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A reawakening of systems programming meetups

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Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#41

Post by bonestamp2 »

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…

It can be a chicken/egg problem. If you run a meetup, you need to meet regularly to create a community and keep members engaged. If you want to meet relatively regularly then you need something to meet about. Sometimes it's hard to get someone to present, so you have to fallback to people who need more incentive to present.

In a perfect world, a great sponsor would provide a free space for everyone to meet and great community members would spend hours preparing amazing content to teach the community something without gaining much for themselves. But, that combination is pretty rare these days unfortunately.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#43

Post by devdao »

kewbish wrote: post #35
torontopizza wrote: post #34

I started a Toronto meetup with people here on HN and the Fediverse. Running a stable IRL meetup is a lot of work!

Curious if you have a link to your event page?

Toronto's Tech Pizza Mondays https://social.linux.pizza/@Techpizzamondays

If you're here, you belong and you are invited and welcome

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#45

Post by citizenpaul »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #33

I was on the board of directors for a local Linux Users Group and can echo the difficulties in finding a venue. In a city full of empty office spaces on a weekday night it was virtually impossible to find a stable meeting location. Without a stable meeting location you are much less likely to establish a core group since people do not like to have to learn how to get to different venues. Mozilla hosted us at one poin…

With GPS its not so much the location but thr change in time commitment. The new location is never 5 min from the preious but 30-45 min difference. People in these groups often have busy lives so if your 3hrs suddenly becomes 4hrs its simply less of a headache to cut the unnecessary thing rather than change 50 other things in your schedule. Eventually this scheduking effect shakes off all thr people in the group with other time commitments.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#46

Post by ssivark »

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…

There seem to be a few obvious tweaks to try:

1. (Apart from the first few meetings, for bootstrapping) presenters must have attended a few meetings before they get a chance to present.

2. No mentions of one's employer / product beyond the intro slide.

There's nothing special about these two suggestions; the general idea is that the organizers ought to be sensitive to what is happening, and responsive in trying to maintain a healthy atmosphere.

Someone trying to organize a meetup might find some helpful ideas in the following book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49766350-get-together

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#47

Post by theamk »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #33

I was on the board of directors for a local Linux Users Group and can echo the difficulties in finding a venue. In a city full of empty office spaces on a weekday night it was virtually impossible to find a stable meeting location. Without a stable meeting location you are much less likely to establish a core group since people do not like to have to learn how to get to different venues. Mozilla hosted us at one poin…

That's what "community centers" are for!

A town next to mine has one of those, and any town resident can rent a room for a reasonable amount of money ($20 to $70/hour depending on room size). So as long as at least one group member is from the right town, the room is guaranteed.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#48

Post by mlhpdx »

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 would love to attend a systems-oriented meetup in Portland, and would be willing to organize/operate it though I’m quite bad at that kind of thing.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#49

Post by aijfedklmnop »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #33

I was on the board of directors for a local Linux Users Group and can echo the difficulties in finding a venue. In a city full of empty office spaces on a weekday night it was virtually impossible to find a stable meeting location. Without a stable meeting location you are much less likely to establish a core group since people do not like to have to learn how to get to different venues. Mozilla hosted us at one poin…

I wouldn't shy away from some exclusivity in order to keep the venue size reasonable.
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