I Stopped Attending Programming Meet-ups
python.shI always mean to go to meetups to meet other programmers in my area, but 99.9% of the time I don't actually do it. Every single meetup is in the evening after work, when I'm tired and just want to go home. Maybe this is less of a problem when you're in your early twenties, single, and used to staying out late. But at this point in my life, not getting home to my wife until 9 or 10 so I can maybe making some soft connections just doesn't seem worth it.
I'm 23 and feel the same way. I went to meetups during college when I was free at 2-4pm. Now I get off work at 6pm and most meetups are in places that extend my commute home by 20 mins. I really don't think they're worth getting home at 10pm.
Also, not to sound rude, but I get enough of socializing with programmers at work.
I'm 23 and work til 5-6 and go to meetups from 20 minutes away up to almost 2 hours away on weekdays, but then again I really love meetups.
I think part of it is I don't feel like I get enough socializing with programmers at work...
To each their own! Glad you found great meetups.
I'm in the same boat. There are a ton of Boston meetups, but I live in the suburbs for many lifestyle reasons. The commute doesn't justify sticking around after hours when I have an hour and a half walk/train/drive home.
Similar situation here as well; live and work just a bit outside of the Boston metro area, driving in/out after work is definitely a deterrent.
Agreed to all your points. I'll add that I have no interest in going drinking.
A number of tech meetups (no necessarily programming) are held at loud venues and involve alcohol. In other words, getting drunk under loud music while yelling at each other 'cause you can't hear and not hearing half of what other people say.
Exactly what I need after a twelve hour day. I never understood how this can be considered "networking". It's shallow, ineffectual and mostly useless.
I get this, I really do. I had to feel like I was forcing myself at times to go, but I knew it was good for me to get out, meet like minded people with similar interests. My manager even encouraged me. You know what, I got my current dream job from it! It takes motivation, drive, and determination at times, but it can pay off. I'm 35, but it shouldn't matter what age you are. I am single, but I don't stay out late and I do have to get up early to start my day. I do live downtown though which helps (Austin). Which made going to the meet-ups no more than a 10 min walk to and from my work and apartment.
You say you mean to go and then 99.99% of the time you don't. When I mean to attend a meetup, I RSVP "Yes". I presume you do too.
If you can't make it, please be courteous and release your "yes" RSVP so that people on the waitlist can get in and so that the organizers can plan more accurately.
If you aren't likely to make it in the first place, please don't RSVP "yes" for the off-chance that you feel like going - please wait until you know you are going for certain to update your RSVP.
You say you mean to go and then 99.99% of the time you don't. When I mean to attend a meetup, I RSVP "Yes". I presume you do too. If you can't make it, please be courteous and release your "yes" RSVP so that people on the waitlist can get in and so that the organizers can plan more accurately. If you aren't likely to make it in the first place, please don't RSVP "yes" for the off-chance that you feel like going - please wait until you know you are going for certain to update your RSVP.
A good organizer knows this is statistical. Only a certain percentage of people show up in any given 'open' social meetup event. I've been going to these for years and the organizers tend to account for that. I'm surprised programmer-organizers wouldn't be even more keen on the statistical and probability aspect of organizing headcount.
Fortunately, I haven't experienced any situation where a lot more people actually show than is expected due to the 'overbooking' and then when someone essential shows up (perhaps a speaker) they have to drag someone out to make room :)
We have never asked people to leave, to my knowledge. We usually have businesses hosting us, so we are well below the fire-code head count limits, while still maxing out at what the business is comfortable hosting a head count at.
We have had to turn people away at the door.
This is very rare, and I hate to do it.
(If it looks like we need to, I try to make an announcement before everyone shows up so we aren't turning away dozens of people a quarter of an hour after the start time. I have only done this a couple of times.)
I've been to meetups where this happened and while it isn't ideal I've usually received a warning that I should show up early.
I was talking more about telling somebody already inside that they have to leave because they were randomly selected (and using the police to force the issue if needed), similar to what recently happened with United.
Yeah, we haven't pulled a United yet, and, barring enforcement of the code of conduct, I don't intend to ever do that. :)
Using "you" here is a bit blaming, especially given the nature of RSVP is "Reply if you please". If someone wants to RSVP for an event, that means they choose the event for themselves in their internal view.
Out here, especially with social sites, RSVP is taking on another meaning entirely. Those "slots" are fictitious (just like airlines overselling seats) and assuming attendance numbers will be what something like Meetup says they are is irrational. I usually factor in a 40% attendance rate - nothing wrong with that if it's more, but it's unlikely to be 100%, unless one holds an irrational belief their event is going to net more than another.
That's not to say it doesn't make planning for the event a bit more challenging, but I seriously doubt there anything anyone can do about it other than charging for the event, which may not be desirable.
That's why I said "If".
You're right, that on aggregate, groups do factor in a poor showup rate.
And that adds to the cost of hosting. You risk buying too much perishable food versus running out of food and disappointing the latecomers.
