Is it just me

I get what you mean somewhat; I think one suggestion for a community to be better formed is perhaps encourage engagement such as competitions or topic-specific meetups throughout the year for members to apply what they've learned more frequently.

Codepen.io's Rodeo Roundup I thought was a brilliant idea.

Since Treehouse is now utilizing Codepen.io for some/most projects, I think using Codepen.io's Professor Mode (assuming they have the Pro account option) and have extended opportunities to help Treehouse members learn a specific topic that's usually hard to understand/very subjective (i.e. CSS Vertical Rythmm, WebGL) or learn from a guest Web evangelist would be awesome.

Maybe a mini-conference using CodePen.io AND Adobe Connect. Regarding the latter, I've been several web conferences with the likes of Chris Coyer ,Estelle “Standardista ” Weyl, Nicole Sullivan, Trent Walton, Dave Rupert, Brandon Satrom, and Addy Osmani be handled that way.

Maybe even encourage people to code their way to prizes and share like what CodePen did.

Since the Orlando meetups been annoying to not be able to go, I think things like that would be a great start as far as community engagement regardless of the general ways members are to communicate with each other.

Hi Kevin,

Maybe I am wide of the mark here and maybe Treehouse is just not that animal anymore.

I do like the idea of the conferences - maybe a live streamed event that is not location prohibitive. Although thinking back I think maybe these have been run before.

Seriously I have the memory of a Goldfish.

G

@Graham -

When using the group before I built up a great network of friends in the web community which is great for so many reasons.

I know exactly what you mean.

On the old Treehouse Facebook group I felt like I had a Treehouse design posse . Peeps I could hit up (e.g. tag) and start a discussion about some web design topic that was on my mind

This same topic has been on my mind. (Not the facebook groups, because i'm rather new to Treehouse) I've been thinking of somehow getting a group of people together who equally love web design as much as I do and... just create amazing things. Having skype chats, IRC conversations, using github to build things together, learning together. That would be fun - but that's just me.

I watched the interview Nick did with Paul Irish and Paul mentioned one thing that really helped him get into the whole web stuff was getting involved with people.

That's my two cents.

Is there a current Facebook group?

I totally agree.

Maybe the industry needs an informal team platform where developers go to meet and collaborate with other like minded people. Such a service should be tailored to web devs by including tools that most teams need.

For example, it could offer a space to share files using version control, a persistent chat or feed, a way to manage users, a way to set goals for the team and personal profiles for managing a user's reputation in the community.

Maybe such a service is too ambitious but where else can web devs randomly meetup to temporarily or informally work on stuff together? It seems like all the services we currently use should be brought together in a cohesive package to provide a better and seamless user experience.

If the platform described above were real than a user could create a new team. They would choose to create it as project-based or ongoing. Either way, they creator of a team would define the goal. An ongoing team could have a goal of learning Web Development, in a broad sense, or be more specific. The project-based team would have a specific goal of creating something like a website, app, plug in or something else with a definite conclusion.

The team creator could then invite people to be members of the team or open it up for anyone else join.

The service could be used for informal teams and, in the future, teams that exist for the soul purpose of working together to make money. In this way, developers and designers don't have to be apart of a company to earn a living.

As a beginner to web dev it would be great to work with some other guys with more experience on creating some projects for fun, same kind of thing that @Cade was talking about.

@Jack -

Go ahead a post a comment over here so you can stay up to speed on what our group plans are. I intend to do just that, have a group of people to work together with on projects for fun.

That's so weird, because I kind of unconsciously felt the same shift happening. Communities that are smaller happen in an organic way.

I think recently, the community has gotten larger, God bless Ryan Carson and the rest of the staff for their commitment and dedication. It happens everywhere (Reddit, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter). It's an unforced evolution that will continue to go in whatever way it falls.

Treehouse needed to control their own forum, but everyone is just already on Facebook (maybe that will change over time as well.)

New pockets will continue to evolve. Give it time to see how it goes.

You can never step in the same river twice.