[HN Gopher] A reawakening of systems programming meetups
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A reawakening of systems programming meetups
        
       Author : paulgb
       Score  : 209 points
       Date   : 2024-07-07 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (notes.eatonphil.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (notes.eatonphil.com)
        
       | Aurornis wrote:
       | > 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 DevRel people trying to advertise.
       | The hard problem was filtering out people who were only
       | interested in presenting something so they could show another
       | presentation on their resume or personal brand website, with no
       | interest in engaging with the meetup.
       | 
       | These people would want to only show up for the one meetup where
       | they got to present. They'd present some simple content designed
       | to make them look good, with little regard to educating or
       | discussing things. They'd often have some excuse for needing to
       | leave quickly after presenting, some times before any QA time.
       | 
       | And they always needed a video recording of themselves speaking.
       | For a while we had these to stream to remote viewers, but if the
       | camera gear wasn't available they'd panic and spend a lot of time
       | improvising a way to record it with their phone even if delayed
       | the presentation. Getting the recording of themselves speaking
       | was the primary goal, not actually speaking to the group.
       | 
       | After this happens enough times, the core members realize they're
       | being used as audience props for someone's career advancement and
       | they stop coming. The meetup collapses.
       | 
       | I hope my local meetup groups can have a little resurgence like
       | this where people are primarily interested in the meetup, not the
       | self promotion opportunity.
        
         | tombert wrote:
         | Yeah, it annoys me that a lot of functional programming stuff
         | kind of fell into cryptocurrency startups.
         | 
         | There definitely is interesting enough tech behind crypto, but
         | a lot of these talks end up kind of devolving into why their
         | product is amazing and better than all the other coins and why
         | you should invest in their ICO.
        
           | cachvico wrote:
           | Haskell?
        
             | hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
             | Cardano?
        
             | tombert wrote:
             | Last meetup I saw it was an OCaml meetup.
        
         | atmosx wrote:
         | Communities without some kind of curation don't survive in the
         | long run. That should be, historically at least, clear by now.
        
         | griftrejection wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | 1oooqooq wrote:
         | this is a problem of the job market.
         | 
         | most celebrated talks are from people well employed for life so
         | they can talk shit at some system or protocol. from upnp to the
         | persistent compiler worm talks.
         | 
         | those folks didn't expect to depend on their resume padding
         | every 3 to 8 months to live.
         | 
         | likewise the people organizing the talks didn't depends on the
         | status sending devRel people to expect sponsors.
         | 
         | this is exactly what doctorow is yapping about lately. but
         | everyone only accept small points of the big picture.
        
           | 1oooqooq wrote:
           | * startups sending devRel
        
         | bonestamp2 wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | ssivark wrote:
         | 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
        
         | eatonphil wrote:
         | I get what you, and other commenters here, are going for. But
         | getting speakers is still hard in the first place. And as I
         | mentioned in the post, I see high quality talks as 100%
         | marketing. They're just marketing for your engineering team,
         | rather than for your product. I think we'd have trouble
         | attracting the high quality speakers we do today if we set
         | restrictions some commenters have suggested such as attending
         | the meetup multiple times, not mentioning the company, etc.
         | 
         | We're pretty picky with speakers we invite but also quite
         | flexible once we've invited someone we think will be good. I
         | think it's worked out pretty well for the audience and
         | speakers. At least, that is what they all tell me.
        
           | danenania wrote:
           | I like your approach and think it sounds very balanced.
           | Creating and preparing for a high quality talk is quite a lot
           | of work, so it's maybe a bit unfair to expect people with
           | jobs or startups to do them for purely altruistic reasons.
           | 
           | A talk that is mostly substance but contains a quick plug
           | here and there has always been reasonable to me. It's also a
           | lot more effective for marketing than just giving a blatant
           | product pitch, so it should be a win-win.
        