There are options for dealing with this:
- Charge for the meetup (but then people with fewer resources can't come.)
- Track no-shows, and kick them out of the group (which is a burden for the organizers and can penalize people with really good reasons for not being able to make it.)
- But just saying something about it makes a difference in the showup rates (we tried it and it works).
So that's what I'm doing here.
> - Track no-shows, and kick them out of the group (which is a burden for the organizers and can penalize people with really good reasons for not being able to make it.)
Realistically this is the only option. No-shows tells people who show up that the numbers they expected to see aren't realistic and that they may be the only one that shows up the next time.
Charging for the meetup just irritates people, and sets them up for disappointment. Putting a limit on attendence and creating a waitlist works. (Although some of the people who were truely a maybe won't sign up)
Or you just develop a sense for typical attendance over time.
I run various volunteer activities. Some do require people to sign up for free but we really make it clear to people to please give us notice of cancellation if it really matters to us.
You can charge a small fee. I know events that charge and offer to refund it if you show up. But for more casual evening events, this doesn't really work most of the time. People don't like to feel like they're locking themselves in which they tend to do even with a small fee.
If you're "kicking people out of the group" and telling people not to "RSVP" unless they're 100% committed, then I feel like you're more effectively making people disinterested in your group than you are solving your attendance estimation problem.
If your group is so large that you have a waitlist, I'd be willing to bet there's a consistent statistic of RVSP vs Attendance that you could rely on. Maybe check records of your past events and see if there's much fluctuation?
You would be surprised on the amount of people who sign up for a meetup group and never attend a single meetup.
Not the sort of meetups people are talking about here, but I'm on a bunch of lists and a number of meetup groups where I have never or only rarely attended an event.
I run a social group that has about 3.6k+ people on it. We have about 200-300 active people at any given time. Most of the people who drop out of the group have 0 RSVP Yeses, and 0 RSVP Nos.
We do a lot to get attendance up and to create events that people want to attend.
Our group was used to about a 66% showup rate, with a top end of probably about 80%.
Showup rates started declining, probably due to people thinking it didn't matter if they didn't make it, and not canceling their "Yes". We started discussing the problem when we had a 40% showup with a large waitlist.
We considered tracking no-shows for suspension, but before we even started that, I started mentioning the fact that we were thinking about the problem to members, and making statements on meetup pages about us looking at no-shows.
We didn't have to actually change policy, but thanks to some simple communication, we got showup rates back to their average 66%.
As a best practice, we should probably continue to mention it from time to time to ensure we don't get back to those kinds of lows.
That seems sensible. For our meetup we assumed 50% no-show, and that 10-30% would RSVP within 24 hours of the event. We only showed the location if you RSVPed just to get better estimates, but ultimately we did the math and calibrated from there.
What? Who said anything about RSVPing?
They didn't, but, in the off chance that when they said "I always mean to go but rarely do" they actually meant "I always RSVP to those things but I never go", I think the parent was just taking the opportunity to make a general PSA about how the etiquette works.
What kind of meetup would you go to?
I organize a meetup and I'm always struggling with how to increase attendance of people like me (and you) - not in 20's, have a house/spouse/kids and a commute home to the suburbs.
In general I'm having problems connecting with anyone my age outside of work. They all seem to have very little capacity or interest to do anything other than go home from work and see their family.
Consider having in during lunch hours. Especially if there is a topic relevant to work, managers will be super supportive of people going to them.
That's a good idea. Travel time may be an issue (I'm looking to network with developers outside my company). Also I feel that the type of people who won't take a detour on the way home from work will also eat lunch at their desk so that they can leave a few minutes sooner.
People with kids have very particular timetables they have to hit. Usually their lunch time would not be so regimented. Truthfully, though the best thing is to try it out and see the kind of people you get. I made it a point to engage with every attendee I did not immediately recognize and find why were they there and if this was their first meetup what got them there.
I would absolutely go to lunch events. (It's quite common for the non-programmers where I work within their fields.)
In fairness, I've been to rather expensive conferences that had talks that didn't start on time, seemed to have whole tracks that were only loosely related to overarching conference topic, and had many presenters who either started too slow, or went too fast.
What I mean, I suppose is that this isn't a Free v. Paid issue. This is a leadership issue, and you're welcome to not go. But if you believe in the free meetup culture and it's ability to create community amongst otherwise reclusive technology nerds, then they could use your opinions in the form of leadership. A public blog post ripping on the people who give their time to meetups is something of an antipattern.
How could the organizers put a price on an event that happens in the future? And provided they had a time machine, how could they determine it's value to you? Is it too advanced, too rudimentary? Does the description of the topics covered reflect accurately the conversational direction of the future date of the course/lecture?
I tend to take an opposite stance. Paying for knowledge is a crap shoot at every level. I realize it every time I make a student loan payment on my useless advanced degree. The only reliable way to learn is to teach yourself through study and mixing with people who have different viewpoints or ways of thinking. Paying for something that will motivate you or do that for you is likely to be a con. It might not be, but why take the chance. Save your silver bullet money for retirement and use lead bullets instead.
