dmitri1981

One question I always ask my interviewers is "What is the best thing about working here?". You can tell a lot by their immediate response and whether their face lights up with excitement. One answer I will never forget is a developer responding with "We have a Dyson hand dryer".

Hospitals by their very nature are anti-competitive. There is no way that you as a patient can shop around. You do not have the necessary knowledge to compare the treatments, evaluate the options and decide on what represents the best value.

Still arranging the exact talk titles and supporting speakers. I expect to have them announced next week.

Videos of talks from past events are online at http://vimeo.com/hnlondon

You are right. I am sorry for not replying to you and other people who submitted talk proposals last month. I have been swamped with work and neglected many emails recently. I know how annoying it is to not receive responses to emails and should behave accordingly myself.

Edinburgh is on the other side of the country. HNLondon is popular, but we don't quite have that much pull.

It does not take too much work to get it started.

1) Pick a decent venue that has space and it not too noisy

2) Announce it on HN

3) Invite interesting people to come along.

We started the London meetup this way and even completely screwed up step one. You can see the original announcement at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1434964

Drop me an email on d.grabov@gmail.com if you want any advise / help with getting one organised. It's totally worth it

It's literally just outside Old St tube station, exit 4

Videos of talks from previous events are online at http://vimeo.com/hnlondon

Not sure why you get banned. I always post HNLondon meetup announcements while it is morning in UK and SF is asleep. At that time there is less competition for the front page and it's possible to get there with just a few upvotes. Once SF starts to wake up we inevitably get swept away.

Congratulations! You will be much missed in London.

I would also recommend checking these slides from Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz fame. http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/making-presentations-bett...

Cool. We are looking for strong JS developers at Skimlinks. PHP and Python would be a huge bonus. My email is in my profile. Give me a shout if interested.

What kind of work are you looking for?

There is always people bingo. Might make an app for that

I have been proven wrong far too many times to believe that I am still in any way a decent judge of what may be a good idea or viable startup.

The best example I can give here is from a few years ago when I was chatting online with some startup folks. One of them was building a Twitter based app where you would enter your tweets and it would post them at an interval you specify. I believe my thoughts at the time were that it must be the lamest idea I ever came across. Fast forward a few years and that startup, now known to the world as Buffer, is making over a million dollars a year and growing at a crazy rate.

The first two events of the year were probably some of the busiest ones we had, judging by the number of people in the hall. Last event was only announced a week in advance which led to lower numbers. The dropout rate for free events is fairly high so I'd say you get the same attendance at a 500 person free event and 300 a person paid event.

Having said that the attendance does seem to be declining. I suspect one factor is that there are so many great events happening in London these days and busy folks only have so much time to spare.

If anyone has suggestions on where the event may be falling short and could do with some improvement, I'd love to hear it.

I honestly wish I could summarise the economic causes that lead to these scenarios, but that would take too long. Instead, I would strongly suggest this boook if you are really interested in Public Economics: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Public-Sector-Joseph-Stigl...

I'd say critical mass is around 20 passionate people who do cool stuff. Once you have that the rest is surprisingly easy.

... and probably saved you some pizza

Several people have made the same comment and it's especially important for people who are new to the scene and don't know many people. It's something that I would definitely like to improve and welcome all suggestions. I'll post an update with pub details on the event page too.

You are totally welcome :)

There are typically quite a few people from Brighton and Cambridge who come along. We usually finish at around 10pm so there is scope for getting the train home after.

The furthest that people have traveled just for the event (that I am aware of) is from Paris.

Not at all. I think many of the sponsors are providing huge value to the community and I don't see much point in reducing their involvement. Another event that I am hoping organise very soon is a screening of The Startup Kids film. There is also a hackathon in the pipeline, though I am still working out some of the details.

In case people are interested, the talks from previous events are online at https://vimeo.com/hnlondon

To cover our costs such as venue, food, drink, video, presenter, as well as my time as organiser. As I mentioned on the event page I am setting up the event as a non-profit organisation. Any money left over from the event will ploughed back into the production of future events. It has been a tough decision to make however it will make the event sustainable for the long term. I mailed out the proposal over a week ago and received huge support in favour of the changes.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts. My email is d.grabov@gmail.com, in case you wish to contact me directly.

22nd Nov http://www.meetup.com/hnlondon/

Thanks for the write-up. The next event will be on 22nd Nov, join the meetup group http://www.meetup.com/hnlondon/ to be notified when registrations open. We also post the videos of the talks online at http://vimeo.com/hnlondon . Last night's videos should be up some time next week.

Can you please signup for the waiting list? We will have a few people dropping out and you'll be able on the guest list in no time.