Slashdot Mirror

Don't forget that Meetup isn't just about Slashdot anymore, (nor was it ever, in fact!). You could network with other Pagan Parents, for example, you could meet other Adult Fans of Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons nerdboys/girls, Dachshund enthusiasts or try your hand at learning Elvish (thatis, if learning Spanish isn't quite grabbing your interest these days). I've noticed some very cute girls in my local Elvish Meetup. Been hoping to meet a nice girl geek either there or at the Sci Fi Meetup.

Don't forget that Meetup isn't just about Slashdot anymore, (nor was it ever, in fact!). You could network with other Pagan Parents, for example, you could meet other Adult Fans of Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons nerdboys/girls, Dachshund enthusiasts or try your hand at learning Elvish (thatis, if learning Spanish isn't quite grabbing your interest these days). I've noticed some very cute girls in my local Elvish Meetup. Been hoping to meet a nice girl geek either there or at the Sci Fi Meetup.

meeting people is easy

You seem to like interacting with Slashdot readers so why not check to see if there is a Slashdot Meetup in the city you'll be working in? If you meet one person you click with you'll be set as they will introduce you to their friends who you are likely to get along with. Instant circle of friends.

Although the C language has been around for close to 30 years, its appeal has not yet worn off.

I'm sure that in some ways that statement may be true, but I've been trying for MONTHS to get people interested in the C/C++ Meetups! Compared to Python you'd think we were trying to start a Sanskrit study group!

btw..fp? hee hee!

Although the C language has been around for close to 30 years, its appeal has not yet worn off.

I'm sure that in some ways that statement may be true, but I've been trying for MONTHS to get people interested in the C/C++ Meetups! Compared to Python you'd think we were trying to start a Sanskrit study group!

btw..fp? hee hee!

I agree. I hope he gets the dem nomination. When do they decide who gets the nomination? Is it at the national convention? Or is it similar to the electiorial college, you weigh each states votes?

Anyway, I think it great what's going on. He's getting a lot of cash from those who actually vote for him. It's not to hard to get 40,000 people who like you to give $20. Granted it's only $800,000 and not the 100+ mil or whatever obscene about the retard currently in office spent. Get 1 million people to send you $20 and now you stand a chance. I remember seeing Dean on cspan and thinking "man, this guys great. Too bad he won't get the nomination, he makes a lot of sense. And it's be nice to have a doctor in office for once."

You guys should check out Dean's weblog It's got the current happenings and Meetups

Use meetup.com (or an equivalent) to host local CD-ripping parties on a monthly basis. Let's see the RIAA stop that.

For those who have not been following the election carefully so far, Dean first distinguished himself by opposing the war in Iraq. This position is looking rather good now that the Yellowcake scandal is brewing in the media. Yesterday he made the particulaly astute move of calling for those responsible for inserting the false claim into the Presidents State of the Union to resign. He is also backing up his claims with some excellent research on his website:

Then and now quotes
A timeline
A chart contrasting claims with evidence (pdf)

For a long time I have been impressed with Dean's use of the internet which includes the much publicized meetup (slashdot story). Dean now has by far the largest meetup with over 60,000 signed up: Dean Meetup

Dean's fundraising over the internet has also been exceptional - he raised over 800,000 in one day at the end of the last quarter. In addition the campaign manager, Joe Trippi, frequents the blogs - he will surely read this so be aware that any advice will be noted - and seems to have a keen vision and sense for how the internet can help the campaign.

Even if you don't agree with Dean's policies, it is probably worth watching just to see how political campaigns of the future might change with the internet.

I've been curious about learning Python for awhile now. But, seriously, what is the great advantage of using Python vs. C++? All I really even know about it is that it is object oriented, just like C++, but that you have to be very particular about your whitespace.

Not sure how significant one could take this to be, but over at meetup.com, the C/C++ group looks to be a dying breed while a relative many are flocking to the Python meetings. Oh well. At least the the D&D meeting is still going strong. ;)

I've been curious about learning Python for awhile now. But, seriously, what is the great advantage of using Python vs. C++? All I really even know about it is that it is object oriented, just like C++, but that you have to be very particular about your whitespace.

Not sure how significant one could take this to be, but over at meetup.com, the C/C++ group looks to be a dying breed while a relative many are flocking to the Python meetings. Oh well. At least the the D&D meeting is still going strong. ;)

I've been curious about learning Python for awhile now. But, seriously, what is the great advantage of using Python vs. C++? All I really even know about it is that it is object oriented, just like C++, but that you have to be very particular about your whitespace.

