while42 - the French Tech Engineer Network

Chapter 1 – San Francisco

When I arrived in San Francisco it struck me how many French engineers were working here. Everywhere I went a French engineer was working on the next big thing in an early stage startup, helping Google grow its next product, or scaling the backend at Facebook or LinkedIn. When you live in France, you cannot imagine how many French tech engineers are living and working in California. And this is due to many reasons that we won’t cover here (maybe a next blog post?).

But nobody knew each other. People working in the same block, even in the same building, never talked to each other. And the official French alumni networks of our universities have no clue who is where. Even my tech engineering school Epitech was not aware of who was in San Francisco or California.

This is not specific to San Francisco or California. It is also true for every city all around the World: New York, Montreal, Dubai, Hong Kong, Sydney ... and more surprisingly Paris. If you are a student or alumni from Epitech, Epita, Supinfo… it is probably true for you too: Do you know how many alumni are working in China? Do you know who can help you find a job in New York? Do you know who can help you launch a startup in the Silicon Valley?

All around the globe, French tech engineers are recognized for their skills, but they suffer from a lack of real alumni associations. So we decided to create one in San Francisco. That was the first mission of while42.

We organized the first meeting in a restaurant with 12 friends on Nov 19th, 2012.

By the time we did not have a name yet. It was called the “Meeting of French Tech Alumni in San Francisco”. By the end of the night we decided that it was a good idea, and that Sylvain and I should scale it to make it a real network. The second meeting we were 40, the third 60, and so on. Today we are more than 300 in San Francisco.

Chapter 2 – Values

After the first meeting, we found a name and wrote down our values:

1. “French"* only
2. Tech Engineers only
3. Real network, real people
4. No asshole

00. “French” only

In order to become a member of while42 you should be either a French tech engineer OR someone speaking French and having a computer science degree delivered by a French school / university.

01. Tech Engineers only

All while42 members are tech engineers (developers, ops, devops, sys-admin, ingenieurs informaticiens, CTO ...) and/or have a degree from a French engineering tech school (Epitech,Supinfo, Epita, 42, ...). There is no filter by degree or by school. You do not have to have a degree to join as soon as you are a tech engineer.

10. Real network, real people

Unlike most of the tech networks, we really focus on IRL events. We do believe that it is important for our community to meet as often as possible. There is a huge difference between a LinkedIn connection you never talked to and someone you have met IRL, even if you talked to this person for only 10 minutes. And you will see clearly this difference when you will ask for help, advice, reference, and co.

Our goal is: Everybody should know each other’s in each chapter. We do not want to be as big as possible. We do not want to be a big organization where you don’t know who is standing next to you. Thus we will never be very big per chapter and each chapter is growing slowly. And we do not want to become the next useless LinkedIn or Facebook Alumni group.

42. No asshole

We do not want haters or people attending only to eat free food. If you are a jerk, even if you are a super-star, you’re out.

Chapter 3 – Events

For people to meet, we are organizing events. Every month, a startup is hosting us and offers us pizzas and beer or cheese and saucisson sec. The program is always the same:

• A talk, usually given by one of us. It is usually technical or entrepreneurship-focused
• A group picture
• The Double pipe: we form two lines of people facing each other. You have two minutes to speak and meet the person in front of you, and then you move to your right and meet someone else for another 2 minutes. Total 20 minutes. If you are shy or if you come with your friends, you will in any case meet at least 10 persons during a while42 event

Events are very casual, and we stay to speak with friends, new comers, or potential future co-founders. Sometimes we have after parties at Sam’s, at a pub, a rooftop or a hotel.

On top of this we often meet for lunch or at other events (tech or not).

Chapter 4 – World domination

The success of while42 in San Francisco started to make some noise in the French tech community, and we launched a new while42 “chapter” in NYC, and then in Paris several months after we launched San Francisco. Soon enough, we had dozens of requests to launch in different cities around the World. Today we are more than 1500 members in more than 30 cities. We are Legion.

Each “chapter” is founded and managed by one or several French tech engineers, who live in that specific city. All the chapters have the same while42 main rules, but depending on the personalities of the managers, the needs of the members, the city/country culture, you will find that every chapter has its own personality and energy.

Chapter 5 - Missions

Today while42 is much more than a simple Alumni network. In fact, we do not call ourselves an Alumni network anymore, because we outgrew our first mission. On top of providing a network to our members, while42 also:

• We talk to, advise and help French tech schools and universities. We often talk to them and we organize conferences when we go back to France. [Spoiler alert!] We are also talking to French-American schools in SF to launch a class in September where we will teach young students how to code. But we also talk to American schools. In NYC for instance we are organizing an event where we will invite AFSE students to meet us.
• We help engineers find jobs and students find internships all around the Globe (including France of course)
• We talk to French accelerators and incubators
• We talk to, and organize events with other groups or associations, including embassies, consulates, French chambers of commerce, UBI France, UBI I/O, L’Atelier BNP Paribas, Girls in Tech, Girls in Web, LaFrenchTech, BPI France, French Tech Hub… and of course lots of startups
• We meet and help a lot of French tech entrepreneurs. We help them connect with the right people when they arrive in a new city/country like San Francisco and give them advice on different matters. In fact we meet and help between 5 and 10 French tech entrepreneurs per week, every single week, only in San Francisco.
• We launched our first Hackathon. (More to come!)
• We organized the infamous 12 labors of while42 (50% coding / 50% sport event)
• The while42 team won a prize at the last Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon
• More recently, we started to talk to politicians to help France understand who we are, what we do, and how we can help France (and other countries!) and its Tech eco-system

Chapter 6 – Read more

1. while42 official website
2. Welcome to while42, the French tech engineer private club
3. #while42 on twitter