Tell HN: HN London Meetup | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: HN London Meetup

199 pointsconnorlu121 comments

While browsing the other day I discovered that there used to be a meetup for London based HN readers[1] that appears to have fizzled out when the organiser moved over to America. This type of thing seems to have been relatively wide-spread in tech hubs at the time[2].

To try and rekindle a local HN readers meetup in London, I have arranged a meetup event here: https://www.meetup.com/london-hacker-news-meetup/events/288139501/

If you are in the London area, feel free to come along and say hi!

[1] http://www.coderholic.com/hacker-news-london-meetup-a-year-on/ [2] https://github.com/antontarasenko/hacker-news-groups

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HNLondon run until at least 2018[1] and were well organised IMO. The speakers line up were mostly very interesting. And some of the recordings of the talks are still available at https://vimeo.com/hnlondon

If I'm not mistaken the organisers of HNLondon in its final years were Dmitri Grabov[2] and Stevie Buckley[3].

One recurring issue that I recall was the typical audience member trying to hijack Q&A to promote stuff - i.e. "can I ask a question?" then proceeds to make a comment and pitch their product instead. But that's not isolated to HNLondon.

PS: Big shoutout to Dmitri and Stevie for the awesome events that they put together back in the day.

[1] https://twitter.com/HNLondon/with_replies

[2] https://twitter.com/dmitrigrabov

[3] https://twitter.com/StevieBuckley

Thanks for this, I’ve reached out to both Dmitri and Stevie to chat about the community. They definitely paved the way for this, so their knowledge would be invaluable.

In most of the events only sponsor are allow to do spam or say they are recruiting. Normal attendes are not allow to do that and they will be ban for the next events.

I remember going to one of these, many years ago. Sounded cool, hackers meeting up. I was pretty adept at reverse engineering and was just getting into vulnerability research, so I figured it would be right up my street.

Unfortunately it ended up being a talk about making websites with some framework or other, and some uninspirational speech about some startup. I didn't bother going to another one.

Though from this I did find out about the HN website itself, which is worth a browse now and then. So I suppose it was worth going anyway.

As much as I like reading and commenting on HN, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable socialising with opinionated geeks :)

On HN, there is the effect of clusterisation. People tend to comment and communicate with others on topics in which they have interest or significant knowledge. One set of topics would interest startup founders, another set would interest lonesome tinkerers, a third set would interest artsy types.

To put all those people on one table certainly might help in exchanging different perspectives, but the conversation probably wouldn't have the same depth.

The mode of interaction is totally different in person. In a text discussion I can skim through several pages and find a point that resonates, then respond with something topical/helpful. In person, you're limited to a single stream of conversation (maybe more if you walk around), there's not the same 'wide area scanning' mechanism.

Maybe we need a vim/emacs tickbox option so we know how to seat people.

I enjoy talking to people on the spectrum for their different perspectives, but a whole room sounds overwhelming:D

Socialising with opinionated geeks sounds like the best way to have interesting conversations!

Opinionated may have ment the 'fight for your view till death' kind of folks perhaps. In which case it is being far from fun.

I've definitely run in to those types at meetups. They're there to ruin the event for everyone (although I'm sure they themselves have a good time).

Thankfully it's possible to convince a smaller group to ignore them (don't feed the trolls etc) so you can have interesting conversations.

Nothing interesting about arguing with someone who just defends their point to the death, never listening to anything you say.

You must be under 26-27 years of age? Because that sounds exhausting to me, but I would have enjoyed it a few years ago, probably

Don't belittle people for wanting to speak to people like themselves by acting like this is a sign of immaturity or something that they will grow out of...

> sign of immaturity or something that they will grow out of...

Or perhaps they meant that it’s a sign of youthful vitality and openness that they lost via the detriment of aging?

Ha! 26. I sympathise - but have to admit, I am quite excited for this! I just know there are going to be so many interesting people there, doing so many interesting things!

I'm way older than that but I work from home. I actually just made an account after a long time of lurking because the lack of lunchtime tech rants is starting to feel isolating.

Meatspace Considered Harmful

Exactly the sort of cringe I'd like to avoid!

Carcass cancel culture.

There used to be and it was great. If you give more notice next time I’ll try to turn up.

Will do, I hope to make it a monthly recurring event.

If you join the group on Meetup you should get a notification when the next event is scheduled.

This makes me wish there was a consolidated monthly “Events” thread, like the hiring/freelancer threads.

I’d love to be able to skim such a list once a month and see if anything interesting is coming up.

love to see this - the london HN meetup is where we found our first few engineering hires at monzo!

we owe a lot to dmitri, stevie and that meetup

my email address is first name at monzo.com if you're looking for a place to host it

Captured for posterity! https://vimeo.com/201364257

Thanks Jonas, I’ll email you later today. On the move right now.