Not sure how significant one could take this to be, but over at meetup.com, the C/C++ group looks to be a dying breed while a relative many are flocking to the Python meetings. Oh well. At least the the D&D meeting is still going strong. ;)

I've been curious about learning Python for awhile now. But, seriously, what is the great advantage of using Python vs. C++? All I really even know about it is that it is object oriented, just like C++, but that you have to be very particular about your whitespace.

Not sure how significant one could take this to be, but over at meetup.com, the C/C++ group looks to be a dying breed while a relative many are flocking to the Python meetings. Oh well. At least the the D&D meeting is still going strong. ;)

This is a bit off-topic, but if you're in Dallas, give the Slashdot Meetup for Dallas a try :). We usually have about half a dozen people each month and it's a good time. (there's also a Linux Meetup, if that strikes your fancy)

This is a bit off-topic, but if you're in Dallas, give the Slashdot Meetup for Dallas a try :). We usually have about half a dozen people each month and it's a good time. (there's also a Linux Meetup, if that strikes your fancy)

Most of my interests or on-line. Most people who type search queries related to those interests will find my website. Thus, most IP addresses in my web server log should be useful.

And for those without a website, or a shitty one, there's Meetup.com.

Funny how scientist think it would be cool do something we've all be doing for years already.

How about MeetUp?

Well, I signed up for both the Linux meetup and Slashdot meetup in my area.

Since then, not one has gone off - not enough people can be bothered to even VOTE on a place to meet up - let alone show up.

In a town of .5 million I'd think that there would be at least 5 (10 ppm) people who would want an excuse to go out into the Big Blue Room.

Well, I signed up for both the Linux meetup and Slashdot meetup in my area.

Since then, not one has gone off - not enough people can be bothered to even VOTE on a place to meet up - let alone show up.

In a town of .5 million I'd think that there would be at least 5 (10 ppm) people who would want an excuse to go out into the Big Blue Room.

MeetUp does this.

You can search by zip code, topic, area, etc., add your own stuff, and it is apparently free.

How about http://www.meetup.com/?

I'm not sure if its exactly what you are looking for, but there are -tons- of topics, and I live in a relativly small city, and there are a few local meetups in the area of differant interests. It's a pretty cool service, and looks like it could grow into something quite cool.

I'm not sure if its exactly what you are looking for, but there are -tons- of topics, and I live in a relativly small city, and there are a few local meetups in the area of differant interests. It's a pretty cool service, and looks like it could grow into something quite cool.

If you're unsuccessful at starting this "computer group" up you may want to try Meetup which is a website to organize local interests groups. They even have a Slashdot interest group. I'm not sure about your high school, but at the one I attend, there aren't a whole lot of people (close to none) into this sort of stuff. Although, I'm bitter and unsociable so that could be why I'm not meeting any of these type of people. Plus, if I would join a computer club of any sort I would end up just wanting to kill all of them in a match of whatever first-person shooter I happen to be playing at the time. I guess I'm just an angry and hateful person.

It sounds like you're interested in participating in the budding e-democracy movement. We're at the beginning of a "space race" to implement something close to what your talking about: A comprehensive online mechanism (with complementary offline events) for petitioning, measure/resolution drafting, peer-moderated deliberations and decision making at various geographical levels. As this "democracy 2.0" phases in, the simple democracy of making "popular" decisions at the voting booths will transform into a democratic meritocracy where issues are decided in a far more responsible manner.

In addition to the Slashdot Meetups, there are plenty of other cool Meetups as well, such as Digital Cameras, Home Theater, Metal, and even tea. Give some of them a try, especially if you live in Dallas ;).

In addition to the Slashdot Meetups, there are plenty of other cool Meetups as well, such as Digital Cameras, Home Theater, Metal, and even tea. Give some of them a try, especially if you live in Dallas ;).

In addition to the Slashdot Meetups, there are plenty of other cool Meetups as well, such as Digital Cameras, Home Theater, Metal, and even tea. Give some of them a try, especially if you live in Dallas ;).

In addition to the Slashdot Meetups, there are plenty of other cool Meetups as well, such as Digital Cameras, Home Theater, Metal, and even tea. Give some of them a try, especially if you live in Dallas ;).

In addition to the Slashdot Meetups, there are plenty of other cool Meetups as well, such as Digital Cameras, Home Theater, Metal, and even tea. Give some of them a try, especially if you live in Dallas ;).

In addition to the Slashdot Meetups, there are plenty of other cool Meetups as well, such as Digital Cameras, Home Theater, Metal, and even tea. Give some of them a try, especially if you live in Dallas ;).

If you're in Dallas, you're welcome to join us for the Slashdot Meetups (the next one is on Thursday).

But as usual, the catch is getting people to use it. Until your grandmother uses it, she's going to have the same rep as an anonymous spammer, so you can't rely on it.

