THE PROCESS OF SHAPING LOCAL COMMUNITIES OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - CASE STUDY

This article presents a comparison of the process of shaping two local communities of information technology (IT), WordUp Lublin and Lublin IT, and measurement their approximate influence and effect on the development of the local IT industry. WordUp Lublin is the community of fans of the free technology tool which is WordPress - widely spread technology but very narrow IT specialization. It was established in 2014 as a part of the global WordPress community. At that time the idea of bootcamps and barcamps just emerged in Poland and the local IT community was not fully developed. On the other hand, Lublin IT is the community of programmers, IT employers and fans of new technology. It was established in 2017 when local IT community was way more mature. It's only local community but it gathers more than 80 attendees on each event with quite broad interests (innovations, programming languages, startups and lifelong learning in IT). The authors put forward a thesis that Lublin IT and WordUp communities have an impact on education in the local IT sector. The Second thesis says that these communities are one of the main sources of industry knowledge for people who are beginners in IT. The authors conducted an anonymous survey among participants of events organized by these groups and carried out a comparative analysis of interviews with the WordUp Lublin and Lublin IT organizers. Historical data on the shape of the local IT industry at the time of the creation of these communities was also compared in this article.