Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Readers Visit Meatspace
Nest, jmccay writes: "The New Hampshire meetup was great. We didn't have a host, but somebody reserved a table. I think it was the meetup people. We talked geeky stuff (and complained about the new word based karma system). We had the hardware comparison (and one-up contest for a couple of people). All in all I enjoyed it and I am looking forward to next time. I hope more people show up next time (only 5 out of 24 showed up this time {I just checked}). I think voting begins Saturday for the next meetup place!"
MattyBoy.bigBalls() writes: "So the first Slashdot Meet Up is done in Toronto. Lets see ... I got pretty blasted ... talked about programming/video games/movies/science ... basically everything on slashdot ... someone asked me my user name and I had the pleasure of responding MattyBoy.bigBalls() hahahaha ... I met some girl who's into skateboarding/linux/punk rock and slashdot.. that's just odd And since im in Toronto on the subway ride home I had a conversion with some world youth day kid about god.. yikes ... thats scary when I'm wasted ... Rock OUT!"
InfinityWpi writes: "Just a quick reporting-in on the Slashdot Meetup Day in Fargo, North Dakota. We had 11 names on the Meetup list, four people RSVP... and three show up, one of whom hadn't RSVP'd. Still, the meeting went on until almost ten."
Finally, mmarlett writes: "The Wichita, Kan. Slashdot meetup just wrapped up. It was a tight, eight-person group. There were some interesting facts, though:
- Most of us sustained some sort of heavy electrical shock as children, either by inserting metallic things into outlets or cutting hot wires. Monitor coils were also popular.
- No one brought a digital camera, but everyone said they'd bring one next time.
- None of us could remember anyone's name. Once we paid the tab and removed the nametags, it was a lot of "what was your name, again?"
Yeah, what is up with that? And what does "Excellent" mean?
Maybe I'm being really dense but I didn't see any announcement about the changes. It would be nice for a news posting to go up with the details when that happens. Generally users don't like seeing changes that they don't know about suddenly appear without any details.
Of course, if i'm being blind then feel free to mod me into oblivion (and send me down to "Not so bad" or whatever the next Karma category is).
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
A list or a calendar of some sorts of where these meet-ups take place would be quite useful. I for one would defintely attend if I knew when and where they were going to happen.
Maybe I am just blind and somewhere on slashdot that exists, but I do see it anywhere.
"We ran into problems due to the assigned meeting place being closed at the scheduled meetup time"
/. as well ;-)
Never knew bartenders read
The Winston-Salem, NC meeting went well. We had no host. We talked about lots of stuff,including the new karma system... turns out everybody hates it and wants the numbers back. There were seven of us... about the number who RSVP-ed, but we still lacked a host......
We talked till about 8:30, the mall we were in closes at 9, so we all had some good time to talk.
How many people were at the Toronto event, and where was it held? I never heard of slashmeets until too late yesterday to get out...
je ne suis pas un fou
My 30th birthday was the night before - i got so muckin tanked that i slept right through thursday.
Pisses me off that i missed it, but i will be looking to attend the next one for sure.
Anyone have the skinny on the Rochester, N.Y. meeting?
"We had the hardware comparison "
On non-geek meetings this would've painted a whole other picture.
I'd like to hear about any NZ meetup that occured. If any :(
Too bad that our litte we-got-no-armed-forces country is ignored down here most of the time.
Here
I turned up to the glasgow one ( was supposed to be the host) i had printed the sign and everything, was there about a half housr, nobody seemd to trn up and i went away. which was pretty bad. :(
As you slide down the bannisters of life, may the splinters never point the wrong way
I went to satisfy curiousity, and thought I'd leave after 20 minutes. I stayed for two hours until I absolutely had to go and had a great time! Man, what a difference in conversation when most of the people you're talking to have clue 1 as to what the hell you're talking about! I'll be going most every month I believe.
You can see our little meetup on our new Yahoo group gae started quite propmtly by our host.
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
Alas, but the Sydney Slashdot meet was scheduled for the same time SLUG was scheduled. It was a tossup between SLUG, /. or sleep (curse my company's birthday party last night. ill never ever ever ever drink again until tomorrow night :).
In the end, sleep won out. Although, as you'll notice, im still awake :/
Hopefully i'll be able to make it to the next one!
Janie took my gun...
"Still, the meeting went on until almost ten."
That's when the scriptkiddies moms wanted them to be home.
a while back I was looking for info on the Melbourne (that's in Australia for you Americans ;-) meetup, but I forgot about it completely.
I guess a lot of people weren't aware of the meetup, I think if there were perhaps a reminder of some kind for upcoming meets on the main page the turn out would have been a lot bigger.
I know there is a website with all these details, the problem is if you don't know about this website (as a lot of slashdot readers don't see every article) then you still don't know about the events.
20-30 is quite small for a city the size of Melbourne (about 4 million I think), and I definitely know there are heaps of slashdotters here.
--jquirke
Everyone hates cats.
Aint /.ing webservers bad enough? Now we knock over bars too?
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
IIRC, ~130 people RSVP'd for the Pitcher and Piano London /. meetup. It was the 2nd largest after Toronto when I checked. About 10 people showed up. =/ It was a great night though. Dave Green from NTK came along...and sold t-shirts. (I bashed you for selling t-shirts again! but at least I plugged NTK=)
I was hoping, but didn't realistically expect that ~130 people would turn up, but the people that did were great to talk to. We talked about lots of geeky things--as you would imagine. I met some people I had only read about before and really enjoyed myself. Plus there was, of course, lots of beer. I only regret having to leave around 11 to get my train home, when the party was moving to Pizza Express! (Dave's pathological addiction). All in all it was a great night, and I would like to do it again sometime.
