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A reawakening of systems programming meetups

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Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#21

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

demondemidi wrote: post #19

Meetup.com was on fire with maker, programming, and tech meetups in Portland in 2010-2014. Some were huge (I recall the auditorium for Puppet Labs wall-to-wall one point). Then ... poof . All gone, even before the pandemic. And it was super diverse topics: everything from NodeJS & Rust, and HTML1.0 to startups, manufacturing, and IoT hacking: heck, there was meetup for RF circuit enthusiasts! I just checked and there…

Exhausting plus everyone has to make a meetup account plus meetup started charging more and more plus why not just use Facebook since I'm the only one without a Facebook account

Maybe a federated alternative will take off soon. It would be nice if email was federated in practice

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#23

Post by walterbell »

demondemidi wrote: post #19

Meetup.com was on fire with maker, programming, and tech meetups in Portland in 2010-2014. Some were huge (I recall the auditorium for Puppet Labs wall-to-wall one point). Then ... poof . All gone, even before the pandemic. And it was super diverse topics: everything from NodeJS & Rust, and HTML1.0 to startups, manufacturing, and IoT hacking: heck, there was meetup for RF circuit enthusiasts! I just checked and there…

> Meetup.com was on fire with maker, programming, and tech meetups in Portland in 2010-2014. Some were huge (I recall the auditorium for Puppet Labs wall-to-wall one point). Then ... poof. All gone, even before the pandemic.

  [2017] Acquired by WeWork 
  [2018] Founder steps down as CEO
  [2019] New pricing model
  [2020] WeWork sold it to AlleyCorp
  [2024] Bending Spoons announced it will acquire Meetup
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetup

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#25

Post by azinman2 »

screye wrote: post #4

I'm surprised that universities don't open their doors to such events for everyone. 'Systems' is fairly industry-focused. So, academia-industry partnerships on seminars seems like a great idea. It's a shame (and imo, mind boggling) that SF proper doesn't have a tier 1 university. While Stanford and Berkeley are very close, the lack of a grounding institution makes SF culture feel 'dispersed'.

It does have UCSF which is tier 1; it’s just medically focused.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#26

Post by dec0dedab0de »

demondemidi wrote: post #19

Meetup.com was on fire with maker, programming, and tech meetups in Portland in 2010-2014. Some were huge (I recall the auditorium for Puppet Labs wall-to-wall one point). Then ... poof . All gone, even before the pandemic. And it was super diverse topics: everything from NodeJS & Rust, and HTML1.0 to startups, manufacturing, and IoT hacking: heck, there was meetup for RF circuit enthusiasts! I just checked and there…

same thing happened in philly about the same time.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#27

Post by shagie »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #21
demondemidi wrote: post #19

Meetup.com was on fire with maker, programming, and tech meetups in Portland in 2010-2014. Some were huge (I recall the auditorium for Puppet Labs wall-to-wall one point). Then ... poof . All gone, even before the pandemic. And it was super diverse topics: everything from NodeJS & Rust, and HTML1.0 to startups, manufacturing, and IoT hacking: heck, there was meetup for RF circuit enthusiasts! I just checked and there…

Exhausting plus everyone has to make a meetup account plus meetup started charging more and more plus why not just use Facebook since I'm the only one without a Facebook account Maybe a federated alternative will take off soon. It would be nice if email was federated in practice

https://joinmobilizon.org/en/ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobilizon )

Also from a few days ago - Show HN: Radius – A Meetup.com alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40717398

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#28

Post by itqwertz »

demondemidi wrote: post #19

Meetup.com was on fire with maker, programming, and tech meetups in Portland in 2010-2014. Some were huge (I recall the auditorium for Puppet Labs wall-to-wall one point). Then ... poof . All gone, even before the pandemic. And it was super diverse topics: everything from NodeJS & Rust, and HTML1.0 to startups, manufacturing, and IoT hacking: heck, there was meetup for RF circuit enthusiasts! I just checked and there…

I also used to go to meetups every week in Portland during that time!

It was great, free beer and pizza definitely helped me when i was struggling to get my career off the ground. Janrain had a great meetup space (old Nike basketball court with risers) with awesome tech topics that exposed the vast world of tech to a noob like me. Puppet Labs, Urban Airship, and New Relic also had top-tier meetups. Intel in Hillsboro was usually worth the MAX trip out there. Tons of swag, food, and opportunities for employment.

The real issue with these meetups is that the money dried up. Most of the meetups had recruiters who were desperate to hire and sponsorship helped fund these meetups. Now that WFH is widely acceptable, there’s little incentive to court talent locally. Zoom meetups feel inorganic and lifeless, although they cost very little. There was a gold rush feel during the 2010’s, but I feel like that time is over. Cost-cutting, outsourcing, and the AI hype are leading to software becoming a less prestigious career than it once was. I don’t see this optimism coming back any time soon.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#29

Post by griftrejection »

Aurornis wrote: post #2

> I used to attend a bunch of meetups before the pandemic. But I quickly got disillusioned. Almost every meetup was varying degrees of startups pitching their product. The last straw for me was sitting through a talk at a JavaScript meetup that was by a devrel employee of a startup who literally gave a tutorial for their product. My favorite local meetups fell to problems like this. It was easy to filter out the DevR…

The solution is simple: vet the talks, vet the presenter, and don't focus on technology that is popular for grifting. Sorry, but I've been to enough JS/TS meetups to know what's happening. But that world is full of marketing and people who want funding. Compare this to a BSD meetup or a 2600 meetup. Nobody's trying to sell you stuff there.
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