         | bboygravity wrote:
         | Counter point: I've been to Filipino meetups (Raid the fridge)
         | where companies (even traditional/established banks) presented
         | new products and services they'd been trying to launch mixed in
         | with some company history.
         | 
         | They'd talk about the tech used, the difficulties (tech,
         | business, legal, market) encountered and how they worked around
         | those.
         | 
         | It was definitely more than just a sales pitch even when there
         | was some of that at times. A mix of business stories,
         | engineering, R&D stories, law, finance and general company and
         | even country history.
         | 
         | I found it fascinating and overal great. To the point where it
         | felt like a night out to enjoy entertainment. Not just the
         | talks but the social meetup part of it as well. Maybe its a
         | cultural thing, but I found companies there refreshingly open
         | and honest about the way things had gone.
        
       | convolvatron wrote:
       | just tried to look - SF distributed systems meetup was a one-shot
       | affair?
        
         | msgilligan wrote:
         | I'm hoping that is not the case. I signed up in the hopes there
         | will be more.
        
           | convolvatron wrote:
           | I suppose we could meet at Lovejoy's tea room and talk about
           | our favorite parts of the paxos paper
        
       | screye wrote:
       | 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'.
        
         | mechanicker wrote:
         | Would love UC Berkeley to revive innovation and collaboration
         | as seen during the BSD days.
        
           | musicale wrote:
           | So RISC-V isn't enough for you? ;-)
           | 
           | More seriously, it does seem like there were a number of
           | interesting systems research and development collaborations
           | in the 1980s: BSD at Berkeley, Athena at MIT, Andrew at CMU,
           | etc.
           | 
           | Currently it seems like the interest, funding, opportunities,
           | and incentives for academic researchers are largely for
           | short-term projects and AI/ML rather than long-term, ongoing
           | systems projects. The modern funding and publishing landscape
           | seems to emphasize speed and quantity over quality and
           | impact.
           | 
           | Moreover, it seems that companies with deep pockets
           | (Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia) may be less likely to collaborate
           | with and/or fund academic projects as IBM and DEC did in the
           | 1980s. It could be that those partnerships weren't hugely
           | beneficial for AT&T, IBM and DEC's businesses.
        
         | Aurornis wrote:
         | > 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 using university
         | campuses to speak so you could leverage their credibility for
         | your brand (I can't remember the exact details)
         | 
         | It became such a problem that universities really can't risk
         | letting random groups come use their facilities. It doesn't
         | take long before someone abuses it to say they "Lectured at
         | <university>" or "Gave a speech at <university>"
        
           | weinzierl wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | Aurornis wrote:
             | My closest community college allows venue rentals. The
             | filter is that few people think it's prestigious to speak
             | at the local community college.
        
               | II2II wrote:
               | I work at a government facility that offers venue
               | rentals. The rental contract states the facility name
               | must not be used in order to avoid the scenario where
               | someone tries to make a private event sound like it is
               | endorsed by the government.
               | 
               | Oddly enough, the facility name gives the impression it
               | is affiliated with an unrelated institution. This results
               | in interesting conversations where one starts by
               | dissuading grifting based upon the implied affiliation,
               | and ends by telling them they are barking up the wrong
               | tree when they try grifting based upon the actual
               | affiliation.
               | 
               | If these people did not exist, many institutions would be
               | far more generous with their space. That is especially
               | true of colleges and universities, where there is often a
               | strong desire to foster positive relationships with the
               | community.
        
             | WanderPanda wrote:
             | Also that level of hustle is not (yet) common in Germany I
             | believe
        
             | pointy_hat wrote:
             | You can attend all events without signing a form, I'm
             | pretty sure no one would also mind if you volunteer without
             | being a member.
             | 
             | The form is only a thing in case you'd like to support a
             | registered nonprofit and has no influence on your
             | participation.
             | 
             | (EDIT) there are also events in the city, Munich Database
             | Meetup, which are less frequent.
        