I think Redhat up to 7.2 will install on anything with at least 32MB RAM. Gotta go back down to 6.2 for 16MB though.
The future isn't what it used to be.
"I would rather meet up with five dozen AOL or Yahoo! kitty-oriented or crochet related chat room people than the dorks and dweebs posing as the intellectual and technological highbrow in person."
:) awww
tsk tsk tsk.... someone's jealous that he's not intellectual or technologically highbrow....
I think it's a great idea. Ill post more on my experience later.
* Most of us sustained some sort of heavy electrical shock as children, either by inserting metallic things into outlets or cutting hot wires. Monitor coils were also popular.
* No one brought a digital camera, but everyone said they'd bring one next time.
* None of us could remember anyone's name. Once we paid the tab and removed the nametags, it was a lot of "what was your name, again?"
Interesting... How many others recognised themselves from this? I've had an electrical shock from inserting a screw into an outlet (though I've never played with monitor coils). I wouldn't have remembered to take a camera (even if mine's weren't so awful), but would've liked to. And I can't remember anybody's name for the first 1/2 year I know them...
Others like that out there?
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Well, about 5 people had RSVP'd, and two showed up. Neither of us actually suggested the location, so we were both a bit puzzled and still have this sneaking thought that the rest of the group was huddled in a corner avoiding us. Anyway, we talked for a good 3 hours (8 beers) and it worked out well considering how it nearly fell apart. Its not as easy as it looks to go meet at a bar when you have no idea who you're meeting and don't want to walk in and say "So where's the /. crowd?"
That happened to us in Montreal Canada as well.. soeone booked the meeting at 7 at a nightclub that doesn't open till 8:30.
The waiter at the next place over gave us a table on the sidewalk next to the the nightclub's entrance so we could catch any slashdotters going in,
Seven people ended up arriving and we had a good time(at least I did).
Slackware will install on a 486/33 with 8mb RAM, although I wouldn't recommend it
:P
blah
I arrived at the Manchester, NH, about fifteen minutes late, since I didn't know where on route 28 the TGI Friday's was (and there are about a half million restaurants on route 28). It turned out to be right off the exit. I got there and met jmccay immediately. Next came perlmangler (sp?) and his brothers. Much beer and other potables were imbibed, and a good time was had by all, discussing karma, old hardware (VIC-20's and the ubitiquous 300 Hz Vicmodem), operating systems, jobs, wireless, etc, etc ... and playing mind games with the waitress... I had to leave a little early, but I'm making a point to put aside the entire evening for the next one.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
I figured that since a few Pittsburgh people RSVPed someone would actually show up. I sat around in an empty bar for about a 1/2 hour waiting for someone to come, drinking a over blended whiskey sour, and eating stale pretzels. Who the hell picked that place anyways? The only upside to this was the place picked is a 5 minuted drive from my place.
And yes, it was just me in the bar. Not even another customer. Just me and the old bartender who could hear anything I said. Argh, stupid meet-up.
The first one arrived claimed the first post?
I'd rather be sailing...
Change your ratingsystem to
...] ...] ...] ...
animals [pig | dog | cat |
religions [...]
moviestars [Ford | Connery |
architects [...]
computers [ZX80 | PS/2 |
babes [...]
food
Privacy is terrorism.
Ping the server before attemting to get higher level services. :) This can done useing the public switched telephony network or by sending a single client to the server to verify its service status.
Most Meatspace servers will also provide a prodiction of when services will be avalable in the future.
met some girl who's into skateboarding/linux/punk rock and slashdot..
/me raises eyebrow
thats scary when I'm wasted
hmmm.... now it all makes sense.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Let your karma be the sum of the moderations. This way you can be a troll, funny or interesting.
Or with some gramatical mathematics an overrated flaimbait.
Privacy is terrorism.
Well, we just finished up the meetup out here in Mantleshire, and I thought I'd report in.
Fourteen blokes showed up, and we only had to send two home (one was arrested for possession of a firearm, and one had his mum storm and haul him back home). Had several pints and a wee bit of whisky, and discussion of course centered on Free Software and Enterprise.
I was surprised that a number of the lads were finding themselves disillusioned with Linux. The general feeling is that we've been pushed aside as Linux has become more of a mainstream USian commodity, and so a few of them (not myself) are heading back to Windows. But to each his own, as they say.
By the time the pub was closing we were all a might pissed, so I might be mistaken here, but I believe two of the blokes (I won't mention names, but you know who you are) went home together. I guess this was a "meetup" in more ways than one! All in all, a bloody fine evening. It sure beat getting pissed in front of the telly, which is what my weekend's looking like. I look forward to next month's meetup, and encourage anyone near Mantleshire to show up!
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Well, I would have gone, but I was getting a night tour of the underside of the Seattle monorail. Good stuff, but I'll be there next time...
It reminds me of the last couple years, with Counter-Strike. I'm at a Univerisity with 10/100 ethernet everywhere. So, we started playing CS. had 2 or 3 servers running full-time, just for the network. Imagine a LAN-party. cool, huh? Well, imagine one 24/7. There'd be people playing at 4 in the morning, 10 in the morning, 10 at night, all the time.
But that's not the best part. The best was, we'd all play football out on Founder's Field (in the middle of campus), full contact, no matter what weather. After which, we'd all go drink. There were also parties, kegs, bottles, ect. I still hang out with those guys somewhat, and it was really a good experience. Especially M@averick, who'd always get drunk, sometimes get hauled away to get his stomach pumped... but the kid could whoop any of us in CS.