I finally got my inner circle of friends to start using PGP/GPG, and it took some serious nagging over a long period, even though they are computer geeks. I've tried to suggest keysigning parties at local Slashdot Meetups (and even went to a 2600 meeting) and there is just no interest. If Slashdotters and 2600 people aren't interested in PGP, and my geeky friends won't do it w/out nagging, then forget Joe Schmoe, it's not happening. The tech is here, but society Just Says No. It's very sad to see so much wasted potential.

I'd suggest contacting your local /. meetup. But then, it might be too late for that.

Mildly interesting tangent, we had a sales guy from this group show up at our second Slashdot Meetup in Raleigh, NC. He showed up and pretended to be interested in Slashdot and geek stuff, but really was trying to recruit people to show up or present or whatever. I was never quite sure what he wanted, but he really came across as a sales guy.

He made sure everyone used the right buzzwords.. it's not a conference, it's not a trade show.. I don't remember what he called it, but I wasn't impressed. He had to explain what the heck a Lulu was (all I could remember was the little girl from my mom's old comic books). One of the guys I was with had a beef with RedHat, as well, as he had lost a tad of money, and the guy who was starting Lulu Tech Circus was still making tons off it.

Anyways, the guy was giving out cards and stuff, but he didn't really impress anyone, I don't think. We were far more impressed with the fact that the bar we happened upon had a wireless network and two people had randomly brought laptops..

Although I'm planning on going, mostly because Andrew Hunt of Ruby fame is going to be there, I got kind of burnt out by all the human-spam in the Raleigh area.

What do I mean by human spam? I mean, first I hear some LuLu rep talking about it at the local Triangle Mac Users Group meeting.. I laughed because 90% of the folks in that meeting don't know what "Darwin" is, let alone what most of the cool talks are about (except I did see they are offering Final Cut Pro seminars!).

Then the worst. A few days later THEY SPAMMED OUR SLASHDOT MEETUP! Of all the things to not spam, they sent some droid (Photo #2) over to our nice meetup at Flying Saucer, to sell us all on the idea of going to this thing.

After about 25 minutes, his salesmanship is over, and the business cards handed out, he dissappears.

What the hell were they thinking? Welp.. I guess if it gets folks to go.

Of course, our local slashdot trolling committe made fun of the silly name. But that's typical.

I have an iPod. I watch out for people wearing headphones each day to check out what they're using. This happens to be something that interests me (once you've spent $1100 on a music player, they quickly become interesting).

I also travel into the CBD each morning and out of it each night via the train, and get around on foot and on trams during the day. (All inside Zone 1, so don't push any of your "cheap suburb" crap onto me).

Almost no-one has Mini-disc players.

The majority of people that are listening to portable music have either CD players, tape players, or tiny radios.

Look, I don't care about your high school age friend and what they happen to be using to listen to music (even though I'm still just inside the age bracket you mentioned). I don't care if three or four of your friends happen to have Mini-disc players, because they are not everyone in Australia.

There is virtually no demand for mini-discs here, because no one uses them. If you'd like to show me otherwise, come to the next Slashdot Meetup and show me some Mini-disc users. Although I've missed the last two meetups due to picking up people from airports for nodermeets, and because of being at work a few hours too long, I'll be at the next one. Really. I'm sure...

• Don't just tell your friends, though that is an OK start if that's all you feel comfortable with. I think you should seriously lobby the person(s) who you know (or have some sort of access to) who:
• Have influence over more people than you do. This could be your boss, your Mayor, your Bartender. Choose someone who can affect the habits of more people than you can with less effort.
  
  
  • As an example, I sent the link to Lessig's site plus information on his books, a link to the EFF's whitepaper Unintended Consequences: Three Years Under the DMCA, information about the Skylarov Case, and links to Lessig's other speeches to the VP of Information Technology at my University.
  • I sent this same information to one of my former professors who teaches classes in leadership for a Masters program that churns out upper-level managers for technolgy and telecommunication firms. He in turn will probably (knowing him) make his students read it. I have suggested Lessig's books as textbooks for his class. He also teaches classes in public policy... which is right up this alley.
  
  
  
• Work to raise the level of outrage in your local and national politicians. Seriously... one hand written letter a week will get noticed. Even better, form collectives with Geeks in your area and create letter rings. One person in the group writes a letter and a SASE, then mails it in a larger envelope to another in the group. That person can read the letter for inspiration, writes his or her own, includes more postage, and sends it on. After it gets to the last person, the letters are put into their respective SASEs and mailed off. In the end, how ever many letters (equal to the number in your group... the more the better) lands in the inbox of your Rep roughly once a week. It WILL have an impact. No Rep will ignore 40 letters on the same topic a month (assuming you have a group of 10 writers and that the month has 4 weeks... more is always better). Make sure to always tell how many voters you have influence over. My wife once included the fact that she worked with a couple of hundred voting age students on a questionaire that we recieved from a Rep. Not long after, we got a personal letter that addressed some of the concerns that we had raised.
• Other examples of Highest Order of Power are welcome

There is a better date, every month. Next one is Thursday, August 22 @ 7:00PM. See website for more details.