Well sometimes organizers do put a price on the event to minimize no-shows and fund pizza or event space so they aren't beholding to a sponsor.
And I sometimes pay for those meetups. But I'm usually price-sensitive enough and there's enough other meetups doing similar things for free that I don't pay.
I want to say that the meetups that do charge money are consistently higher value, but that's not the case. You just have to test them for yourself.
I wonder if it's possible to aggregate a list of good meetups.
Do people go to meetups to learn something? I guess I always treated them as networking events to expand my sphere. Sure, it's interesting to be exposed to a new technology that I can then go and investigate on my own time, but I have never expected to truly "learn" something at a meetup.
For the most part, presentations aren't a great format for getting into a lot of details in things like code and they generally shouldn't even try. They're much better for making you aware of potentially interesting things and highlight how you might use them. (It's also why I find most presentations are better when they're shorter.)
As others have said as well, if you're going to a meetup to do the equivalent of attending a lecture, you're probably not going to find them very valuable.
It's been my experience that the type of "programmers" that network at these events aren't the type I'd like to be networking with. It's usually beginners and hobbyists, or recruiters trying to use me as an "in" or mentor rather than the peer relationship I'd be looking for. Not saying peers aren't there, but the ones running around talking to everyone are usually the type of people I'm not there to see.
> I always treated them as networking
I did too, but the format is a class: chairs arranged in rows, facing forward, with one person doing all the talking.
I suppose we are supposed to do our networking before and after class, over pizza. But come on, we're programmers, generally shy and quiet. If we trade a few words or sentences, the degree to which we know each other is less than after an interview --- and interviews are notoriously bad for getting to know programmers.
Maybe arrange the chairs in a circle. Then, instead of planning a long talk, encourage participation. Even something as awkward as going around the room would be better than the lecture format.
I enjoy going to meetups to learn when jumping into a new technology X, especially when I get to talk to experienced developers about how to solve a given problem in X, or the difference between X and some other technology with which I'm familiar. I recently attended a Go meetup, and it was super helpful to talk about the differences in the concurrency models used by Go and Elixir.
> Do people go to meetups to learn something? I guess I always treated them as networking events to expand my sphere
I last went to a programmers' meetup about 3 years ago, and did that in order to specifically see a guy make a presentation about ElasticSearch. We were also using ES at our job back then, but at a much smaller scale compared to that guy's company did, so I wanted to learn additional stuff about how ES works and how it needs to be configured when the numbers increase.
It was a nice presentation, can't say I remember much from back then (I've also not used ES in the meantime as much as I would have liked), but some presentations do have a learning purpose.
I go to meetups (and organize one) 60% to network with people and find customers, 40% to learn and stay up to date with technology. I'm a speaker at somebody's else meetups or conferences two or three times per year.
True learning requires a lot of effort but I remember a meetup about shaders in a HTML canvas. I didn't know much about them, I know where to start from now at the cost of a couple of hours and a twenty minutes walk from home. However I know that attending meetups after work could be taxing. My free meetup has an almost perfect 50% no show rate and indubitably both the price tag and the time concur to it. But if I start it during the day, how many people would come? That's the territory of more well organized conferences.
Yes, I usually expect to learn something, especially if it's how a new technology is being applied in the real world. I also except to meet some people during pizza time, etc.
A slightly different debate, but as a digital nomad (who also happens to be a programmer) I can totally relate.
Most of the meetings/conferences I went to ended with too much boozing and laughing about silly stuff and not nearly enough networking/exchanging ideas/helping each other to my liking. This was funny when I was in my late 20s, but I have different goals now.
Particularly, about the 'helping each other' part - I have the feeling that everyone is pushing their own agenda most of the time, and there is very little sincere interest in works of others - let alone helping/advising each other. More like 'let's get the compulsory presentation part down, do some quick networking... done? Let's get drunk'.
Maybe I'm visiting the wrong kind of meetings though. I'm guessing there's also a big difference between meetups in the US (never been to one, hence guessing) and in Europe (or elsewhere).
In Boston, I'm going to use Python as an exapmle, we have a regular Python Meetups [1], in addition to a Python Project Night [2], it sounds like you're looking for something like the later, which involves a bunch of people of various skills, hacking on projects, with some experts of the community circulating around the room, etc.
I haven't been in a long time, but they were great.
[1] Example of regular Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/bostonpython/events/234430898/
[2] Example for April: https://www.meetup.com/bostonpython/events/237146736/
Yup, exactly - thanks for helping me figure it out (euphemism for 'phew, I'm not stupid for disliking all those meetups').
Alas, to my knowledge, nothing even remotely similar like that exists here (or at the places where I lived in Southeast Asia), simply because there are not enough people who would participate, let alone organize/run such a meeting.