Even though a few failed out because of it, the whole meeting people you've been spending hours with online is a very rewarding experience. NOTE: there are more than just /. meetup's at meetup.com there's livejournal as well (yes, i'm friggin blogger), and others.
Meeting started out with 5, but stragglers kept coming in till there were about 20 all together. We had to keep assimilating nearby booths/tables to make room. The "All your tables are belong to us" comments were made more funny when we figured that we were probably the only people for miles that got the reference.
Slashdot users visit Meatspace? Aren't we gonna Slashdot meatspace? It feels so empty without a link to Slashdot..
slashdot!=valid HTML
Lies... and statistics: Attendance vs Time wasn't quite exponential, but probably the only time a bunch of /.'ers could be described as "Normal" (think Bell curve). Of 80 some listed, and 25 RSVP'd we collected a bar coaster of 18 nicks (I was AC #1 of 3 (now sporting my own shiny new nick!)). Conversation was lively, we had a chair-space overflow and took over a booth, and we even had 2, count'em, TWO attendees of the female persuasion show up! BTW, note to all the RSVP'd no-shows (including our host!) we know who you are and we hope you like being duct-taped to a tree next to a mosquito-filled lake! :-)
Mmm, donuts.
The Hartford, Connecticut area Meetup was very small, but still a good time. No one had a clue who picked Chili's as the venue, but it was a good meal.
Hartford Area's Thoughts:
The general consensus was that posting is not as worthwhile/enjoyable to do anymore on Slashdot for a couple reasons:
- The need to post immediately within a few minutes of a story being posted to have any chance of moderation
- Ambiguous "Lameness" filters when composing messages akin to porno filters: filtering out more stuff than they ought to.
15 people signed up on meetup.
6 people (roughtly) RSVP'd for the first meetup.
3 people actually showed up.
Meetup should allow people who actually show up to have more voting power over the next venue...
I managed to get a pretty stripped-down install of Mandrake 8.1 on my Pentium 75... It is damn slow, but it functions as an e-mail/ICQ terminal.
Build boards not bombs
After reading about the general lack of numbers that showed up at these meetings, I think it's safe to say none of the places where the meeting occured were /.'ed.
Initially there were actually two meetups scheduled for Boston (one originally at Jillians for "Boston" proper), and the one at Gallery Cafe for "North Boston Suburbs"... which is rather ridiculous, so they were combined at the last minute.
Well out of the 80 listed on the page... we had a grand total of -five- people. It was still a good night, not entirely wasted. Much chit-chat about random crap ensued, which lasted a couple hours. Good food, nice view, not bad at all.
But next time don't sign up if you aren't serious about attending. Also, Gallery Cafe is nice, but I would suspect very hard to find and difficult to get to due to traffic at that hour. So please vote for a different venue next time.
Well Our meetup place turned out to be a Small Parking Lot With a non-descript Corporate type building. I hung out there for a while and even rode back to the "real" starbucks in Latham (Newton Plaza). And the Parking Lot. After about 30 Minutes and an Iced Carmel Machiatto (sp?). I rode home. Maybe Next month?
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
everytime we tried to get into a heavy discussion on ipv6, or Win XP, these barely dressed women would walk by, dance around a pole, and try to sit on our laps. You didn't miss much.
Darnit. Either I didn't wait long enough or nobody bothered to show up for the Charleston meetup.
/.ers in the area and see how geeky these people were. oh well, maybe next month.
Showed up at the appointed place about 10 minutes before the appointed time. Waited around for a while, but didn't see anyone claiming any affiliation to the meetup. nobody with signs or anything. checked with the hostess, and she hadn't seen anybody there for the meetup. left to check out the bookstore, came back 15 minutes later and still nobody. by then, the wait for a table was about 40 minutes according to the hostess, so i decided to bag it and go do other things.
unfortunate, because i was looking forward to meeting other
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
Fargo, North Dakota...Still, the meeting went on until almost ten."
OH MY GOD! You Fargo-ites are P-A-R-T-Y ANIMALS! Almost 10, can you imagine. You better goto Church twice this week..!
Sjender's "Pacific Solution" game about the australian pacific-refugee problem?
t io n/
http://home.pacific.net.au/~sjender/pacificsolu
A choice bit of rhetoric from the instructions:
[pic of boat]
A leaky craft full of filthy boat people. Must be stopped at all costs, for the good of the nation. Say it with me: We don't want people like this in our country!
Wow, here in the US, we had people who might say such things -- they were call the Ku Klux Klan!
What a jackass.
thelocust[dot]org
Hmm, Meatspace ... interesting name ... well if I ever open a gay club at least you've given me an idea of what to call it! ;)
When I was about 5, I put the legs of a large stapler into a 120v wall outlet. I saw a blue-white flash, smelled ozone, and then was inexplicably on a table in front of my surprised Sunday School classmates. (My muscles convulsed and launched me a bit.) Much more interesting to me than Sunday School. The teacher kept trying to make me admit that I stuck a pencil in the outlet, and I repeatedly denied this. Nope, not a pencil.
The outlet took the brunt of the visible damage, though -- it was cracked, blackened and partly melted. My thumb got a pretty interesting scar which lasted for the next few years but has unfortunately departed.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Couldn't get there at the scheduled time, but i and two others showed up at the bar around 11:30- the festivities apparently disbanded long before then... might i suggest a time later than 7:00pm?
Around 7 people were there, which was a pretty good turnout. We didn't have a host like a few of the other meetings. We just sat around a table and talked. There was a conversation about open-source as a whole and how it could break into the various markets more easily, which was interesting. I myself had a conversation about the PDA market. Overall, a good meeting.
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!!!
Heh. "...go insane trying to get Karma: 50".