             | mzinsmeister wrote:
             | Just to clarify some stuff here (from an actual TUMuchData
             | management team member):
             | 
             | The form is not really relevant for our events, it's just
             | to support us. Since we have made the decision of being a
             | MUNICH BASED IN PERSON club to get the maximum networking
             | and social experience, we also wanted to make sure our
             | actual club members will fulfill these criteria. That's why
             | we have the paper form in person policy.
             | 
             | There will be some member-only events but those are more
             | social events or maybe ones with very limited spots but
             | usually access to events will be public.
             | 
             | Our events are not exclusively on the Garching campus. As
             | you already found out we have two major formats:
             | 
             | 1. The weekly paper reading group which is mostly
             | researchers (mostly PhD students, sometimes professors)
             | presenting their research or a single paper. Some weeks we
             | have industry talks instead. These events are in Garching
             | and only during the lecture period because they are mostly
             | targeted towards students (we are a student club after all)
             | so that they can learn more about the very relevant
             | database research that is happening at TUM and how it's
             | applied in industry.
             | 
             | 2. Monthy or bi-monthy Munich Database Meetups which are
             | more targeted towards industry and bringing together
             | industry, students and researchers from academia. Those
             | events will usually have more than one talk unlike our
             | weekly events, the talks will mostly have speakers from
             | industry (usually 2). They will usually be somewhere in the
             | city center of Munich to make sure industry people will get
             | there easier. We usually try to get some location at some
             | company. We already had them at CodeCentric, Google and
             | JetBrains.
             | 
             | For both formats we try to make sure we get deep technical
             | talks about mostly database systems internals. For the
             | research talks they are usually very deeply technical
             | anyway and for the industry talks (including meetups) we
             | are working on guidelines to make sure they know what type
             | of talk we expect.
        
           | musicale wrote:
           | Many US universities seem happy to rent out their facilities
           | over the summer, but you have to pay.
        
         | weinzierl wrote:
         | The mentioned TUMuchdata is held at an university. I think a
         | lot depends on the individuals behind such activities.
         | 
         | I don't know anyone behind TUMuchdata and had no contact to the
         | department for years but the chair is still the same as when I
         | studied there and I think he might be exactly the person that
         | would permit or even foster such activities.
        
           | mzinsmeister wrote:
           | While we get a lot of support from all three database related
           | chairs at TUM we like to highlight that we are an independent
           | non-profit initiated, founded and run exclusively by students
           | (which includes PhD students like me by now). We were founded
           | with the main mission of making sure normal bachelors and
           | masters CS students know about the high quality database
           | research at TUM with projects like HyPer and now Umbra.
        
         | musicale wrote:
         | Many universities have seminars that are open to the public,
         | online or/and in person.
        
         | azinman2 wrote:
         | It does have UCSF which is tier 1; it's just medically focused.
        
         | aijfedklmnop wrote:
         | Systems have been cleaved in two for who knows what purposes.
         | Systems have always deserved a proper segregation from product,
         | that's been lost in this new paradigm.
        
       | weinzierl wrote:
       | > _First off, don 't pay for anything yourself. Find a company
       | who will host. At the same time, don't feel the need to give in
       | too much to the demands of the company. _
       | 
       | Or go the same route as the mentioned TUMuchdata[1] which
       | apparently kicked off the activities in the post.
       | 
       | They are simply meeting at their university. I know at least one
       | Rust Meetup near them, that deliberately decided to meet at the
       | public library (with permission) and forgo any company
       | sponsorships.
       | 
       | [1] The pun here is that TUM is the common abbreviation for
       | Technical University Munich.
        
         | mzinsmeister wrote:
         | We are very lucky to have both the university to host our
         | weekly events and also to have Alex Petrov on our side who is
         | very well connected to all kinds of companies and helps us a
         | lot in finding venues for our Munich Database Meetup which we
         | only organize once every 1-2 months or so.
        
       | walterbell wrote:
       | _> I started feeling a bit embarrassed that a graduate student
       | had more guts than I had to get back onto the meetup organizer
       | wagon._
       | 
       | Inter-generational perpetual embarrassment engine for innovation.
        
       | demondemidi wrote:
       | 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's still CTRL-H
       | going strong, but not much else.
       | 
       | From what I heard from two regular organizers is that it is just
       | a LOT of work to run a consistently solid meetup, and eventually
       | exhausting. I can see that: I remember thinking, "I could help
       | but do I really want to use my small amount of free time for
       | this?" So, hats off to people who ran those awesome meetups
       | (Thubten, I'm looking at you!).
        
         | 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
         | 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
        
           | shagie wrote:
           | 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
        
         | walterbell wrote:
         | _> 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
        
           | demondemidi wrote:
           | That explains it! Son of a b....
        
         | dec0dedab0de wrote:
         | same thing happened in philly about the same time.
        