Thinking about it, though, it makes sense: Working 100% remotely/being a digital nomad means moving AWAY from places like NY/SF/Boston/Seattle etc. (where the action happens) because they are crazy expensive; This, however, also means moving away from hubs where Python Project Nights are possible due to the sheer number of Python guys.
To have the cake and eat it too, the digital nomad hubs should have enough x (x=Pythonistas, Rubyists, whatever) to able to organize such meetings/hackathons etc. However, once that would happen, prices would skyrocket, and you would have to move again...
I don't want to derail this discussion to a digital nomad problem, so tl;dr: seems like my global location, rather than my attitude or bad choice of meetings is the culprit; To put it other way: living at tucked away islands might be romantic, but it also means no quality meetings... :(
Luckily, in your case, there's a lot of online communities to participate in.
I hear you.
There are good meetups and there are bad meetups.
If you want "helping each other" style meetups, you need to look for ones that are office-hours style, where they have tables and conference rooms and people sitting next to each other trying to help each other.
If you have organizers that want to make a regular commitment to running them (and basically being the on-hand experts) then you should be able to get space from firms that would like to host Python programmers (and we do have members get hired out of our group by our hosts sometimes, but that is certainly not a guarantee).
If your area can economically support these things, but they aren't there, then you just need a catalyst to get them started. I would think a lot of areas in Europe should be able to start these kinds of things.
I'm currently in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for a longer period. I have moved here because LPdGC was dubbed as a digital nomad heaven, said to be the 'Chiang Mai of Europe' etc. It has an incredible amount of Co-working spaces relative to it's size etc. so one would think it's a perfect place for things you are describing above.
tl;dr: it's not.
Snippet from an email conversation with a local guy (author of GrapheneDB):
"Nomads apart, this is a small city, and while there are some active developer meetups, it's hard to get enough momentum, people willing to do talks, etc. I did run a Rails/Ruby meetup years ago, but it ended up being mostly people from our team + some curious guys. Eventually, I ended up not wanting to push it any further and focusing more on the business side of things."
So even though a lot of parameters are OK, the size of the city (400k in this case) seems to be enough to hamper things...
My least favorite thing is the always-in-attendance Master Bikeshedder.
"So at my organization... {2 minutes of uncomfortable and unnecessary context}... would this solution work for us?"
after presenter mentions some syntax offhand "Can I use a special character here? What about casing, does that matter? What about {some contrived example, unrelated to the topic}?"
Really turns me off of a given meetup group if I know this person is a regular.
If that's a problem, put it into your house-keeping - "please keep your questions short and to the point, and in the form of a question".
I'm a member (but not an organizer) of a meetup that doesn't do it, and our regular filibusterer will take up minutes of time with no urgency during Q&A. Really annoys me too.
I'm a coorganizer of Python meetups in NYC.
You usually get what you pay for.
Our meetups are free, but they do take time out of your day. In exchange for your time we offer:
- Free pizza and beer (just Tuesday nights, not at weekend office hours - but we usually have free tea then.)
- Access to potential employers (usually the ones buying the pizza and beer or providing the space - we give them 5 minutes to make a pitch about themselves, and allow them to stick around and take questions from people who are interested).
- Access to other Python programmers who are at every point on the learning spectrum, including experts who can help you.
- There is also the opportunity to help other people who are usually deserving and appreciative, frequently just trying to learn on their own.
- (No one will bug you if you don't want to be bugged. We have a code of conduct, but I've never seen us have to invoke it.)
- From time to time, we have speakers, tutorials, workshops, and other kinds of presentations and learning opportunities.
- We also offer you the opportunity to provide these kinds of learning opportunities for others.
I have been a member of our meetup for 6 years, and a coorganizer for the last 3 years. I have learned a lot, mostly on my own, but I've also had a lot of opportunities to help others learn.
I haven't paid a dime (I think I've donated a couple of twenties) and I haven't been paid a dime. But I've met a lot of people and it's provided me with a lot of experience that is hard to match.
I've helped people build websites, do web scraping, and do data munging and analysis. I've given talks myself. As a result of all of this, I'm teaching at world-class universities.
Meetups aren't for everyone. A lot of my opportunities have come from being there. They say a lot of success is in showing up. Well, I do that, at about half of our office hours (I even ran them every Sunday for a year), and I still try to show up, even though I've given myself permission to not do it.
You get out what you put into it. If you solely want a learning experience, pay for college classes. If you solely want to get experience programming, do free work until you can charge for it, and charge for it. If you want pizza and beer, go buy it. You don't need a meetup for those things. But if you like all of those things, you can show up, and we don't charge you money for that.
That's a pretty good deal, in my humble opinion.
I'm one of the lead organisers of the meetups that Aaron mentions, and I'd like to offer an additional perspective.
I think that both Aaron and myself (and, indeed, all of the organisers) use the meetup as an opportunity to meet programmers needing mentorship.
Many of us have personally benefited from the generosity of others, and we feel an obligation to offer newcomers this same opportunity.