That's funny. Find the right time to post to a story (when it's got <100 comments) and a relatively on-topic post maybe sprinkled with some relevant links that contribute to the story, and it's damned easy to reach the cap. Of course I'm sure you know this too.
Then again, it's just as easy to make an inflammatory comment that gets you moderated to oblivion, LOL
[that particular comment & my attitude toward CmdrTaco still remain]
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Gee, and you sound like such a winner. I can't imagine why you haven't found someone yet.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It's spelled "Katz". And...um...yeah, lameness filter dodging in full effect, yo.
do not read this line twice.
I got to the Nashville meetup spot at about 6:45, one other /.er was there.. small groups of 2 or 3 people started showing up, some with blue hair (obviously /.ers..) We had 12 or 13 people show up, we frightened the TGI Friday's waiter, and we managed to keep the felonies to less than ten. Things rolled along well, but I left at about 10:00, and there were still 6 people there when I left. We got an email address logbook going so we can keep in touch, and we offered to share our vast libraries of books with one another. Also, beer. =]
However, I'd like to hear from some of the people that RSVPed but didn't show up. I'm not accusing anyone of being lazy (heck, I was an inch from not going myself - it was a 30 minute drive for me) but if we get feedback as to why people didn't show up, then maybe we can do something to get better attendance in the future.
I was unable to make the meeting, anyone attend?
~ now you know
I was the only person to RSVP after Charlottesville, VA had 7 people sign up. The location choices were ridiculous -- I'd love to find out where those came from. I submitted an alternate one, but it never showed up as a choice.
It looks as if over-committment is a common theme around here.
-Waldo Jaquith
Well, after a rough start, the Nashville meetup turned out pretty well. We met at TGIFridays in a local mall, and while they were expecting us, I don't think they were expecting quite as many ppl as showed up. First they put us outside on the patio, then it started raining :/ We got moved inside, and after some table shuffling, we finally got settled down and got some drinks :) Oh, did I mention that about 18 ppl showed up (more than had rsvp'd). Conversation on my side of the table ranged from port concentrators to programming to handguns to counterstrike. We covered pretty much everything geek. After getting run out of friday's at 10, about half of the group continued to stand in the parking lot and talk for about an hour. Then the mall security got suspicious! ha, there weren't any computers around, so we were completely harmless. So, it was a great success and I look forward to doing it again next month.
phil
Cincinnati had 11 or 12 show up over the course of the night. At least half were members of CINPA (CINcinnati Networking Professional Association) members. We talked about our tech toys, work and school experiences. I talked about my websites, Uncoveror.com and Dontbuycds.org, and gave out copies of The Uncoveror newsletter. It is good we met at a resturaunt, and not a bar because one slashdotter named Matt was a high schooler who couldn't have got in otherwise. We had fun, and will do it again next month.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Well, since no one else has posted yet, I'll sound off on the OKC OK TGIF rendezvous.
We originally had about 35 signed up, with 3 hosts. 15 showed up, none of whom were hosts, and most of whom were smarter than I.
We sat around and tried to remember everyone's name for awhile, with frequent introductions and occasional small talk. Once we got past trying to be social, it all went pretty smoothly.
I left about nine-ish, having spent a rather pleasant two hours discussing everything from an upcoming bewoulf laptop cluster to acoustic cradle modems and teletype. All in all, it was a fairly productive way to meet like minded individuals, and have a good time.
Slashdotted? ;) sorry.. couldn't pass that one up :)
Na such place mate! Unless Columbia has decided to rejoin the Glorious Empire...
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Just reading other people's posts I see a problem: a lot of test were held in bars. I'd venture to say half of the people who would have gone aren't over 21!
/. are college undergrads like myself, and I don't turn 21 until I'm a senior which means that I couldn't get into the Pittsburgh one even if I wanted to go.
I'd say a disproportionate number of people reading
Finally, it is summer, which means a lot of people are away from the big cities as classes don't start for another month.
Maybe in September there will be more attendance
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
about 120 signed up... 30 RSVP'd, and around 30-40 actually showed up, quite impressive really... the restuarant had to move us around a bit cause people kept appearing ;) overall it was a really nice event; everyone was ready to talk about anything ;) definately doing this again... thanks all, 'twas a great idea...
later
I think people are a little confused about the difference between signing up for the meetup service and rsvping to the meeting. I wanted to see where this thing was in Kansas City and it signed me up. I wasn't able to make it so I didn't RSVP, but once I signed in the KC count went from 44 to 45. If you want to gauge how many people will be there, look for the RSVPs.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Where:
2002/08/25 19:00MDT Old Chicago, 1102 Pearl St, Boulder, CO 80302
Who showed:
Eazolan
Ben
Wire
Ehackathorn
Hobart
O3zone
Summaries/Photos at:d erSlashdot.html
http://www.dim.com/~mackys/irregular/current/Boul
http://www.jb.org/meetup/
(The pictures being low-quality is my fault)
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The most karma you could ever have was 50. After that it could only go down.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We had ten people RSVP and five of us showed up, so it seems our 50% is not as bad as we thought. Our venue changed an hour before the meetup to some bowling lane, and we ditched that pretty quick. It was mostly a good discussion of the awaited Perl 6, multiCase or under_score, and the introduction of Fark which, I might add, is friggin hilarious. We are in the process of looking for beer sponsors -- Sam Adams, do you hear us?
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Having just recent arived in Rochester, NY, (previously in 714, 909 and 213) I was pleasantly surprised at the size of the turnout at the starbucks conveniently located in sight of my desk. It's always nice to be able to talk to fellow tech heads in meatspace, especially those whose circles are outside of yours even online.
