Software Developer
Upon arriving in Wollongong I knew no one in tech, but having run meetups in San Francisco (SF Agile Marketing, with 3,500 members) I knew the value of bringing people together to share and learn from one another.
Dave and I started Siligong Valley, a community to bring together tech, entrepreneurs, designers and more. Today, nearly four years on, the community numbers over 1,000 members.
Javascript meetup
Every month the Easy Agile team is donating their time to host and facilitate meetups here in Wollongong, under the Siligong Valley banner. We host Javascript, Product Management, UX, Marketing, Python, Infrastructure as Code and more.
Infracoders meetup
We’ve even been invited to run ‘Siligong Valley Takeover’ meetups in Sydney for like minded communities.
Every Easy Agile team member has 4 days of Pledge 1% time to use annually, these appear alongside their annual and sick leave in our payroll solution Xero.
