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Slashdot Readers Visit Meatspace 423

Posted by timothy from the all-at-once-well-met dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashdot Readers Visit Meatspace More

Slashdot Readers Visit Meatspace

Comments Filter:

  • karma (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @06:48AM (#3957039)
    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 (Score:5, Informative)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @06:57AM (#3957052) Journal
      Yeah, what's with this sudden changes?

      But then CmdrTaco has updated the FAQ [slashdot.org] abt the new changes.

      Sheesh, I miss my Karma :-/ 50 gave you a sense of accomplishment, excellent sounds awful ;-)
      • But then CmdrTaco has updated the FAQ abt the new changes

        Granted I missed that and should have looked.

        However it would still be nice if they tell us what the changes are rather than us having to scan through all the FAQ's periodically to find out has been changed as a result of the update. Or just stumbling across something and going "oh, i think that might have changed, better check the FAQ".

        I did moot the idea to CmdrTaco that karma values be public so that you could tell how "respected" (if you like) other people thought of your views. Not surprisingly, he didn't like it.

        I still think it would be nice to assign additional points to people with a high karma so that I can view their (probably) insightful views even though several idiots have marked it as "Redundant" or "Flamebait".

      • Re:karma (Score:3, Interesting)

        by buffy ( 8100 )
        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.

        • The most karma you could ever have was 50. After that it could only go down.
          • The most karma you could ever have was 50. After that it could only go down.

            Lots of us were "grandfathered in" before the 50-point cap was put on, though (we didn't get it chopped off to 50.) My karma was at something like 238 before it suddenly switched to "Excellent."

            Thanks a lot, Taco. ;-)

            • Then, of course, there's the usual problem with the 50 point karma cap if you happen to get modded up before you get modded down (I think this happens more often)...

              50 + 1 - 1 = 49

              but

              50 - 1 + 1 = 50
              I always felt like a helium balloon bouncing against the ceiling.
        • As another former karma 50+ I too find this bothersome. The switch to word based karma would have been an ideal time to get rid of the foolish cap business. Personally I would like to see the following levels beyond Excellent:
          • Superhero
          • godlike
          • Demi-God
          • God
          • CowboyNeal

    • Re:karma (Score:4, Funny)

      by rmohr02 ( 208447 ) <mohr.42@osu. e d u> on Friday July 26, 2002 @06:57AM (#3957054)
      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: (Score:3, Funny)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • 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 [slashdot.org] that gets you moderated to oblivion, LOL
        [that particular comment & my attitude toward CmdrTaco still remain]

    • Re:karma (Score:5, Funny)

      by popeyethesailor ( 325796 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @07:05AM (#3957070)
      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

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

      Well, it was either that, or fix their math algorithms... "Excellent" turned out easier than trying to fix "49 + 3 - 2 = 48".

      q:]

      MadCow.

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

      Karma? I'm still pissed about loosing moderation priviledges because of this [slashdot.org].

  • wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by __aahlyu4518 ( 74832 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @06:54AM (#3957043)
    "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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LWolenczak ( 10527 ) <julia@evilcow.org> on Friday July 26, 2002 @06:56AM (#3957050) Homepage Journal
    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 (Score:4, Funny)

    by __aahlyu4518 ( 74832 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @07:01AM (#3957063)
    "We had the hardware comparison "

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

  • 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!

  • almost ten ?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by __aahlyu4518 ( 74832 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @07:18AM (#3957100)
    "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

  • London Meetup (Score:4, Interesting)

    by umm qasr ( 72190 ) <leith.bu@edu> on Friday July 26, 2002 @07:23AM (#3957114) Homepage
    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 [ntk.net] 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 was considering coming along, but the date happened to be me and my gf's anniversary. Choose a better date next time ;-)
    • I was hoping, but didn't realistically expect that ~130 people would turn up, but the people that did were great to talk to.

      Pfft, amateurs. This year's annual Discworld MUDmeet in London (well, Feltham) had well over 100 people. You people just need to get organized. :) I almost felt bad for the staff at the Feltham Wetherspoon's, but then I thought about how much money they made that weekend.
  • * 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 attempted (when I was 8) to fix a clock my mom got for Christmas but died 2 months later. I figured it *had* to be the plug, so I cut it off, stripped back the wires, and inserted the wires.