Not sure exactly how many people signed up, or how many actually showed, but it looked like a relatively decent time was had by all (even accounting for the lack of ethanol.) [Too bad the organizers didn't seem to show (or at least, remained safely anonymous...)]
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, I'm a pretty loudmouthed commentator, so my old account would be modded in both ways pretty often. I had 190 or something when the cap went into effect. After I was only able to lose it I basically stopped posting.
:P
If you asked me, they should have either set everyone's cap to their current level, or just hacked everyone's total down to 50. seeing your karma slowly decline like that was just depressing
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Images and light narrative can be found here.
There's something a little subversive about clusters of technophiles, scattered across the planet, having synchronized gatherings in chain restaurants and bars. Maybe next time, we should ask to have them in their basements.
"Welcome to Nerd Club. The first rule of Nerd Club is, you do not talk about Nerd Club."
His name is Robert Malda...
His name is Robert Malda...
His name is Robert Malda...
His name is Robert Malda...
Venue: A little iffy. The meetup was originally scheduled to be held at a bowling alley near Union Square, but this got changed last minute to a bar above the alley. Not everyone got word in time, so we may have had some attrition there. And god knows if any of the under-21 /.ers got turned away by the elevator bouncer.
As for the bar itself? Nice enough, but didn't really have a /. vibe. It kinda felt like one of those corporate-chic places that inevitably get picked for the company holiday party. (This turned out to be remarkably accurate later in the evening when a large group from Merrill Lynch, I think, marched in, got drunk, and played Twister for a few hours at the far end of the room.)
And before I forget: $8 drinks at the bar(!) I tried to explain the whole "free as in beer" concept to the bartender, but I don't think I got very far.
The meetup: A mixed bag. The next one of these could definitely use a host. As it was, people just kinda wandered in, spent a couple minutes figuring out if the extremely sedate and fragmented group over by the bar was indeed /., grabbed a drink, and tried to form their own 2-3 person molecule of conversation. It would have been cool if everyone had gotten together at some point in the evening and done something, anything. Heck, form a big circle and play some "Duck, Duck, Penguin".
Other than that, my only observation is that people went home *way* too early -- especially for New Yorkers. By 10:30, it was just myself and another bloke closing out the place, playing pool and doing tequila shots. It's just unholy.
Biggest surprise: To the best of my knowledge, not a single laptop was whipped out over the course of the evening.
There's a limit to the number of posts you can make per day? That's pretty asinine.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I guess I was about 4 years old when I put a penny across the exposed prongs of a plug that was half out of the electrical socket. I remember doing it, even.
When I was 5 or so (Hurricane Camille came through in '68, that might have been it) we had a hurricane leave a lot of flooding in my hometown in Louisiana. There used to be a Texaco gas station/convenience store next door, and Mom went over there for bread or somesuch, and I demanded to be allowed to tag along. I remember walking in ankle-deep water, finding a wire laying on the ground, picking it up and saying, "hey Ma, look what I found". Apparently the wire was still attached to the electrical pole, and was live.
I'm told that my mom saw me standing frozen, and started screaming for my Dad who was working int he yard repairing something that broke during the hurricane due to the high winds, and he came running over, full-speed, and grabbed me without breaking stride. His momentum forced the wire out of my hand. I don't remember him grabbing me, though. I must have been out by then.
Anyhow, both events landed me in the emergency room.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
Well, I can safely say the Sioux Falls, SD meetup sucked. It was just me, and a friend who rode with me... frackin' great time!
/. irc meeting? See if we could get thousands of slashdot users in the same channel on the same server at the same time on the same day... that'd be nifty.
Way to go to all the poser bastards who said they'd be there. YOU GUYS SUCK!
Geeks weren't meant for meeting face to face... why don't we have a
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
I showed up at the Klassy Kat meetup, perhaps I should have tried the Starbucks one.
We had the same problem as the Australian folks, the venue was not open. It is a nightclub (Lava Lounge) and only opens at 20:30. It is unfortunate that nobody checked this before suggesting it as a venue. Fortunately there was a restaurant next door with outside tables where we could sit and eat/drink while waiting for others to show up. A total of 7 people showed up and we had a good conversation. None of the so-called hosts made an appearance. I hope we can have more of these with a bit better organisation, it is interesting to meet new people in the technology world.
Did any chicago/burbs people go? I would have gone but frankly you people scare me. :)
Rob
We actually had about 18 folks show up, although nobody fessed up to being a host. We had a strong showing from the OKC Linux user group (http://linuxsig.org) which wasn't planned. It was fun!
http://james.nontrivial.org
Either that, or nobody else showed; either way it must have been pretty lame. Or maybe everybody was later than me? (I waited a while).
James
Tempe AZ
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I met myself in my apartment. What a loser! I'm never gonna meet him again!
Have you read my journal today?
Cats rule. There is one main difference between a dog and cat when it comes to their relationship with humans. You become a dog's master, and you befriend a cat because you will never truely break a cat.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
err ..albany .. so 678 rt7 .. starbucks .. sure lure me out with the promise off coffee .. so its a office building w/ tony the tailor in the basement and various lawyers .. I hit the mobile station for smokes and the yellow pages .. yes there is or rather was a starbucks computer training something or other at 678 rt 7 .. not there now .. WTF .. who set this up. Lets do better next time .. for starters .. some place that exists .. indoors would be nice .. coffee is a must for me to start the car .. .. it took /. to make me consider actually talking with someone .. I guess I might maybe sorta kinda be a host .. if I have too .. but no hats or funny clothes .. so .. ideas into that little form box and we will vote ..
Gort, Klaatu, Barada Nikto
About 12 people showed up at Jillian's at CityWalk. Lots of fun, however the general noise factor made any sort of serious conversation impossible.
