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Comment by tom_b | Hacker News Reader

I am watching the Durham startup scene these days. There might be a sustainable startup movement cranking up there.

The RTP area(Research Triangle Park, where Triangle=Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill for folks who don't already know) is full of smart people and if the culture continues to shift from a "join the big corporates" (IBM, SAS, even Microsoft has a presence) to a "build your own business" mindset, I think hackers here will have great opportunities.

However, I'm not sure (and I would welcome correction) that Red Hat alone makes us much of an open-source leader.

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Red Hat alone is a pretty poor open source leader in the area, to be honest. The headquarters is mostly support and business, with very little engineering work being done, so they tend not to have much presence. I'm a member of the NCSU LUG, and while they're on our campus (literally next door to the computer science building), we've had a fairly difficult time maintaining a relationship with them. As long as I've been a member, we've been unable to get speakers from them.

On the other hand, they do provide a meeting space for a couple of local groups (namely the TriLUG, though this is changing I believe), and hold a couple un-conferences which are a lot of fun.

As for Durham as a startup scene, I think it has a lot of potential, but I find that most of the capable developers I know are moving out west because staying in NC means you end up working for one of the big corporates for the most part (IBM, SAS, Cisco, etc). I've also been to a few of the startup events, and it feels like a lot of business people and very few "hackers", though perhaps this is just due to selection bias (it is a social event). Durham could use a new, really successful technical startup to give it a jump start.

they do provide a meeting space for a couple of local groups (namely the TriLUG, though this is changing I believe), and hold a couple un-conferences which are a lot of fun.

Hmm... I haven't heard anything about Tri-LUG moving, but I haven't been terribly active lately. I know Tri-LUG did meet at SplatSpace in Durham for the December '11 meeting, but that was a one-off deal. It's sort of becoming a tradition for Space and Tri-LUG to do a join December social gathering / open-source show & tell. But AFAIK, the regular meetings remain at RH for now.

Tri-JUG meet at Red Hat's offices as well, FWIW.

I've also been to a few of the startup events, and it feels like a lot of business people and very few "hackers", though perhaps this is just due to selection bias (it is a social event).*

Check out RTP Hackers & Founders[1]. We haven't had a "formal" meeting for a while, mainly because I've been so heads-down working on Fogbeam Labs[2]... but we will be meeting in 2012 for sure. In fact, almost every member of the group should have "event coordinator" role to schedule events, and if anybody on this thread wants to join and schedule an event, ping me and I'll make sure you're able to do so.

Durham could use a new, really successful technical startup to give it a jump start.

Yeah, not to mention this area could use a sort of "Paypal Mafia" of it's own... a batch of people with plenty of $$$ from their own successful exit, wanting to invest in the next wave of local startups. Who knows, maybe 2012 will be the year things really blow up here...

[1]: http://www.meetup.com/RTP-Hackers-Founders/

[2]: http://www.fogbeam.com

Bad for to reply to onself, I know... but just wanted to say, we just setup an RTP Hackers & Founders meetup for the evening of Thurs., Jan 19th. That's the night before the "Venture Outlook" event that SCV is putting on, so it probably makes a good time to meet and talking startups, funding, VC, etc.

Panera Bread - Streets of Southpoint, 7:00pm.

I actually attended the last one, and this one is on my calendar so I plan to be there. Hopefully I'll see you there!

And again... just got a reminder from Scott Kelly about the upcoming "Launch Day" event in Durham, at the American Underground. This is probably worth checking out as well:

http://launch-day.com/

Sounds good! You need to allow more than 14 people, though. It's full up at the momet. Need a bigger venue?

Yeah, that Panera doesn't handle large crowds very well. I'm working on something for February that should allow a much larger crowd. Andy from Open Software Integrators has said he's cool with us meeting at their offices, so now it's just down to working out the exact details.

Durham (American Tobacco Campus) is home to TriHUG, one of the best Hadoop Users Group in the south.

There's a great crop of young, vibrant startups in Durham and Raleigh that are thriving and hiring.

It's a lot more than IBM, SAS, Microsoft and Cisco here. You just have to look a little harder.

TriDUG too, the Southeast's largest Drupal user's group outside of Atlanta.

I'm a student at North Carolina State University, and our CSC department has a large number of people building or at least working at startups. (Though it is still a running joke that everyone in CSC works for IBM at one point or another.)

I can't disagree there. I graduated from that program and put my year of IBM interning in while I was a senior.

Not many people seem to stick around for long though.

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