         | itqwertz wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | mlhpdx wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | sausajez wrote:
       | Strange you say this, I just got together with a bunch of people
       | and revived an old user group that I used to run, seems like
       | there's a itch to get out and socialise again
        
       | billfor wrote:
       | The old DECUS meetings were fun.
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECUS
        
       | shae wrote:
       | Who's up for one in Boston? I'll organize if I can find some
       | speakers.
        
         | kaizoku20 wrote:
         | +1
        
         | rahuldave wrote:
         | Count me in on organizing as well. And not just for systems but
         | ml/llm adjacent infra and databases as well. Things like arrow
         | and lancedb for example
        
         | tstack wrote:
         | There's a handmade meetup in Boston you might want to check out
         | -- https://handmadecities.com/meetups/
        
         | otras wrote:
         | Just the other day, I was checking to see if there were any
         | active ones in the Boston area. I'd definitely be up for one,
         | and I'd be more than happy to do a talk and/or help organize.
        
       | __turbobrew__ wrote:
       | 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 point but the
       | political tides changed there and we got kicked out. I think
       | having strong buy in from someone in the C-suite of a company is
       | the only real way to do it. Otherwise you are beholden to the
       | changing winds of the company.
       | 
       | In the end we are now in a stable location in the local library,
       | but only because we had someone on the inside. Previously when we
       | approached the library we were stone walled without someone to
       | grease the wheels.
       | 
       | I do believe that it should be a mandate for the municipality to
       | provide meeting space for local non-profit and special interest
       | groups. In many locations you can no longer pool some money with
       | your buddies to buy a piece of land to build your clubhouse on.
       | In my city there are many such clubs which were formed 50 years
       | ago -- the sailing club, the badminton club, the lawn bowling
       | club, etc -- but land is too scarce in many places now and we
       | need the municipalities to pick up the slack.
        
         | packetlost wrote:
         | > I do believe that it should be a mandate for the municipality
         | to provide meeting space for local non-profit and special
         | interest groups.
         | 
         | I never realized this was something that was needed so bad, but
         | yeah. In my city we have a bunch of privately owned venues that
         | you can _rent_ , but the cost ranges from reasonable to very
         | _not_ reasonable. To be fair, a lot of my local technical
         | meetups just hang out at one of the quieter restaurant /bars in
         | the area and it seems to work ok for them. The downside is you
         | don't have any way to present anything. Another group I
         | regularly go to is a local DefCon chapter that rents out space
         | above a "barcade" (arcade + bar) and aside from being a bit hot
         | in the summer, the vibes are great and the community doubly so.
        
           | bonestamp2 wrote:
           | I know some groups meet at a city library (many of them have
           | meeting rooms that can be booked for free or for a small
           | fee).
           | 
           | We had this same problem and ended up starting a (non-profit)
           | makerspace where we now host several meetups. It's win/win
           | really. We are all about building community and bringing
           | people together with similar interests is a great way to do
           | that. It has also helped us get more paying members.
        
         | citizenpaul wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | __turbobrew__ wrote:
           | Yes, generally people are adverse to change and like routine.
           | Going to a new location requires figuring out how long it
           | takes to get there, where do you park or get on/off transit,
           | where is the building entrance, where within the building do
           | you go, etc.
           | 
           | It is important to have consistency in time, location, and
           | consistency to build a thriving meetup.
        
         | theamk wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | floren wrote:
           | But unless you're going to ask for contributions, this means
           | the organizers are footing the bill every time -- and in my
           | opinion, once you start collecting money you've doubled the
           | complexity.
        
           | jazzyjackson wrote:
           | But can you really guarantee it at the same time every week?
        
           | __turbobrew__ wrote:
           | 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
           | free. It is a very hard burden to get a single person to foot
           | the bill for meeting space, whereas the municipality can
           | charge everyone $50/year on their property taxes and build
           | meeting spaces which everyone gets to use. People love to
           | moan about taxes but I think this is one of those problems
           | solved better in the collective.
        
         | aijfedklmnop wrote:
         | I wouldn't shy away from some exclusivity in order to keep the
         | venue size reasonable.
        