Of the 12 people, three of us were female. In your face, NJ!
I have created an IRC channel at irc.openprojects.net called #la-meetup . Hopefully we'll figure out a time when everyone can meet in there. As far as future meetups go, we all definitely want to do this again. Whether we do it under the auspices of Meetup or not is not clear.
I'll get pix up today sometime. They'll be up on MsGeek.Org and I'll send a link address to the folks at Meetup.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Just moved there but had other obligations last night. Since I saw only about three or four RSVP's, reading the posts, did it actually happen?
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Just would like to comment on a few points ...
/.'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. /.).
- 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
- 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
Greg Whalin
greg@whalin.com
Did Milwaukee happen? Duty called I could not make it. (did not rsvp)
A big scam. 80 people signed up, only 3 showed up. Or I was the only person in a bar with no other customers.
Like I said earlier...#3957083
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
It was a small affair of about 8 or so people. We had fun until at least 8:30 pm when a couple of us left. We all agreed a better venue than Starbucks was needed. Preferably someplace that served real food & beer. Someone took a digital photo and will be soon available elsewhere.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
It went well, I thought. Had close to 20 people show up. Somebody *did* bring a digital camera, and soon got to discussing its features, price, battery life and other geeky things :) Nobody brought a laptop, notebook or anything like that :(
:)
:) ).
:(
Sit & Spin was rather noisy - it's a great funky place for three to five people, but with this many, it got obnoxious. I never even met half the people, because they were on the other side of the table and I couldn't even see several through the decor, let alone hear them.
Oh, and there were a total of *three* women there, which seems like a pretty high number, from what I read about the other meetings
We chatted about distros, bashed Micro$loth, wailed about karma, music, heck, Vikki even waxed eloquent on her political views (which are slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan
Somebody earlier had a great idea: Meetup should allow people who actually show up to have more voting power over the next venue. YES!!! There *was* parking, at $6, behind the building, but then you had to walk 2 blocks to get in the front (they weren't allowing people in from the back - that was for the bands that started at 9:00, throwing us all out). Two blocks may not sound like a problem, but I have multiple sclerosis - my total safe daily walking ability is about 4 blocks. After getting in the building, then standing and chatting for two hours, I was *seriously* beat
Maybe something up north a tad would be better? Near Northgate? There's good bus connectivity there, and enough space that free parking is the norm rather than the exception. Plus, maybe this time we could find a place more suited to gatherings of more than 4 people at a time?
Regardless, I still want to attend the next one. Vikki may opt out - she's not really a people person, preferring the feel of a keyboard under her fingers (or a soldering iron in her hands) to actually going someplace to chat.
Lemon curry?
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I think the best part of the evening was when we attempted to /. the bar by ordering everything simultaneously, and then repeating our orders three or four times when they didn't come fast enough.
That green slime had it coming.
I think we had at least 4 women at the DC meetup (out of 25-30 people), including one who did the organizing (thanks).
The restaurant was a little too noisy, but we eventually got our own room, but it wasn't away from the noise.
We had at least one laptop, one digicam, which we passed around so everyone could take photos (I also had mine, but we didn't use it), and someone had a neat little VCD player, which was like a CD walkman with a video screen embeded in the lid.
Of course, everyone (just about) had a cell phone, and there were probably lots of PDA's.
Hopefully the next one will be a little farther away from the city (like in Fairfax county, where a lot of us live), so we don't have to deal with so much traffic.
- Eric, InvisibleRobot.com
Did any of the Iowa groups actually get together? There were several scheduled across the state, but I haven't seen anything about them yet. Next time I may consider driving to one of the more interesting ones if I hear a good report.
Oddly enough, the meetup suggested as closest to me when I entered my zip is NOT the closest. Didn't really matter though. Either way, one listed 5 signups and the other had none. I have a feeling only maybe Des Moines, Cedar Rapids or Iowa City drew people.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Well, the Cinci meetup went pretty well . . . we didn't have a host, so the initial getting a table/finding other people part was a bit difficult. Our meetup was at a Chili's, about 20 minutes from downtown. We probably had a dozen people over the course of the night, over a pretty broad spectrum. We had IT professionals, a high school student, a med student, a contractor or two, a tech, and me (the materials engineering grad who's looking for a job.)
Discussion was interesting, with there usually being two or three discussions going simultaneously about various topics. These varied from WiFi, to distros, to mutual aquaintances. I'm not the biggest computer geek out there, so there were definitely areas where I was out of my depth, but the conversations were still interesting.
I don't know when the meetup ended, but I left a little after nine because I was heading out to a bar with some non-Slashdot friends of mine (though there was definitely a part of me who would have liked to have stayed and chatted some more). Overall a good time . . .
getting to meet new people that new what karma and mod points were =]
Our group (the san jose, ca) one was about 17 or 18, a few people larger than who had RSVPed for it, but we hope to get more people next time! A Yahoo! Groups list is being set up for the people in this area asap.
We want more people here next time! 88 people on the list, and I want at least *HALF* RSVPed next time! Of course, we will have to find a larger venue in that case...
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
So how did Cafe Cocomo (http://www.cafecocomo.com/) work out? When i found out that it was a dance club with a dress code, it seemed like a really mindless choice for a /. meeting, so I passed on it. But it sounds like i missed out. Did Cocomo end up having /. appropriate places, or was every S.F. nerd more stylishly dressed than I would expect?
mahlen
When the president does it, that means it's not illegal.
--Richard Nixon
New Karma System:
1. Excellent
2. Good
3. Neutral
4. Bad
5. Terrible
6. Cowboy Neal
-Sean (I may have the order/names wrong, so sue me.)