I don't have any real skills, but I do know a lot about Python, and I attend the weekly meetups to share this knowledge with others.
I'm there every week (barring conference & work travel,) and I'm there to help.
> That's a pretty good deal, in my humble opinion.
Dude, I wish some Europen CONFERENCES offered the same (and for 100s of €s, not for free). I'm not kidding - even big ones are shit compared to what you are talking about (they might have more booze, food, or other material stuff (as I said, there's a hefty entrance fee, so what) but I could only dream about networking like you described above.
You guys in the US are seriously spoiled compared to Europeans...
We have the same kinds of conferences in the US. (I'm not going to name names, though.)
The fact is that you can pay a lot of money to do just about anything, but running conferences (and meetups, to an extent) is, for some organizers, a business.
They're trying to create and capture value out of mostly thin air.
But as a community, we can create a lot of value for ourselves. It may not pay a lot of salaries, but we can create an awesome experience with each other.
We just have to get organized ourselves.
The same organizers of the groups I help co-organize run PyGotham, NYC's Python convention.
We are a bunch of unpaid volunteers for the most part, but we create an awesome conference year after year.
It takes a lot of our free time, and we do it on shoe-strings and through the kindness of corporations and non-profits. But we get it done. You can do it in Europe too.
What meetup is this? I'm a developer with a strong focus on Python in the NYC area.
Here's the link to the office hours/tutorials meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/learn-python-nyc/
Here's the link to the meetup that does talk nights:
https://www.meetup.com/nycpython/
We have two separate groups so that people who just want to go to talks can easily avoid emails about office hours.
And there are other meetup groups you should check out. Some are good, some are not so good (in my humble opinion) but here is not the place for me to rank meetup groups in NYC.
I really like the emacs group (I've volunteered to coorganize, but I'm not an organizer yet), and since I don't think enough people come, I will mention them:
Link to meetup? Sounds fun
Interesting point of view but...
> I’ve decided I’m no longer attending programming meet-ups
Who is "I"? The "About" links to https://python.sh/2017/2/bureau-of-programming ... which doesn't really answer the "Who" question.
To your post - meetups also perform a social function - that's the offset for mixed quality presentations. That's if you like socialising with peers of course...
To your post - meetups also perform a social function
Yea, that is mostly why I attend meetups. It's just nice to get a chance to meet up with a bunch of people interested in a specific topic, have a beer or two, and talk about that and related topics.
You need to ask why the organizers of the Meetup are doing it. If they are corporates, of course they will plug their products. That's the sole reason for them to invest their time. With this in mind, one can easily distinguish between good and bad meetups before attending.
This post is not helpful for those who genuinely try to build a community in their domain. Also, a good talk compresses many days of reading and a-ha moments into one hour. It's just a lot of work to prepare a good talk.
Background: I'm one of the organizers of a machine learning meetup in my area. We (organizers) are PhD students, so building a strong and connected ML community in our surrounding is an intrinsic motivation. We decided not to affiliate ourselves with a company. Otherwise our quality control for talks would inevitably be overruled at some point.
I think it's a bit much to expect meetups, especially free ones, to explicitly teach you concrete skills that are exceptionally well done. If someone is doing it for free, then I can accept the fact that they spend considerable time promoting themselves or generalizing their message (and specializing it for a paid audience). In general, my expectations for free education sessions are pretty low.
I don't think it's fair to expect what often amounts to volunteer effort from the part of the organizers to provide the same learning experience as institutions that have paid full-time employees.
Meetups however are a fantastic way to get outside of your social circle (work, school) and meet new people. One of my favorite general meetups is Civic Tech, since it's a mish-mash of people in the tech, academia, public sector, and non-for-profits.
Exactly so, I try to avoid people who seem to want me to do all of their programming for them.
If I do it all for them, they don't learn, and it's a bit of a waste of my time.
What I like to do is to help people get over a blocking problem on a project by teaching them something they didn't know yet. We usually take their code from a non-working state to a working state. Then I point out other problems with their code, tell them what they need to work on (usually involving reorganization of their code), and then I can (and do) focus on other things.
I don't run into a lot of dependent help-seeking types in real life at office-hour style meetups. They generally understand that I'm going to work on my own stuff, but they can come get me if they run into a roadblock.
Honestly, if you don't like the way certain Meetups are organised, the quality of the talks, etc. you can always help to make them better. Just prepare a talk such that most of the attendees can learn something from it. I am sure most Meetups will be happy to have you!
Here in Vienna we have a couple of hands-on Meetups that require you to bring your laptop and actually do something. Less people attend - but those that come are usually very motivated. This is a good place/way to learn something new.
I can absolutely sympathize with the post's author, having been to my share of poorly-run events and those with poorly-communicated goals/topics.
However, I've also been to some that are run quite well, with clear & focused topics, and where I have learned something practical or gained insight into a particular subject from a speaker's unique perspective/experience.
