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NYT Techie Night Life Reprogrammed
securitas writes "Almost a decade after the Internet bubble collapsed, the New York Times reports on the revival of the Silicon Alley technology social scene — with a twist. It's now about substance. Gone are the "glitzy club ... minor celebrities, go-go dancers, an open bar and pricey giveaways" in favor of unconferences, Ignite, Pecha Kucha, ideas and 'a night life that involves actually talking to creative people doing exciting things.' Most major cities have a geek social scene like the NYC Soldering Championship [video link] featured in the article." Not surprisingly (for anyone who reads O'Reilly's Make magazine), Bre Pettis is one of the event organizers mentioned.
I predict a total sausage fest.
Come on, ladies.
Geeks are great, once you get to know us.
Sounds leaden.
I'll take the open bar.
Sometimes balance means shutting off those overly acute powers of perception and going with the animal brain every so often.
Dropping the bubbly excess sounds great, but everything doesn't need to be turned into a intellectual engineering exercise.
"Almost a decade after the Internet bubble collapsed, ..."
The bubble burst in 2001. Internet "decades" are much shorter.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
What ever happened to the classic drinking contest? Sure you dont learn something useful like you would in a soldering contest but at least at the end all the girls look significantly hotter.
and your point was ?
babes & cars :)
Is there any Boston social scene around? I can't really find anything that doesn't require me to go to one of the local universities.
Yeah, because I work all week with geeks all day long just so I can hang out with them after work on the weekend. Yeah...no.
Give me the old scene any day of the week. The social scene is about unwinding and meeting interesting people who help you expand your mind, not a bunch of people who think exactly like you and only are willing to challenge you in a game of Warcraft or in a heated discussion about design patterns and antipatterns. If you can't do that at work, then yeah, maybe you need that kind of interaction...but most don't because they get it all day long. Unless you're unemployed, of course.
And we finally have a definitive answer to the question asked at least since the time of the Roman Republic: how can we segregate those with new wealth but no cultural sophistication away from the rest of society without isolating their money from the larger economy?
The apparent answer: soldering contests with expensive drinks.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I figure just throwing a bunch of nerds and alcohol will produce more "intellectual" stimulating exercises than this whole pre-planning will. I mean, nothing wrong with a soldering contest with beer, but I'll take a bunch of napkins and spur-of-the-moment scribbled ideas after a night of drinking with my fellow guys than attend an organized town-meeting.
I mean, who HASN'T had a a great/horrible idea when drinking?
import system.cool.Sig;
Here in South Florida we have Night Life, but no Techies. Seriously, there is no social interaction for geeks down here. You find 2 or 3 smart people and hold on to them for dear life. Nobody seems to socialize in a group larger than 5. Part of that may be how freakin huge our state is and how spread out we all are, but there are just no technology meet-ups in south florida of any decent size or regularity.
"a night life that involves actually talking to creative people doing exciting things."
Pretension still doesn't count as "substance."
'a night life that involves actually talking to creative people doing exciting things.'
withering away one's life in a dark bar corner with sleazy sluts and calling it fun didnt make much sense ever anyways.
Read radical news here
Maybe I'm Captain Obvious, but who wouldn't want to talk to creative people doing exciting things?
stuff |
Trolling a Troll as an AC, what a chump.
For everyone saying 'I get enough of geeks at work', well good. You're one of the assholes I get enough of on the weekends.
I don't mind my 'non-geek' friends at work, but I'm tired of being the weird one for having 'geeky' interests at home. I like to meet people for whom working in technology is a passion, and creativity is a gift.
I think it's nice that they're arranging things that will get people who might not usually go out to the bars. I think you have to have something like a soldering contest, just to get that introverted crowd to go check it out.
At IgniteNYC, after ... a half-hour of drink-refilling and chatting, 16 speakers made PowerPoint presentations.
I've been to evening events like that, with presentations by people who want funding. Listening to people present bad business ideas is entertaining maybe twice. Then it gets really boring.
You've got to go clear to the east coast flagship New York Times for a report on Silicone Valley? Wtf?? And when has the NYT been right about much of anything in recent years anyway???
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Au contraire, I got my lead tinned in record time!
*DUCKS*
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
This is something like the beatnik movement in literature. Although a few good pieces of lit came out of the movement, most of it was amature poets looking for any audience willing to sit through bad poetry. And that audience was other bad poets.
In looking at the examples from the article, it looked like the same thing. Five minutes to spew your geek ideas to an audience of geeks who are interested in one thing - their own five minutes to spew their own ideas.
Um. What?
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
The event was actually pretty fun. It was in a biggish bar/lounge so there was plenty of booze and it was *packed*. The crowd was a mix of geeks, artsy types and business folks. A bit loud, but hey, it's NYC.
The main thing was a bunch of 5 minute presentations. They were NOT demos or requests for funding as someone else implied. The talks ranged from funny (how NYPD conducts undercover prostitution busts) to weird (guerilla knitting) to informative (how to raise money from angels) to cool (a prof from NYU's ITP who showed a bunch of new tactile interface ideas) to preachy (helping out in third world countries). Most of the speakers were pretty good. One guy even did his in rap/hip-hop style.
All in all, it was fun and everyone I know who went was glad they did.
Rob
Meanwhile in Florida nerds still ingest massive quantities of drugs and party like whores.
Yeah so I was in the soldering contest.
It was fun.
The drinks weren't bad by any means. And the crowd was pretty cool. The talks weren't sales pitches... and while some were less than entertaining many were pretty damned awesome.
But what it comes down to... was that I enjoyed it.
Nerdly or not.. if I enjoy it I enjoy it.
Lot of armchair sophists on this site... it's pretty sad. You should get outside occasionally and do something you enjoy, instead of ripping on people for doing the things they enjoy.
=D
Much to my surprise, I have found that Los Angeles has a fairly significant geeky underbelly, for example:
Dorbot SoCal
Barcamp LA
LA G33k Dinner
Mindshare LA
Machine Project
Here is a calendar of LA tech events.
Whoos-AGH! who stole my karma!! my precious :(
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
Even with that my karma is still excellent.
ok - so here is something you don't want to hear. Real geeks are not solder monkeys. Nor are they like "Saul Griffith", the guy on the main page of Ignite and who won a genius award. Thats just media driven hype. Tell me one lasting contribution Griffith has made. Now, the real geeks are the people who walk around grocery stores thinking of the problem they want to solve. They build things, and often, it might just be something like a Microscope. Going to solder fests is not being geeky - its being a geek wannabe.