Well, this will probably go into oblivion since there are already 300+ comments posted, but I thought I'd add our locale's story.
I arrived with my friend Valorie at about 7:45 (we were late because we had to walk her dog!) We went into the venue (Cafe Cocomo) only to find out that it was a salsa dance club that had just opened at 7:30. When we walked back outside, we noticed some geeks in a car and asked them if they were with the Slashdot meetup. They said yes and pointed us to a sign on the gate that started with "Nerds can't dance..." and ended with directions to a local pizza joint.
People straggled into the pizza joint until about 8:15, when the pizza place finally found a table to accommodate 14 people. (Considering 110+ people signed up, this was a rather disappointing turnout. Our host didn't even arrive!) I took over the ordering of the pizzas, and we snarfed down 4 pizzas and two orders of garlic bread, as well as a lot of beer, wine, and soda.
There were definitely some interesting people there. Everyone I talked to had written software of some sort -- one guy had written shareware to search for porn, and two other guys carried around an iBook with some software that searched for open wireless LANs. One guy had legally changed his name to Lunatic! He had the most interesting fingernails -- he grew them way out and some of them were several inches long. It seemed to be a pretty Mac-centric crowd, but then again, this is San Francisco, so I wasn't surprised.
All in all, we had a great time and a lot of fun. If you're a Slashdot reader in or around San Francisco, please join the slashdot-sf Yahoo group so we can keep in touch.
Here are a couple of other wrapups I found from our group: Anonymous Coward and another Anonymous Coward. (I was surprised at the number of people without Slashdot usernames!)
And to those of you who signed up but didn't go (including our host), well, you missed out on a fun night!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Many people also sign up because it's the only way to find out where the meetup is. I wouldn't be surprised if that is also why you get a lot of fake e-mail addresses.
And maybe you should only list the people who RSVP'd.
-ll
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Everyone hates cats.
Yeah. That's what everyone said at the meeting.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
About 14 of us met at T.G.I Friday's for the Nashville-area meetup. Ages ranged from 17 to early 30's, and amazingly both genders were represented, so conversation was lively and covered a multitude of topics. Slashdotters exchanged friendly greetings with such gratuitous puns as "We've slashdotted the server," etc. The somewhat unexpected turn-out provided ample opportunity for the professionals to share some much-needed advice with the students, advice that may soon be put to use in apprenticing/interning positions. The overall experience was rewarding, providing us geeks with a techno-fellowship we don't often have the opportunity to enjoy offline. Even after the meal and the departure of a few working slashdotters, conversation continued in the parking lot and even as I type this, slashdotters sit behind me in my house discussing esoteric filesystems and their applications - and this is 5 1/2 hour after we first met up. I think I can safely say that the Nashville-area meet has been a definite success. Kudos to whoever came up with the idea, and I hope all the other meets turned out as well as ours did.
it'd be great to get suggestions from sf people for venues for the next meetup. sorry about the cocomo mixup - they are OUT of our venue database. (we didn't know about the dress code thing when we added them initially.) post your suggestions here or email them to me directly. venue voting opens soon, so the sooner the better. jen@meetup.com
Anything happen in Plattsburgh? I checked and like 4 people were signed up, I had also made plans... anything happen?
No, I fully understand why people use fake email addresses (fear of spam). I do it myself on many sites. But, if you use a fake email address, you can't expect us to actually be able to send you an email. :)
The member list has a little symbol next to those users who have RSVP'd.
Greg
greg@meetup.com
Greg Whalin
greg@whalin.com
Slashdot seems to overlap 2600 quite a bit. There were a lot of 2600ers who already knew each other, but also a few of us outsiders who didn't know anyone.
There were a few people who I think were under 21 (CS undergrad students). I'm glad we didn't have the meetup in a bar, because if these people (I'm thinking of one in particular) had been excluded, I think things would have been less lively. I mean, just because they think perl is a decent language, doesn't mean we should get rid of them -- I'm sure as they get older they'll start to see the light and switch to Python. ;-)
I was the guy who had been pushing for a PGP/GPG signing party and failed, but at the meetup I found at that there is at least some interest. So I guess I'll try again next month.
Everyone was very friendly and I enjoyed it. Whoever's idea this was, gets a karma point.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Man.. it was slow here. Here at the Columbus meet, it was just me and 10 strippers. These girls were complete sluts. The problem was, they were all Redhat users, it was so lame. I wish there would have been some more nerdy Debian types there... maybe next time.
-gerbik
Je suis désolé, mais j'ai eu un cours, qui coûte assez cher. (Je ne veux pas le rater, ça c'est sûr) Mais je pense que c'est vraiment pas mal comme idée, surtout pour les étrangers et expats...Et la prochaine fois, bon, j'ai trouvé un nouveau boulot aux USA, donc... si vous êtes à Boulder...
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
First, I was late too - it happens, its okay. Second, we *did* leave a forwarding address, complete with the MeetUp logo on it and a map. We went someplace with alcohol, since everyone at that point was of age. I agree with your third grievance - the place was hard to find and the size wasn't big enough.
Hopefully we can get a better handle on things in the future. OH well.
I don't think we have to prove anything to you.
I sure didn't go - seeing as everybody (EVERYONE) wanted to go to sawgrass. Somehow (meetup probably had a kickback) Corner Pocket Billiards (WAY on the other side of the county, and not in the best neighborhood) got chosen as a venue. BS as far as I'm concerned. That site is stupid...
Chipper
who the heck chose corner pocket billiards, I won't be visitng Wilton Manners. Sawgrasswas a better idea.
Lousy facepalm.
