For myself, I'll probably not use it, but that's because I'm an "old," and I stopped attending local meetups, because I was always surrounded by a circle of avoidance, where no one would look at me, or have anything to do with me.
Got a bit tiresome, but it's the way of the world, I guess. For non-olds, these meetups are great, with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.
Not saying there aren't any, buy I would avoid conflating old and wise together.
However, it seems that most folks conflate "older" (which is getting increasingly younger -I encounter folks in their early forties that can't get interviews), and "useless."
Funny. We're doing pretty well at opening up the industry to folks from many ethnic backgrounds, and women, but the industry actively encourages ageism.
Most of the "reasons" end up falling flat, upon closer inspection.
It just seems that gray hair makes people uncomfortable. I guess it always has, but in the Days of Yore, corporations were usually run by older folks, so we had to work with them (I didn't always have gray hair, myself -spoiler: We all get a turn at this wheel).
I'm not young anymore either and my experience job hunting has been that I get invited to fewer initial interviews, but when I am, the whole process is much much easier for myself than a decade ago. Onboarding is also much faster.
> I stopped attending local meetups, because I was always surrounded by a circle of avoidance, where no one would look at me, or have anything to do with me
Meetups (as in "group meetups") might be part of meet.hn, but I also saw it as a way to meet new people one to one.
Hopefully this makes you change your mind, I'm sure you would have plenty of things to share!