Hey HN Folks, Let's plan a meetup in Bangalore (Bengaluru)? Who are in Bangalore?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32662083

That's a really good idea!

Related, I started a rather successful tech meetup in Tampa, Fl. In just under a year we grew it to 1000 active members. We're expected to hit 30-50k revenue (possibly even higher) as a almost newly nonprofit next year that we're putting back into the community

https://www.tampadevs.com/

Https://Meetup.com/tampadevs

If anyone wants to emulate this work for their own community, I've written a series of blog posts about the challenges I've had to solve along the way. For context I have about a decade of experience in startups and building communities, and have alot of awesome advisors more experienced than me guiding me through all of this

https://www.vincentntang.com/tags/tampa-devs/

Feel free to hit me up on personal blog to reach out to me or on Twitter in my profile if you would like advice on starting a tech community

Anyone interested in a Berlin version?

Hamburger here but if this becomes a regular thing, I could ICE to there. :)

There's an inactive Meetup group with 1700 members here: https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/berlin-hacker-news-meetup/

I got an email from Meetup recently that it will shut down unless a new organizer steps up.

Definitely.

Count me in!

My info is in the profile.

I would, yes!

Me too!

Yes!

Yes

Me too!

yes

me too

HackerNest is another good one, I hosted a couple of these when I was part of a co-working space - https://hackernest.com/events

This is cool, I'll sign up to their September event when it's published.

The hackathon section is interesting too. Do they host hackathons, or just help companies organise them?

I wonder if there's any interest in a meetup in the North East, probably Newcastle. Or if it'd just be me drinking in a pub on my own.

Either way, I'm tempted to organise it.

I'd be potentially interested in a Newcastle meet-up

I'd be interested if it's Newcastle.

In for HN toon

@connorlu My employer has offices across the major UK cities including London.

I doubt there would be any cost but it would likely need to be planned a month or so in advance as the building managers and security need to be briefed and approve it.

Most buildings would have conference spaces etc which would be suitable for talks, and pretty central so could head for a drink afterward.

Let me know if interested, it might be an easier option to manage if going broader across the UK.

Would be great to chat about this for future events, feel free to shoot me a message at ConnorL__ on Twitter or send me an email at firstname at oneslipstream.com

Hi HN, we're overwhelmed by the response to this event - it seems like something that has really struck a chord with the London tech community.

We are still looking to confirm a venue for next week, thanks to everyone that has reached out with an offer for this so far. If you are able offer space for this, or a future event - it would be great to hear from you, my email is firstname at oneslipstream.com

HNLondon was my absolute favorite meetup. Maybe it was where I was at the time in my career, or the state of the London tech community in the early 2010s, but it was such an exciting time. The talks were interesting, and the post-event drinks were fun. Met some great people. I live in the US now, but if this will be a regular event, I'm sure I could attend at least one event a year.

It's great to hear that it was a highlight of your time in the city. Hopefully we can kindle some of that hacker spirit and you can make your way along to some future event!

Miami folks - interested? reply here and ill ping back if we get 4 folks or more

Let's do it!

There is a biweekly happy hour at the Freehold, Wynwood on Wednesday nights.

btw sorry i couldnt make yesterday's one, i realized i had another conf to travel to

We have started a sucessful one in Taipei, Taiwan a few months ago [1] with 40+ hackers.

If folks here interested into an other one, reach me out or reply here.

[1] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/taipei-hacker-news-meetup-1-tic...

Went to a bunch of the original meetups years ago, good times! Pizza was great :)

Dmitri did a great job organising it all and kindly let me speak about our startup at one of the events. I was completely overshadowed by an amazing talk on quantum computers by a very educated and funny guy afterwards though, 10/10 best talk I've ever seen.

Glad you enjoyed, hope to see you at a future event :)

Would love to come this this one but am away in Scotland, future ones will be sure to come down if there are more :)

I organized a popular coding meetup - called Let's Code Together - in 2018 in Nijmegen (The Netherlands). I'm thinking of doing the same kind of meetup thing in Arnhem/Nijmegen area (The Netherlands) for HN. Anybody interested?

I just want to say thanks for taking the innitiative and setting it up. Although I'm not in london I would've gone if I was nearby. YC just did an official one near me in Boston and there seemed to be lots of enthusiasm.

Good to hear that the one in Boston was full of enthusiastic folk. What format did it take? Was it quite structured, or very casual meeting and discussion?

I wish I could tell you, I was actually out of town during the event. I gathered it was supposed to be kind of a talk mixed with a job fair?

https://www.workatastartup.com/events/yc-jobs-bos-irl-s22

Anyone in Amsterdam interested?

There's another hacker/founder meetup happening in Amsterdam tomorrow, though it's not HN/YC affiliated as far as I know: https://www.meetup.com/hackers-and-founders-amsterdam-nl/eve...

