The Best Kept Secret for Free Developer Education
Tags: learning, beginners, computerscience, webdev
Published: 2020-08-24 11:41:56

---
title: The Best Kept Secret for Free Developer Education
published: true
description: CFE.dev has live virtual meetups and hundreds of hours of free sessions for developers on a wide range of topics.
tags: learning, beginners, computerscience, webdev
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/jo4blcspekvjp2kmqqal.png
canonical_url: https://remotesynthesis.com/blog/best-kept-secret-developer-education
---

Just about 3 years ago, before the pandemic forced us all to go virtual, I launched a [site with the goal of hosting free, virtual meetups](https://cfe.dev) (and occassional virtual workshops). Since then, thousands of developers have attended one of the almost 70 sessions I've hosted. However, despite the hundreds of hours of free recordings available featuring some of the [best speakers](https://cfe.dev/speakers/) in the industry, most developers have never heard of the site.

Part of that was that I'd never really invested the time and effort into making the site look worthy of the content it contained. I joked that the original site simply "barfed up images" on the home page and didn't make it clear what the site was about. Today I am excited to share the completely revamped [cfe.dev](https://cfe.dev) that I believe solves these issues and, hopefully, helps developers find the valuable resources it contains.

## Free, Live Virtual Meetups

Nowadays the site typically hosts two free virtual meetups every month on a wide range of tech and tech culture topics. There are talks for anyone from beginners to advanced developers. These are typically held live at noon Eastern Time. 

The new launch includes 5 new meetups newly announced between now and November including [Getting Started with the DOM](https://cfe.dev/events/getting-started-with-the-dom/) featuring Edidiong Asikpo on September 18, at noon ET.

[![Getting Started with the DOM](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/ohaf6aj72v70y8mt29ck.jpg)](https://cfe.dev/events/getting-started-with-the-dom/)

Additional topics include:

* A Jamstack 101 series of events featuring Joel Varty:
	* [Jamstack 101: Using Gatsby with Netlify](https://cfe.dev/events/jamstack-101-gatsby-netlify/) on October 1 at noon ET
	* [Jamstack 101: Using Next.js with Vercel](https://cfe.dev/events/jamstack-101-nextjs-vercel/) on October 22 at noon ET
	* [Jamstack 101: Getting Started with Eleventy](https://cfe.dev/events/jamstack-101-eleventy/) on November 12 at noon ET
* Two hands-on events featuring Dave Nugent:
	* [Build a Virtual Agent in JavaScript](https://cfe.dev/events/build-a-virtual-agent/) on September 24 at noon ET
	* [Build a Smart Slack Bot in Node.js](https://cfe.dev/events/build-a-slack-bot/) on October 15 at noon ET

More virtual meetups to be announced soon!

## Almost 70 Recorded Sessions and Workshops

The site also features over 3 years worth of session recordings which are edited recordings of every session (the full Crowdcast recording is also available). Previously therse weren't very easy to find and navigate, but the new site has completely revamped the categories to make finding sessions in your area of interest easier to find (on top of a revamped search). Topics are:

* [Web Development](https://cfe.dev/categories/webdev/) - Stay up on standards, accessibility, and best practices.
* [JavaScript](https://cfe.dev/categories/javascript/) - Sessions on React, Vue, JAMSTACK, and everything in-between.
* [Career and Culture](https://cfe.dev/categories/culture/) - Learn to lead with empathy and master soft skills.
* [DevOps](https://cfe.dev/categories/devops/) -How to launch and scale high performance apps like a pro.
* [Software Engineering](https://cfe.dev/categories/software/) - New languages and tools to take your code to the next level.
* [Cool Stuff](https://cfe.dev/categories/stuff/) - Check out VR, IoT, and fun experiments.

You can also find your sessions by [your favorite speaker](https://cfe.dev/speakers/).

## A Virtual Meetup Community

My goal for [CFE.dev](https://cfe.dev) is to build a welcoming online community where developers can learn, network and interact. I'm working on new features like favorites/save-for-later, custom playlists of sessions (like a "build your own virtual conference"), badges, discussions that extend beyond the meetup itself, interviews, live coding and much more.

I hope that you find the site useful and find sessions or workshops that teach you something you've been wanting to learn. If you enjoy the site, please consider [voting it up on ProductHunt](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/cfe-dev). I appreciate any feedback. Or, if you'd like to speak, please reach out.