Hacker News Meetups
github.com
github.com
In my city, Calgary, we have Python, js, datascience, beginner coder and much more. Most of them you can attend for free, so you can pick and chose what talk you go to.
What sort of talks/events do HN meetips typically offer?
The whole idea behind a meetup is to connect people with a similar interest or a similar group of interest so that they can talk, listen to and discuss things that they care about.
HN has such broad range of topics that it is seems hard to find a group of people sharing the same interest.
It would be really helpful if somebody that attends these meetups shares insights about them.
Can you imagine a Slashdot meetup? Could potentially work at a combination circus-firing range-porn addiction support group, all taking place in your Mom's basement.
If a HN meetup could someway or another uphold that level of quality, it could be a great conference even if the topics are as varied as deep learning - to web frameworks - startup culture - to UBI economics.
It would be a shame if we had to rely on Meetup.com to organize these things. I've heard complaints from attendees and organizers about the platform/fees. Ideas for alternative ways to organize?
We could spin up a Django or flask site and build a HN style meetup application.
I've heard bad things about the IO TLD. What about openmeet.org? I'm just starting in Webdev but I'd like to be involved!
https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-produc...
Fortuitously, .dev happens to be hitting General Availability tomorrow. And both meetup.dev and openmeet.dev are still available!
Disclaimer: .dev is my baby.
Go for it as well if you like, but rest assured that there are already several talented people already trying to figure this out.
If some federated option were to work, there would have to be ways for various meetups to broadcast their existence, and have these recommendations be available.
1) Their onboarding sucks __for organizers__. When someone is new to Meetup, Meetup forces them to pick three (or more) groups to join as part of the sign up process. The person may or may not have an legit interest in your group. Maybe they came for another group and your group is just fulfilling the onboarding process.
This matters because if as an organizer you went for their cheaper tier w/ a smaller group size you get to that cap fairly quickly. Which mean you either keep the group closed and "eat" the dead members, or you pay more so you don't have to close the group.
2) You can send a group email / message but they have no analytics. Not even something as basic as an open rate. You can export members but not their emails so something like MailChimp is not an option.
After a year I decided that Meetup was good for Meetup but not for me.
In this case, for example, perhaps a meetup can be coordinated by simply posting the meeting info to HN.
If there's a real need for an turnout estimate ahead of time, such as making a group table/room reservation at a venue that requires that, see how low-tech that can be. For example, an optional RSVP to email, and guess at the RSVP ratio.
I would typically try to have some snacks and drinks, and wouldn’t want to be bringing either way too many or far too few. Also, I want everyone to be comfortable and have a positive experience, so if we have a concert hall for a meetup of 5 people, or a meeting room for a turnout of 100, plans need to change to give a quality experience for attendees.
There are few discussions in the thread about open platforms, but I also started a community on https://spectrum.chat/canada. I'm Toronto-Waterloo based. Let me know if you have any ideas.
In my experience, if the groups is small enough but has sociable members, they will just agree on a time and half the expected number of people will show up. Even 5 people is a success IMO.
If you want to organize an HN meetup in Toronto, I can make space available at the PagerDuty offices, whether it’s for six, or a hundred and six.
Most people call me “reg,” and my work email domain is pagerduty.com.
More happy to chat and see if we could coordinate something.
I've already seen that the collective intelligence in HN is not necessarily well represented by any particular commenter. (I may resemble this remark at times.) In any case, you already have no basis for your ignorance/bliss.
Can anyone suggests free alternatives? I want to set one up for Waterloo, Canada but don't want to pay for a plan when I'm not sure if an audience exists.
* As funny as it might be, a subreddit. reddit meetups use subreddits for tracking just fine, I suppose a HN meetup could as well. The overlap between platforms is probably pretty high. In fact my recommendation would be to see if there's an existing reddit meetup group, and if any of them would be interested in a HN/tech meetup.
* Discord server with pinned messages for pending meetups.
Another way to go is the old fashioned route of posting physical paper fliers on telephone poles, or bulletin boards in cafes, universities, and libraries. It's local, absolutely free, and usually there's so much junk there that something serious and actually interesting would stand out.
People at a meetup would see your face and hear your voice, but so what?
I recently started an Indie Hackers meetup [1] in Chiang Mai, and we had our first meetup a few days ago. Feel free to come along next month if you're interested in startups and bootstrapping.
Although right now... would not be the best time to stop by as we're buried in something like a meter of snow.
Recently relocated to the US and building a new network. Anyone interested in meeting up in the Miami/FLL/WPB area?
Nothing for Downtown Minneapolis where I'm at. I might have figure a way to change that.
The event space is anywhere that allowed us to use their space, usually some tech company office. We've had some gorgeous night views from a high-rise, cool atmosphere at the top floor of a hip bar, and admittedly the occasional small windowless room as well.
It's about 2 hours, starting 19:30 with introductions and two or three talks. After the talks people just chat with each other. Why are they "HN meetups"? People here have pretty similar interests, so if you give a talk or chat with someone about a topic that would interest HN, then it will probably go well at the meetup too.
Afterwards we often head to some izakaya.
The talks were not interesting enough, and the events themselves felt like glimpses some Twilight Zone universe where an on-stage chair-thrower screams "Recruiters! Recruiters!"
The Toronto Rails Pub Night has a very good solution to this problem. Their policy is that you can stand on a chair and make a short pitch at any time, but you have to buy EVERYBODY a round.
Those that aren’t interested in the pitch are usually happy to have their glass refilled, and the modest cost makes for a modest speed bump.
Buying a round also seems less cynical than paying a meetup organizer to pitch the attendees.
It's not like it's not there. Sometimes ad letters contain things. I've been given a kitchen knife for listening to a knife demonstration in a hardware store. Online we do get a lot of content and services even though it often doesn't feel like it is a good trade with all the tracking and security risks.
At the same time (maybe not online) it is a dark (grey?) pattern to guilt people into buying something. Or you might get junk you do not want in exchange for being annoyed. And often you don't get anything but annoyed, as with billboards or leaflets.
So would it actually be more ethical to consistently give people payment for paying attention to ads? (I know there are some projects, yes.) Especially considering that now the ones profiting (minus costs) are not the ones who have to live with it. How ethical is a for-profit ad business where people are exposed to it whatever they do? (This is a question of freedom in my book too.) Then again, if I got a beer for every pitch I can't avoid I'd be black-out drunk at all times..
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On both of those occasions the tone of the evening was pretty much "we have these recruiters over here, and those recruiters over there, go say hi and please give your email address".
The entire London meetup scene (at least the one I try to frequent) feels like it's densely populated by recruitment agency staff, to the point where techies and hackers are driven away ... unless the meetup is consistently exceptionally good.
As it stands now, I suppose that most people would just sign up and wait.
My strategy started by being kind on Twitter in my target community. Those interactions led me to target conferences to attend, and from there I aimed to build content with people (side projects on GitHub or podcasts) which have added up to something of value. I now feel good about my extended network without being internet famous to really any degree, which works for me. What's your goal?
ping me: julien __at__ serpapi.com