CoNGA-WM is spinning up a series of short video interviews with technical, professional, development, and user group leaders in the West Michigan and Grand Rapids area. We’ll be talking about such things as what each group does, why, how, and when it formed, and how to find their meetings. We’ve teamed up with Kyle Hilla of Apptopus, Inc. to provide the camera work with live editing using their iOS app CollabraCam.

Our first interview is with Matt Heusser of the GR-Testers group, and should be up shortly. Stay tuned!

P.S. If you lead a group or organization and would like to be interviewed, send an email to info@conga-wm.org to get the ball rolling.

Today was our first (automated) email that got sent out from the CONGA calendar. We’re excited that it worked so well and thought we would show it off for those that may not already be signed up.

HAT TIP: A big thanks to Mike Swieton from Atomic Object and SoftwareGR for scripting this up.

You’re probably saying,

“You’ve got to be kidding me – another thing I’m now to follow? How many can West Michigan handle?”

If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re correct, it’s awesome that so many things are happening in West Michigan but keeping up with it all is way to difficult. That’s why CONGA was started. It’s not one person – it’s all the groups of West Michigan coming together to keep things organized.

How does it work

Keep watching your favorite groups – we’re not going to replace them or what they do. However, if you want to know what else is going on, you can come here and we’ll direct you to more events. The site is kept up by the various groups themselves and for good reason. It allows the groups to work together, avoid overlapped scheduling and topics.

If you’re a group, event or doing something cool in the technology and startup community of West Michigan – let us know by emailing us at info@conga-wm.com and we’ll work to give you access so we can direct people to what you’re doing.

Do I follow CONGA?

No, don’t follow us, follow all the amazing things that are going on. If you need help knowing what those are, come here and check out the calendar. It’s being updated by the different groups (soon to be auto-updated from their calendars).

It was during a GrWebDev after-party where a Dirty Bastard-fueled gathering of West Michigan tech community leaders conceived of an umbrella organization, a sort of Meetup-of-the-Meetups,  to help coordinate the many local entrepreneurial and technical groups. Some of our goals are to combine resources, avoid redundant topic overlap, and help each other spread the word about how awesome West Michigan’s tech scene is becoming.

So what comes next? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out!