Are students also welcome? :)

Not sure actually, it's not my event.

If for LND - the answer is yes!

With enough of a heads-up, I might travel from Cologne to hang out. The London meetup is way too short-notice for me.

Sorry! I’m going to make this recurring so hopefully you can come to a future event.

Looking forward to it.

Utrecht, but yes.

Yes!

I've attended the HN London meetup and the HN Paris meetup that was sponsored at the time by Github(?). Met the engineers from Mindgeek, loads of fun learning how they store and classify petabytes of video.

I just registered.

Important question (probably the most important in such events):

... will there be pizza?

I will do my best, can’t make any promises at this stage. I do appreciate the vital important of pizza from my hackathon days though :p

I'll sign up! A lot of meetups have died recently so there is a definite desire to get going again.

The quality has been fairly low from the stuff I've been to lately (not to name any names).

That sounds a great idea!

Our company has an Office in Canary Wharf and we'd be happy to host the event in our building. It's a WeWork so quite easy to set it up.

Could it be of interest?

Thanks for the offer, I’ll keep it in mind for a future event. I’d you could get in contact at firstname at oneslipstream.com or send me a Twitter message at ConnorL__ I’d love to chat about this with you.

Hey! We're looking for a venue that can host - very grateful if you could drop us a note - dillon(at symbol)oneslipstream(dot symbol)com

Sure! I'll get in touch with you and Connor shortly

@dang

An idea: a monthly post (like whoishiring) for HN meetups announcements around the world. I believe there are enough people interested in this.

I organise meetup groups in Manchester. I have a venue nailed down. Who is interested in a similar HN Meetup but in Manchester?

Me! I'm in Staffordshire, so would be better to travel to Manchester than London.

Are there any good similar get togethers in NYC these days? I used to be a part of NYTM all the time but when I started looking around this year it seemed like basically everything has gone virtual at this point.

Any regular coding or tech adjacent get togethers happening in the actual real world in NYC these days?

Has there even been / would anybody be interested in a Toronto HN meetup?

I feel like this city is certainly tech-heavy enough that we could organize something nice!

Please let me know here if that’s something that potentially interests you.

I am a fan of in-person Internet forum meetups and have had some of my best social memories from them. :)

I was literally searching for tech / dev meetups in Toronto earlier today, as I moved here a couple months ago. The results were a bit disappointing. Most group are either dead or online only.

That's a way to say: YES, if that happens, count me in.

I would join from Buffalo! If I can help in any way, let me know.

Amazing idea @connorlu.

I won't be in London at that time so made a virtual video event for this at the same time.

Feel free to use it how you'd like.

https://vibehut.io/rooms/630f5b614c9de70016e36f20

Great idea! Can't make this one but have joined the group to look out for future meetups.

Thanks, hope to see you at one in the future!

Greater Bay Area, China if anyone's still here. I propose Shenzhen on the 10th as it's pretty much central in transit terms and the current snap lockdowns of Shenzhen and Guangzhou should be over by then.

Based in Cambridge and would consider travelling down for the occasional meetup - but would really appreciate some of the events being virtual if possible?

I've signed up. It's a bit short notice, and I don't know if I can rejuggle to attend, but I'm definitely interested in future meetups.

Hope that you can make it, and if not I look forward to meeting you at one in the future.

Unfortunately I've moved from London to Oxford recently. If the location is anywhere near Victoria Station I'd consider the trip though :)

Time to organise the HN Oxford Meetup! :)

I'm in!

HN Oxford represent!

If you check back on the event at the start of next week, I’ll have a confirmed location. I’m hoping to keep it reasonably central.

This is great, I am on Leave outside London ATM. I will join the group, this is a great opportunity to meet and share ideas post lockdown

It's a real pity that events haven't started up again completely post-lockdown. One of the reasons that I started out in tech was the active and welcoming European Hackathon community, so events have been a big part of my experience.

Hope to catch you at an event in the future!

This is a good idea. I'm not in London much at the moment but could be tempted to attend an event at some point in the future.

It would be great to see you there if you can make it for a future event :)

Bit short notice for me but I've joined the group and would love to come in the future. Thanks for taking the initiative!

Of course, hope to see you at one in the next few months.

Same here, will join the next one :D

I've signed up, but won't make the first. If you run a second with a couple weeks forewarning I'll try attend.

I’ll set a regular schedule so that you can attend the next one!

Anyone interested in Nürnberg/Nuremberg?

I'm thrilled to join. I just moved to London (tomorrow).

Look forward to seeing you there! Come and chat to me when you have a minute free.

Great stuff. Thanks for doing that! #golondon

Hope to see you there :)

Anyone up to do one of these in Lisbon ?

We will be in Lisbon shortly, if there is demand we could organize one impromptu? I know a few places and locals there

What happened to the event page?

good idea, added to my calendar

Look forward to seeing you there!

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