And, yes, many of these events have a strong element of networking which is clearly helpful given the job offerings and job seekers routinely in attendance. Though I've no first-hand experience in the matter, seems like a good starting point for a match between people who are being proactive in their professional development and employers who value that.
"Some common characteristics of programming meet-ups" really should be restated as "Reasons I stopped going to programming meet-ups". These would be an excellent checklist for perhaps starting one that addresses these issues since there are many who would agree and appreciate if someone (else) did it right. You don't even need to be the permanent organizer, just an initial facilitator or catalyst to get one off the ground.
You have to pay for meetups in Japan and they are universally worse than the ones in Seattle. Frankly, I love meetups: free food and drink and a chance to hang out with people who like exactly the same stuff? Sign me up!
I like meetups as well. The Bay Area meetups covering data management tend to be pretty worthwhile--both the content as well as the opportunity to geek out with fellow nerds. Open source projects in general have a good sharing ethos that works well with the meetup format.
Plus it's pretty important to keep up contacts just in things go sideways at your current gig.
I recently drove down to Minneapolis, MN for Systems We Love. I'm not sure if that counts as a meet-up. I went because the first one was interesting and it looked like the type of thing I am up for.
It was interesting with the AV presentation being a bit of a unexpected surprise. I guess I didn't expect hard core learning (nor should you given the items covered), but I did get a lot of food for thought and strange ideas. I'm always happy for the sparks these days.
It had plenty or opportunity to network[1], but I get the feeling the main networking occurred after the event at the bar. That is to be expected and frankly I have no problem with that, but I was a bit tired from the drive and didn't feel up to it so I cannot really say.
The food and beer were good as was the facility. I enjoyed myself and its nice to be around people who like technology.
I got to wonder about the nature of meet-ups in a world with YouTube. I get the feeling that the social side of the event really needs be a draw to pull people out of their lives. I get the whole unconference thing, but I wonder if it even goes beyond that. What makes you say "I need to be there" as opposed to I'll DVR (YouTube) it? I felt compelled to go because it was something national in MN and the first one looked like it rocked. If it wasn't already a thing, I'm pretty sure I would have ignored it. I really don't have an answer on this one. Although, for me it was a chance to be around technological people again. Maybe if you day job has a rich environment, meetups just don't have the compulsion.
2) Strangely, I did not run into one person I knew from working as a consultant in the cities in the later half of the 90's or as an employee in the 00's. Maybe it was the nature of where I worked or maybe its age.
People often misinterpreted the "point" or value of meet-up.
The one and only good thing about meet-ups is to meet and talk to other programmers, in a fun, social environment.
Don't waste time listening to the speaker, or care about the stated "purpose" of the event.
Just treat meetups like a bar full of techies, where the alcohol is free.
As somebody that ran a successful meetup which I grew from 0 to 1500+ members (now 2700) on meetup.com the article feels like it misses the point of the meetups.
The presenter being late, disorganized, and talking down to the audience is a pretty simple problem to fix. Screen your presenters! Don't let people who you know would give a bad talk speak. With our meetup, we would send some guidelines along with some information on the kind of audience we tend to attract. This along with front-loading the socialization addressed nearly all problems the author had.
Our meetup was and continues to be sponsored and we never felt the need to give them a plug. We thanked the companies for hosting us, encouraged people to talk to each other and that's it. None of these problems cost a penny to fix.
I have seen other comments here mention that a meetup is not about the talks that it is only networking. While, I agree that is the main benefit for going, I tried pretty hard to have cool talks with topics attendees were unlikely to run into online. I loved to spotlight people who had passion projects previously working in obscurity. I loved introducing academics to an audience of mostly industry people, and vice-versa. People would come up to me afterwards surprised to here that someone in town had solved a problem giving them pain for months! Bringing talks about things they might not see on Twitter or Hacker News.
Want to know what I actually worried about? I worried about diversity. Although 50-60% of the speakers booked were women we had trouble boosting that ratio above 10-20% for the audience. I worried about attendees with kids that couldn't make evening meetups. I worried about people who worked somewhere hard to commute from. My co-organizer actually started organizing events that occurred during lunchtime. These had just as good if not better attendance than the evening talks. So do know those can work.
I think meetups are a fantastic medium to meeting people who like similar things as you. And if none of the meetups around you are working, you can always just start one that does.
Gee, there is almost certainly nothing the author could do about this tragic waste of his time except volunteer to give a talk and
* Provide a proper description to the organizers * Ask the organizers that they skip pizza that night or handle the logistics himself * Prepare properly for the presentation * Be considerate of your audience when presenting * Ask that the organizers tone down the commercials * oh, well, I guess you're hopeless on this one
Seriously, meetup groups tend to be community oriented and driven and members almost always have a voice.
Or just don't go, that's really fine, they are definitely not the most time efficient way to learn to program.
Went to a JS meetup in Pittsburgh. The co-host asked me if I was there just to ride the coat tales of actual programmers (because I was/am new to programming). That experience has been enough to keep me away from them.
I ate their pizza anyway.