Having been to a semi-successful MeetUp (Ann Arbor, Michigan), I'd like to add in a few comments that I hope get modded UP so that people will see them, and make their Future MeetUps (if they intend to have them...) a lot easier to deal with.
.. what.. 12? 13?) had the wonderful thought of reserving a spot for as many as he saw on the RSVP board, and then the waitresses got to help put us together.. though by that point, we had amassed into a group of 5 not-at-all-looking-like-we-would-be-together people, so when the next person wanders by they're like "oh, you're slashdot."
/. hat or t-shirt, that's probably a REALLY good indicator, I just picked the geekiest looking thing that I could find.. (yeah, I know my employer's not THAT geeky, but i didn't want to wear my Sprint t-shirt as that got me deluded with insults the last time i wore it to a gathering) Since my vehicle is pretty beat up, I might just spray paint a big "/." on the hood of my truck next time. lol.
Pick a restaurant, or other relatively well known public place, that you know EXISTS. This is what Venue Voting is for. If you see places that don't exist, you might want to contact MeetUp, so that they don't continue to get people looking for places that don't exist! If you're in an area where people might be travelling long distances, vote for a site that's EASY to find for people who might not be familiar with your area - something near a Highway/Interstate, or at least near some major crossroads. Our location was just about perfect - although packed as heck, and we had to wait 40 minutes or so for a table, at the corner of US 23 and M17/Washtenaw is a pretty easy to identify location.
First person there (or, even before hand) should let the staff know that there's a group of people by the name of "slashdot" (or "slashdog" if your waitress is too busy checking out Reverend George, when you tell her the name). Get some space reserved. I thought 8 people was pretty decent, esp since there were only 5 RSVP'd when I last checked before leaving for the restaurant. Brendan (probably the youngest person at any of the meetups - 7th grade makes you
Second.. wear some geek clothing, or something. Just by chance, Tomo and I happened to pull into the parking lot, and park nose-to-nose at the exact same moment, and then after not finding anyone, we returned to our vehicles to hang out.. obviously looking like we were waiting for something. If anyone owns a
Third: Stick around. if you're going to a spot that's got food, even if there's only one or two people that pop in, grab some food. play some video games. Just hang out.. do SOMETHING at the location. We're geeks. Many of us are habitually very late. Many of us are referred to by our co-workers as operating in our very own time zones. People will come in late. Also, people might be driving in from a way away, and not familiar with directions or traffic issues.
Fourth: voice your concerns with the people at Meetup. Obviously since slashdot represents the largest number of people on meetup so far, it's quite new. I think the people who set it up did an excellent job on the site, but obviously there's a few things that need to be addressed. If they don't soon setup any way to communicate amongst people in the site, then I'd like to welcome everyone to come and make use of the message boards and instant messaging at my site ( http://mage.kicks-ass.net/ ). Yes, Slashdot is a big message board. It's sheer size makes it almost a difficult medium to use to communicate with people, back and forth. I rarely see any CONVERSATION on slashdot, just comments on stories.
Fifth: Have fun!
Hey.. did anyone show for the meeting in Southgate, MI? I went to head over that way after I got back home and did what I had to do there, but encountered some really bad construction zones that yahoo's driving directions took me through, and all the street signs were missing, so i couldn't find anything.
Thanks for showing up George, Martin, Eric, Brendan, Tomo, Jason, anyone I forgot...
-out
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I think I'll submit Dave and Buster's as a venue choice. Its on 85 past north of 285 a couple miles.
Any Atlanta folks have any thoughts, objections, support?
It's okay, my cat hates you, too.
The place the Melbourne gathering finished up at was more than appropriate. It didn't just have a row of Internet terminals available for $A2 an hour if you bought a drink, but the tipping jar on the counter next to the Internet prices promised to improve your karma.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
meetup.com's website said not enough people had signed up for a /. meetup here. um... whatever. There were 5 of us at the BozemanLUG meeting. The LUG meets the last Thursday of each month so we will have a conflict anyway. Nonetheless, I am surprised because Bozeman is a very high-tech oriented area. Linux Meetup Day is August 6th and there will be one of those here.
--
I think, therefore, ken_i_m
"Doing my part to spread the open and free software memes."
Here's the pix page...
http://www.msgeek.org/html/la-meetup/
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Well, that guy obviously was less then 50, so he could not have gotten above. My old acount still has like more then 100. Or it did, anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Sacramento's was good. I have a feeling there'd've been more than the 12 who showed up if the venue hadn't changed at 12:30 that afternoon. :) (Someone forgot to see if the winning venue _existed!_ D'oh!)
;^)
Anyway, I was there, 'representin' the big LUG in the area, LUGOD. The head of the smaller SacLUG (a coworker of mine at Worldcom, in fact) was there too.
Interestingly, most of the folks who showed up were people I've never met - so they aren't regular LUG'ers. They will be, though. Bwahaha.
One dude who came had just recently moved to the west coast (if you could call Sacramento that!) from Flordia.
As with one of the posted meet-ups above, noone brought their digital camera. I had my Zaurus, though, of course, and showed off the recently-ported Doom running on it, and handed out some leftover handouts Sharp gave me for LUGOD.
I should go into marketing...
-bill!
I reached Rivoli (meetup place) @ 7:10 and thought I must be late .. then found out that I was the 2nd to reach there !!!!! Anyways .. I had a nice time there .... when I left @ 11:00 there were still 5-10 ppl. Here are the pics @ http://www.zaksolutions.com, and Rachel Is NOT an alien !!!
-- We are born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse.
Thanks for the heads up; I'll see about fixing it. In the meantime, you can reach the Geek Ed pages with the following links:
How Stock Options Work
How To Negotiate a Job Offer
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9