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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

I've often thought about having a 'meet' tab in the top bar, alongside 'ask' and 'show' and 'jobs', where people could post meetups. HN has connected a lot of people over the years, both with each other and with significant opportunities. It would be nice to foster more real-world connections.

Edit: not a new idea - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1310849

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This sounds like it could provide a lot of value to many users, would love to see something like this! I had a service once that I tried to get a few people to use for this purpose, but having a lightweight one on the website itself would definitely be the best option imo.

Sounds good, or we could also try having an automatic thread on the 1st/14th(?) of the month, like the hiring ones.

Yes, that would be a more organic way to start.

I attended a Hacker News-adjacent meetup event at a pizza place in Osaka a few years ago. I'm not a "hacker" but it was a nice way to meet smart/lonely/bored people in a region where they are isolated enough to make meetup events really meaningful. I hope this kind of thing sees a resurgence post-COVID.

There was a HN group in Japan that met for years, but I forget where exactly they were. There was another in San Diego that met for years (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1308886 - note the response from pg!) Scott and I used to talk about randomly showing up one day.

Please, bring it on!

Please do, and name the threads “Meet HN: December 2021” etc

This is a terrific idea and I’d love to see it.

The format of a regular post wherein people could post which city (or virtual space) they’re in and up to meet in x place at y time open to replies would seem to feel the most in HN spirit.

The regularity of a post and the lack of a formalized format would go a long way to make it casual and low effort. This is important as I think the more formal meetup with PowerPoint in company office looking to hire is not something I’d like to see repeated. This could be something different.

One thing we could do pretty easily is use IP geolocation to highlight "meetup in $place" posts for readers who are accessing HN from $place. I'm not sure if this would be extremely welcome or extremely off-putting.

I mean, I'm sure it would be both, for different users, but I'm not sure what the percentages would be.

Top-level posts, or comments?

It'll also be good if locations/cities couldn't be monopolised by a single large meetup. I attended a few HNLondon meetups back in 2012, but came away with nothing.

Smaller meetups might work better for actually getting to know people.

IP geolocation gives latitude/longitude. Maybe we could sort such posts by proximity. Whether they'd be comments or top-level posts would depend on the format I suppose.

I live in the South Bay and I'm considering hosting a meetup either at my house/backyard or at a nearby park. Is there a way or preferred format for me to gauge interest or announce it? Making a top level post just for that feels a bit silly but that's the best idea I have.

That's how people used to do it and we certainly don't have any objections. The main problem is that it probably won't get off the /newest page. If you make it a text post it might make the /ask page.

I would really enjoy this

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