> "actual programmers"
That's funny coming from the Javascript crowd. :)
You don't go to programming meet-ups to actually learn anything new. It's a place for networking. Nothing more. The same with tech conferences and MBA programs. They're all networking events.
This sentiment has been stated multiple times now, and seems to be discussing a different type of meetup. There are meetups that are simply a social event/mixer where everyone puts on a nametag, impromptu discussions happen, etc. That is about networking.
Then there are meetups built around a presentation. During the presentation there is little to no socializing. Yes, if there are presentations either you have little regard for your own time, or you should be learning something (usually some high level concepts, new approaches, etc). When a presenter hasn't properly prepared it is simply robbing people of life for nothing.
Ultimately in things like this it's like a website that is "free" but full of ads -- there are often unstated and dishonest motives that corrupt the whole thing. Whether it's the bloviating presenter who is mostly interested in trying to build their own legend, or someone just trying to use the thing as a cheap veneer to pitch some service or product.
No. They're all networking events. They all use different tactics to get people in the door. In every case, the organizer's goal is to get people to network.
Edit: See jpfr's comment. He organizes the meetups to "build a strong and connected ML community". That sounds like networking to me.
jpfr's comment is an anecdote and deals with a very small community. It doesn't proves an absolute claim that every organizer's goal is to get people to network, even if a valued side-effect.
Many are built around the core principal of providing interesting enough of content to draw people. Because meeting other people in a given field is ridiculously easy. But if you say "let's all meet at XYZ and socialize", generally the turnout will be abysmal because most people are not there to just to socialize, and actually need some prescribed value to justify their time. So most are built around some premise of providing a value. It's the disconnect between the promise and the actual that causes issue.
While this is probably different for different people, I tend to agree that meetups aren't conducive to learning. The format definitely has something to do with it too - most meetups I've attended are monthly events with very high turnover. I wouldn't expect such a sparse schedule and such varied levels of ability in the crowd to make a good environment for learning. For my part, I don't go in expecting to learn anything at a meetup. Hear some interesting stories/information? Maybe. Meet some interesting people? Definitely. But the learning happens online, or in personal conversations outside the meetup.
There's a ton of meetups in MadLab each month (the Manchester Digital Laboratory). It's a community space, free to use, so it doesn't come with corporate agendas attached.
Maybe there's a community tech space in your city?
I live in SF. The entire city is a community tech space. I go to meetups, but not to learn. If the topic is relevant to my work or interests, I go to talk to those in attendance. I largely don't care about the presentation material.
I cofounded a meetup a little over a year ago and so far we've seen a lot of success. When we started it we actually made a list of things similar to this article that we wanted to avoid. Here are a couple of ours:
1. We only allow 3 sponsors a year at a predefined cost. This covers our cost with a little buffer for unexpected expenses.
2. We promote our sponsors on our slides, website and a mention in each meetup. They also get one 5 minute promo during their sponsorship period. We also WILL NOT give them our email list.
3. We have it consistently on the same day of the month, time of day and location to avoid people wondering where we're going to be.
4. We have multiple backup presentations ready in case our speaker doesn't show. We NEVER cancel a meetup.
5. We always provide food and drinks and have designated people to handle it.
6. We solicit ideas for topics constantly and schedule them a couple of months in advance. We do not allow sales presentations and we vet all of our speakers beforehand.
7. We recently started a short lightning talk at the very begninning (5 minutes or less) to encourage members to break out of their shell and present a useful tip.
8. We offer 2 full day training events during the year. We generally do this during the work week as we found local companies are more than happy to give the devs the time off for free training. All of the content is created by devs for devs in order to make it as practical as possible.
These are a few things that we do. The biggest thing to remember is running a good meetup is not a couple of hours a month job. It's a big commitment.
I attend Meetups because I enjoy meeting other people that are interested in things I'm interested in. I really don't care if the event doesn't start on time or they forgot the pizza.
A lot of meetups I've attended do hands-on sessions which most definitely are useful for learning things.
As for presentations, they vary a lot. But inevitably you learn something you weren't previously aware of.
If you need to go deep on an emerging technology then you need to stick your headphones on and spend an afternoon absorbed in it.
I haven't been to a programming meet-up for a very long time. It was pretty fun when I was in San Francisco, because I felt like there were startups everywhere, and everyone was excited about lots of cool technologies. And I got so many free shirts.
This post has actually inspired me to check out some more meetups conferences. I might see if I can fly in for the React Native conference in Portland [1]. Firstly, because React Native is my new favorite tool, after using it for the last few months. And secondly, because my wife and I have just decided that we might like to move to Portland one day, and we've never been there before. We might go check it out for a weeks.
Gack. Don't move to Portland. It's crowded, overpriced, dreary, constantly raining, and there's no decent bookstores or parks.
Weather is awful, traffic is worse. But other than that PDX is great, esp. the restaurants.