         | floren wrote:
         | > In the end we are now in a stable location in the local
         | library, but only because we had someone on the inside.
         | Previously when we approached the library we were stone walled
         | without someone to grease the wheels.
         | 
         | I ran into this sort of problem when trying to put together an
         | explicitly non-profit tech meetup (talk about your projects,
         | nothing commercial allowed, no cost to attend) at my local
         | library; because I wasn't a "community group" but rather just
         | somebody trying to assemble a loose group of individuals from
         | around the Bay, they wouldn't let me do it.
        
         | Aeolun wrote:
         | > I do believe that it should be a mandate for the municipality
         | to provide meeting space for local non-profit and special
         | interest groups.
         | 
         | Japan has these. There's local community centers basically
         | everywhere which can be used as a meeting space for a token fee
         | (I think it was like $5/hour last I checked). My local center
         | in the middle of Tokyo is just three floors of rooms that
         | people can use for whatever they need.
        
           | valenterry wrote:
           | I'm interested and I need this. Do you have some additional
           | info for me maybe? Thank you!!!
        
           | bboygravity wrote:
           | In 2024 Japan you could also just buy a house for 10k USD and
           | call it your club house :p
        
         | neilv wrote:
         | 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, getting a guest badge for the visit, going to whatever
         | presumable compartmentalized area, and the company presumably
         | doing all the snooping things they could think of...
         | 
         | Every time I considered going to a meeting, the idea of going
         | out of my way to be Big Tech's b-word, before I even got into
         | the meeting, was a turn-off.
         | 
         | I like your community centers idea. The public libraries here
         | have some meeting rooms. Sometimes someone at a university
         | department can open up meeting space to the public.
         | 
         | Someone else mentioned makerspaces, which is an idea I hadn't
         | thought of, but maybe complementary to makerspaces, as well as
         | great marketing for adding members.
        
         | bsder wrote:
         | > I was on the board of directors for a local Linux Users Group
         | and can echo the difficulties in finding a venue.
         | 
         | While venues are difficult, don't overlook the added
         | complications that are caused by _insurance_.
         | 
         | A lot of "venues" want you to show that you are carrying
         | liability insurance. That means you have to be an actual
         | 501(c)3 along with a bank account.
        
       | torontopizza wrote:
       | I started a Toronto meetup with people here on HN and the
       | Fediverse.
       | 
       | Running a stable IRL meetup is a lot of work!
        
         | kewbish wrote:
         | Curious if you have a link to your event page?
        
           | devdao wrote:
           | Toronto's Tech Pizza Mondays
           | https://social.linux.pizza/@Techpizzamondays
           | 
           | If you're here, you belong and you are invited and welcome
        
       | toyg wrote:
       | _> although 60 people say Yes initially, by the time of the event
       | we have typically gotten about 50 people in attendance_
       | 
       | That's actually pretty good. Most free events (of any kind) will
       | typically see attendance rates around 30-50% of RSVPs.
        
       | mattrighetti wrote:
       | I recently moved to London and I wanted to start participating in
       | these kind of events, where's the best place to look for them?
        
         | paulgb wrote:
         | I haven't been to one yet, but from afar I hear great things
         | about the London Future of Coding meetups.
        
         | mgaunard wrote:
         | There are regular C++ meetups, which I expect would cover
         | systems programming.
         | 
         | It seems however cloud/web people have a different idea of what
         | systems programming is.
        
           | twic wrote:
           | Is that ACCU, or someone else now?
        
             | mgaunard wrote:
             | ACCU London is not very active anymore, I think CppLondon
             | pretty much took over (it was the same guy as the CppOnSea
             | conference, but I think he started asking other people to
             | arrange it now).
             | 
             | I don't know if it's that great these days, but it's a
             | meetup I used to present at in the past, and I remember
             | having fun getting beers with attendees afterwards.
        
       | vsgherzi wrote:
       | Ive been struggling to find good meetups in the san diego los
       | angeles area. meetup.com seems pretty dead.. any suggestions?
        
       | zeristor wrote:
       | In London there was Skillsmatter's Code Node. Skillsmatter had
       | trouble getting continued funding, however CodeNode itself is
       | used occasionally for some meeting tech things apparently, but
       | not the continualy hosting 5 days a week of tech meetups it was
       | so loved for.
        
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