Slashdot Readers Visit Meatspace

Several readers sent in notes about their Slashdot Meetup experiences; we'll start with tuxedo-steve 's report from Melbourne: "Just a quick wrapup from the Melbourne, Australia /. Meetup. We ran into problems due to the assigned meeting place being closed at the scheduled meetup time, but ended up getting a fair few people (20-30 probably) herded up before moving to a bar that would provide us with service. A good night ensued, fueled by tech-related conversation and a fair amount of beer for those so inclined. For those yet to have their meetup, be sure your meeting place is going to be open!" Below are a few more local reports -- feel free to add yours in the comments.

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?"

We had a great time and talked about everything from the Soviet Union's introduction to newsgroups (Dennis, a.k.a. wetcat, was there) to problems with Linux installs to antiquated hardware installs. I took down the sign I made ("Know who CmdrTaco is? [slashdot logo] Who are you?") around 7:30 when it seemed like everyone was there and people at other tables started staring."

Comments

karma

[Mr_Silver]

We talked geeky stuff (and complained about the new word based karma system).

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).

Re:karma

[metlin]

Yeah, what's with this sudden changes?

But then CmdrTaco has updated the FAQ abt the new changes.

Sheesh, I miss my Karma :-/ 50 gave you a sense of accomplishment, excellent sounds awful ;-)

Re:karma

[rmohr02]

I don't remember them all, but they're now listed in the FAQ.

Yeah, what is up with that? And what does "Excellent" mean?

I guess it's so people with Karma: 49 don't go insane trying to get Karma: 50, since it's "just a number in a database".

I think they should use the animal I'll be reincarnated as instead of these adjectives, so that I'd have Karma: Cow.

Re:karma

[Stephen Williams]

I think they should use the animal I'll be reincarnated as instead of these adjectives, so that I'd have Karma: Cow.

Negative karma presumably means reincarnation as CowboyNeal.

-Stephen

Re:karma

[popeyethesailor]

I wish there the ratings had an associated animal,instead of adjectives;

l.t 10 - Goat

10 - 19 - Sheep

20 - 29 - Dog

30 - 39 - Bunny

40 - 49 - Cat

Re:karma

[buffy]

Doubly frustrating...

I've never really cared about watching my Karma, but I'd taken a recent jump into the high 40s. I did a quick calculation in my head and figured I was easily +50, so I went to check and what do I see... Karma: Excellent.

Damnit! I never even got to see it!

Actually, I just figured at the time that once you hit the "cap" it switched to "Excellent" rather than a numeric value. It wasn't until this little thread that I became aware that a change had, in fact, been made.

Oh well...never cared about Karma before...not going to start now.

wow

[__aahlyu4518]

"We ran into problems due to the assigned meeting place being closed at the scheduled meetup time"

Never knew bartenders read /. as well ;-)

The Winston-Salem, NC Meeting

[LWolenczak]

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.

uh oh

[__aahlyu4518]

"We had the hardware comparison "

On non-geek meetings this would've painted a whole other picture.

You can find it

[__aahlyu4518]

Here

almost ten ??

[__aahlyu4518]

"Still, the meeting went on until almost ten."

That's when the scriptkiddies moms wanted them to be home.

Re:karma- no bloody cats

[evil_roy]

Everyone hates cats.

London Meetup

[umm qasr]

Ahh, the London Meetup, what a story...

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.

Wow - NH in the story!

[zoward]

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.

Pittsburgh Sucks

[Xenopax]

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.

Re:Pittsburgh Sucks

[sharkey]

Indianapolis, too. It was to be in an Internet cafe. The bartender hadn't heard anything about it, nobody looking around for anybody. Had a couple of beers, bailed after a half-hour or so.

Re:Pittsburgh Sucks

[tps12]

Then you turned over the lone napkin on the bar counter, and found, written in pencil, the cryptic letters, "YHBT. YHL. HAND." Better luck next time.

When in MeatSpace

[cpuffer_hammer]

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.

Hartford, Connecticut Meetup Notes

[mikey573]

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...

Boston

[tweakt]

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.

It was at the Klassy Kat, and it sucked

[Hairy_Potter]

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.

Raleigh Meetup

[XaXXon]

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!!!

Re:karma- no bloody cats

[liquidsin]

It's spelled "Katz". And...um...yeah, lameness filter dodging in full effect, yo.

Was it closed, or was it...

[bmooney28]

Slashdotted? ;) sorry.. couldn't pass that one up :)

Chicago?

[RobPiano]

Did any chicago/burbs people go? I would have gone but frankly you people scare me. :)
Rob

Re:Geek types

[fobbman]

"I attempted (when I was 8) to fix a clock my mom got for Christmas but died 2 months later."

You're posting from the afterlife? Or is this Shirley Maclain?