This collides with the slashdot meetup date of next month....

We do allow the people in the city to pick the venues. In fact, that is what we strive for.

http://www.meetup.com/suggest/venue

Greg
greg@meetup.com

Just would like to comment on a few points ...

- We send email to everyone who signs up to notify people of winning venues, to try to get people to RSVP, to notify people of venue changes, event cancellations, and a few other things. We do our best to keep the user well informed of what is happening. Perhaps people did not use real email addresses. We do tend to get a lot of bounces right after a mailing goes out. Also, please be aware that just because you have 50 members in your chapter, you may not have 50 RSVP's from these people. Many people sign up, realize that they can't make it, and do not RSVP. We can't really force people to attend or not to attend.

- We hope to improve our venues available to vote on via user suggestions. As we are organizing local gatherings for people, we know that the locals will know better than us what the great venues in their area are. So, please feel free to go to http://www.meetup.com/suggest/venue to let us know your suggestions.

- As far as poor hosts, please keep in mind that these are fellow /.'ers who have volunteered to help the event run smoothly. They are useful in helping people find each other. We do not expect the host (or anyone for that matter) to force the conversation any direction. We are simply trying to arrange gatherings for people interested in similar topics (i.e. /.).

- Please feel free to contact us via our support email (support@meetup.com). We do our best to reply to everyone who sends in, and we also take seriously all of our user problems, complaints, and suggestions.

Greg
greg@meetup.com

The Raleigh meetup turned out pretty well. We had 19 people RSVP, and had about 20-21 people show up -- the extras were due to spouses/gf's/small people. It was a bit tight trying to get a table for 20 at Chilis at 7pm, right in the middle of their dinner rush, but they did a great job getting us in there.

We had quite a group of people. Most people were computer geeks, but we had an agriculture geek, a lawyer (yes, we let him stay), a politician (who stayed just long enough to give us his vote-for-me speach), a teacher.. We got seated ~7:20 and the last of us left a bit after 9:30, so it was a good get together (my vocabulary is still stuck in the mid 90's BBS days), and the time really flew by.

I brought a digital camera, but I can't find the stupid usb interface cable, so there's no pictures available right now :(

ADV: If you're in the Raleigh area, join us for the next one.

Everyone, check out slashdot.meetup.com!!!

Here

A check of the top cities shows Toronto(!) with 169 members, London(!!) with 153 and NY with 126.
The rest to 9 are US cities.
Hmmm... new wrench in a US-centric Slashdot universe.

They want your email address because they use it. They send you reminders: "Hey, don't forget to RSVP for the meeting so that we won't cancel it when not enough people say they're going to show up" or "Hey, don't forget the meeting's tonight."

They do have a privacy policy, you know.

You go to the Slashdot meetup website, register with your email address and zip code, and the site tells you where the meetup is in your area.

...or your venue might turn out to be a parking lot.

The Livejournal Meetup was on Tuesday. Here in Springfield, Missouri, the closest of the three venue choices to me turned out to be something called "Farmer Brothers Coffee." I checked the map, and it seemed kind of odd that a coffeehouse would be far out on the east side of town toward the expressway, where mainly office buildings could be found...but I figured the Meetup people knew what they were doing, and voted for it.

Enough other people also voted for it that it became the selected venue...and when I got there, a half hour early (since I was the host), I discovered that it was not, in fact, a coffeehouse...it was a suite in an office building, for a restaurant coffee supply firm. Closed, of course.

So I waited out in the parking lot for the other confused souls to show up, we all had a good laugh about meetup sites that apparently pick their venues by grepping online yellow pages, and then we went somewhere else. We had a good time, all things considered.

Still, I wonder how many other meetups have taken or will take place in parking lots?

Check out the top cities for Slashdot Meetup Day. First on the list is Toronto. Vancouver (13) and Montreal (Tied-14) are in the top 20; taken together they outscore the combination of San Francisco and San Jose. Outside of Canada, London (England) is second on the list (the top American city is Washington, at third). The Aussies are putting in a strong showing with three in the top 20: Melbourne (6), Sydney (7), and Brisbane (11); Perth weighs in at 32nd. "Majority" is too strong a word to use, but ... are us non-Americans taking over Slashdot?

And it's only the Devil Rays...