Last year I went to a lot of meetups. It felt kinda nice at the time but I'm wondering if it really was worth it. Learning by doing is the best way to really learn stuff and I dont have enough time to do that. I think this year I'll try to do stuff rather than go to meetups.
The only programmer meetups I usually go to now are 'hack nights', i.e. get together and work on your own projects together or just in the presence of others. It helps me stay on track and I get to see and hear what others are working on (or debating about, some people are mostly there to socialize).
I find these worth it, and most other programming meetups not really worth it. I will still attend a lecture-style meetup if it's about a topic I'm pretty interested in though.
Also, non-programmer meetups I find very valuable and try to go to as many as I can afford to. I've met several of my close friends through those. There's less pretense of networking at them and you can form real connections with people.
Funny how so many programmers think programming meetups are for learning something. There're not. They're about meeting people who could, at some point, become collaborators, colleagues, co-authors, friends, mates, bosses, or candidates.
If you won't ever need any of those, meetups are terribly inefficient and ineffective for just transferring knowledge. Skip them.
I think you've got to try different meetups and find ones that work for you, especially if you are more interested in learning things than in networking. The few Ruby meetups I've been to, for instance, were well attended, but they seemed more industry/newcomer focussed and talks were not particularly engaging for me. In contrast, the Boston Haskell and Vim meetups were super vibrant and full of energy and interesting talks. One presentation by John Wiegley changed my whole development workflow. In Minneapolis I'm struggling a bit more to find vibrant programmer meetups, it seems to be a much more quiet, conservative tech scene here.
I assume you've checked out Minnestar.org (MinneDemo, MinneBar) or beta.mn, & IoTMpls.
I have not! Thank you.
A great organizer makes all the difference. Meetups were more interesting to me when there was less great content on the web. Now you can find tutorials on everything, so meetups are networking and not much else.
But the low to zero cost of meet-ups means there’s little incentive to produce quality presentations.
If in any case you did attend a meetup and you found the presentation lacking, is it right to think that the presenter / organizer would definitely appreciate if you provide an honest feedback that would make the next meetup better? I know most meetups are free and the value that it provides for everyone can be increased by the participants adding value on how to make it better.
As a speaker at a lot of free meetups, I feel a great deal of pressure to have a strongly prepared talk. I've seen a lot of talks, had some communications and public speaking education, and I try to follow best practices as I have determined them.
I also greatly appreciate face-to-face critical feedback.
For example, I've been told that going back and forth in my slides is hard to follow, and I'm trying to avoid that. (Though I think it's frequently unavoidable.)
I've also been corrected on a minor point before - and I appreciate that as well, I don't want to be guilty of spreading misinformation.
But I have seen (very infrequently) poorly prepared talks, or talks by people clearly unqualified to give them. I don't want to be that guy. Maybe the author of the main post here has standards that are too high, or maybe the meetups he's attended just have no quality control.
But I don't know of any group that intentionally wants to have bad talks - it reflects poorly on the organizers as well as the speaker.
I used to go to meetups to actually learn from presenter. Then I realized I can learn much better and faster using online videos/books.
So I stopped caring for the topic of presentation and started go for networking and socializing. But it was just too much to sit through an hour long presentation just so that I can socialize afterwards. A lot of attendees leave immediately after the talk. I could show up an hour late but that feels weird. So I stopped going to meetups completely.
I did my first ever tech talk at a meetup just a few weeks ago (http://bit.ly/2oIWHiH). I hope I prepared sufficiently and didn't suffer too much from most of the pitfalls discussed, but I have been to plenty of meetups which are exactly as the OP describes. Almost all of them seem to be thinly veiled networking / hiring events from my experience.
From my experience with the Chicago Java User's Group. They've done a fantastic job at getting speakers I'd like to go and see. (And sometimes they get spring speakers .. can't win them all :))
Feedback is collected from the organization team and it is taken seriously. There are speakers that are asked not to come back.
I've never seen a speaker that wasn't prepared at a CJUG talk.
To me it sounds like the writer of the post has seen a poorly managed meetup.
Well someone is choosing shitty meetups...
Here we usually get:
- A quite accurate description
- Time to chat with people and an on time presentation
- Hot pizza upon arrival
- Humble presenters willing to take their own time to teach us something for very little exposure
- 1 minute at most of sponsor specific content (with the occasional bad filtering of presenters, but those are rare and get a bad rep. quickly..)
- Great Wi-Fi
Maybe you should think of moving to Montreal?
I guess one of the benefits of living somewhere rural by HN standards is that there's few local meet-ups that are relatively well attended, everyone gets to know each other, every other meeting is at a bar, etc, etc...
Some great points in this article. I've found that meetups happen a bit too frequently. I think instead of monthly, they should probably be quarterly.
I went to a ZFS preso for the Vancouver BSD meetup and it was great and I learned a ton. You win some you lose some.
Better write a blogpost about it.
Oh man, I will never forget that Erlang meetup with Julia in 2014. Man oh man. Julia didn't want to be there, naturally. BlackRock is a Julia shop now.