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A reawakening of systems programming meetups

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Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#111

Post by throwaway2037 »

weinzierl wrote: post #10
Aurornis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised that universities don't open their doors to such events for everyone You have to be very careful about letting people use your facilities to host events. Unfortunately, grifters will use any opportunity to do something on a university campus as a way to imply they are associated with the university. Even self-help author Tim Ferriss recommended this trick in his “Four Hour Work Week” book: He advised…

The mentioned TUMuchdata requires a signed form, in German, handed over in person (not email) to join their community. I think this is not required to just attend one of their events. The events are at the university campus which is quite off, and makes it relatively inconvenient to get there if you are not at the university anyway. So, I guess they found a viable filter.

    > The events are at the university campus which is quite off, and makes it relatively inconvenient to get there if you are not at the university anyway.
I just checked Google Maps. The uni is 2 stops on the metro or a 20 minute walk from the main train station (HBH). "[R]elatively inconvenient to get there" -- uh, no.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#112

Post by throwaway2037 »

mechanicker wrote: post #5
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'.

Would love UC Berkeley to revive innovation and collaboration as seen during the BSD days.

eXperimental Computing Facility isn't enough for you?

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#113

Post by weinzierl »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #111
weinzierl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mentioned TUMuchdata requires a signed form, in German, handed over in person (not email) to join their community. I think this is not required to just attend one of their events. The events are at the university campus which is quite off, and makes it relatively inconvenient to get there if you are not at the university anyway. So, I guess they found a viable filter.

> The events are at the university campus which is quite off, and makes it relatively inconvenient to get there if you are not at the university anyway. I just checked Google Maps. The uni is 2 stops on the metro or a 20 minute walk from the main train station (HBH). "[R]elatively inconvenient to get there" -- uh, no.

This is either one of the other universities or the old TUM campus. The computer science department is located in Garching and this also where many of their events are, as you can see from their events page.

https://www.tumuchdata.club/events/

But as others have pointed out they had and have many events in other locations as well. From the events page you can see that Google and JetBrains hostet them among many others.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#114

Post by kortilla »

farazbabar wrote: post #81

I am in phoenix, it is summer right now so things are double dead but even in fall to spring months, I have tried to find tech meetups (my interests are c++, c99, java, distributed systems, data engineering and non generative AIML/infra) and I can’t find any activity in the 5th largest city in US. I have tried to host things myself but only my friends or coworkers showed up, where are my fellow passionates?

I think there are enough out there with the surge of Covid relocation population.

Godaddy used to host some when I was briefly there for work in the early 2010s but the meetup.com tech community was definitely non-existent. I would have been very active if it wasn’t dead. Just need some catalyst to get it started. :)

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#115

Post by valenterry »

Aeolun wrote: post #90
valenterry wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested and I need this. Do you have some additional info for me maybe? Thank you!!!

This is the one near my place. I suspect you can find a similar one nearby: http://sdh-takaido.sakura.ne.jp/kumin.html (It was a bit more expensive than I remembered, but still extremely reasonable)

Thanks for the link! It's very reasonable, unfortunately a bit limited in terms of time (usual the programming meetups I organized went up until almost midnight). Still good to know that these kind of options exist.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#116

Post by pjungwir »

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…

Calagator has been dead for years, and I don't understand why. Way before the pandemic: agreed. Most of what I see there now is business networking or people selling something.

But there are still things happening, e.g.:

- pdxpug (Postgres)

- Database Reading Group (DBRG) at PSU

- pdx.rb

- pdxruby Slack channel

- pdxstartups Slack channel

- Portland Papers We Love

- Portland Linux Users Group

- Linux Kernel meetup

- Rose City Techies

That's from just a little bit of research. But I miss when Calagator was full of cool stuff. What happened there I wonder?

I've tried hosting things in my home/back yard before. One was just to come hack on your projects together. Another was to work on open source contributions. I'd be up for trying something like that again. Something about systems/databases would be right up my alley. Maybe a reading group. If anyone sees this and is interested, send me an email.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#117

Post by alternatetwo »

diffxx wrote: post #80
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience $20-$70 an hour is too much. We were offered $50/hour meeting space at a local incubator, but the numbers never added up. It is hard enough to get people to show up if it is free, requiring people to pay to attend a casual meetup would not work in our situation. Who is going to foot the multi thousand dollar per year bill for meeting space? This is why municipalities need to provide this space for fr…

Why should my tax dollars pay for your special interest group to have free meetups? How would we distribute access to this newly created resource equitably? I don't disagree with the concept, but it gets hairy in the particulars. The problem is that of course we rarely ever get to vote on issues such as "should we build a community meeting space?" so we never really get to understand how the electorate truly feels.

Because you unironically live in a society, and it's give and take. Special interest groups are part of a civilized society.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#118

Post by neilv »

1oooqooq wrote: post #96
neilv wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when a company offers meeting space, they can be overbearing about it. I was involved a tiny bit in reviving a local interest group of high-powered programmers. Another person, who did all the actual hard work, of meeting organizing, got meeting space at a Big Tech company... Unfortunately, as a Big Tech (and in the surveillance capialism space), it was complete with signing in with security in the lobby, gettin…

> high-powered programmers how many Watts did you require for the meet up?

I wanted to talk about a general problem, without identifying a particular group. If I'd given it more milliseconds of thought, I would've said "niche", and of interest to that particular Big Tech.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#119

Post by bezier-curve »

__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…

There's a local developer meetup group in my hometown, a town which doesn't have a lot of local developers, ban me for essentially disagreeing with them in a private Discord DM. My crime? Telling them I don't like my hometown (and possibly for being the only known gay person). Meanwhile, their group's amenities are tax payer funded and allows their publicly funded power trips because they found someone to "grease the wheels" (aka cronyism).

If special interest groups are entitled to access to public resources, then I think their "board of directors" should also waive their right to filter out people from their group without some intervening third party auditing.

It's nice to use public infrastructure, but what you're suggesting already exists in some parts of the US, and it's abused. These "non-profits" are not necessarily philanthropic, or in the public's interest.

Re: A reawakening of systems programming meetups

#120

Post by jpc0 »

giantrobot wrote: post #84
diffxx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should my tax dollars pay for your special interest group to have free meetups? How would we distribute access to this newly created resource equitably? I don't disagree with the concept, but it gets hairy in the particulars. The problem is that of course we rarely ever get to vote on issues such as "should we build a community meeting space?" so we never really get to understand how the electorate truly feels.

> Why should my tax dollars pay for your special interest group to have free meetups? Because they'll also pay for your special interest group meetup. If you don't have a special interest group, a low friction meeting place available makes you more likely to start one. Public space allows for a municipality to build a community.

Alternative take. I pay every month for a meeting space I cannot use because it has long term commitments when I need to have an annual meeting.
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