      20 minutes later I woke up with no eyebrows. 14 years later I graduated with my BSEE.
    • yeah, well, like .. that mmarlett guy who wrote that comment? turns out i know him! wouldnt be so odd i guess, except i thought he was cool -- not a slashdotter! eww!

      at any rate .. he went to my high school and boy scouts, inspired me to take an interest in photography, and i havent seen him since. yeah, i'm a mook. but i think it's cool when i, living now in new york, run across people i used to know in years and many miles past.

      btw: Hi Mike! how's things? :)

  • Wow - NH in the story! (Score:3, Informative)

    by zoward ( 188110 ) <email.me.at.zoward.at.gmail.com> on Friday July 26, 2002 @07:54AM (#3957166) Homepage
    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.
    • I arrived at the Manchester, NH, about fifteen minutes late...

      Well, at least you had one in your part of NH. Apparently there wasn't a critical mass out here in the Hanover/Claremont/Lebanon area, since our meetup got canceled. Too bad I didn't have to time to drive down to Manchester.

    • The first thing I did when I got home was boot up the computer to send it in because I remembered the comment about sending in a review of it. Did you catch the comment about the new karma being explained int he FAQs?
      • Yeah, I'd actually seen it a couple of days ago. It left me a tad disappointed. Still, their argument certainly holds weight: the point of the system is to get people to post intelligently by allowing the populace to vote, and while this worked with a numeric system, people were getting obsessed over their karma ratings.

  • Pittsburgh Sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xenopax ( 238094 ) <[xenopax] [at] [cesmail.net]> on Friday July 26, 2002 @07:54AM (#3957167) Journal
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @08:10AM (#3957213)
      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.
    • 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.
    • Wait until school starts and all the nerds filter back from their parent's basement (aka, me :)

      Or just attend one of the several nearby college's computer club meetings. It may as well be a /. meeting except it will be in a server room instead of a bar.
    • Nobody showed up to the Springfield, Missouri one, either. Geez. I mean, the Livejournal meetup we had met in a parking lot, but at least it got four people...

      Oh well, maybe next month...

  • When in MeatSpace (Score:5, Funny)

    by cpuffer_hammer ( 31542 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @08:04AM (#3957194) Homepage
    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.

  • Hartford, Connecticut Meetup Notes (Score:3, Informative)

    by mikey573 ( 137933 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @08:36AM (#3957337) Homepage
    The Hartford, Connecticut [wikipedia.com] 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 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tweakt ( 325224 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @08:40AM (#3957362) Homepage
    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.
    • Like the other posters said, I signed up so that I could see where the event was being held on the offchance I could make it there. Since I didn't know if I could make it, I didn't click the "RSVP" button. It turns out that I couldn't have made it, so I didn't come.

      But I've got to post a slight rant on the "RSVP" feature - RSVP actually means "respond, please" (respondez, s'il vous plait - I think?) - meaning that they should have options for "I will be attending", "I will not be attending", or "I might be attending." Since I could only say that I might be attending I would have loved to have given that option. That way, you could have seen that there were 7 people planning on coming, 3 people who might come, 5 who couldn't, and 65 people who were to lazy to respond. (As an example, obviously...)

      If there is another Slashdot meetup, I'll try and come. But I couldn't promise to come to this one. If it were on a weekend, then there would be a higher chance I could manage to come to it. Maybe next time, maybe...

  • Darnit. Either I didn't wait long enough or nobody bothered to show up for the Charleston meetup.

    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 /.ers in the area and see how geeky these people were. oh well, maybe next month.
    • Yeah, the lady at Chili's said you left about 3 minutes before we got there.

      PopeFelix (the host) had to cancel at the last minute because of work, so myself, kimi, and Hlynna showed up at about 7:15. We waited until 7:45, then got a table and had a few drinks, then left.

      I wore my first-edition green-and-white Slashdot hat, hoping people coming for the meet would get the picture. But I guess we were there after you left.

      Hopefully next month.
  • 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..!

  • Raleigh Meetup (Score:3, Interesting)

    by XaXXon ( 202882 ) <xaxxon&gmail,com> on Friday July 26, 2002 @09:05AM (#3957507) Homepage
    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 [meetup.com]!!!
  • I was unable to make the meeting, anyone attend?
  • 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
  • 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 [uncoveror.com] and Dontbuycds.org [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.
  • 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!

    I'd say a disproportionate number of people reading /. 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.

    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

  • Washington Meetup (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mindcry ( 596198 )
    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.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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...)]
  • Body count: Out of the 159 who signed up, maybe about 15 showed. One was even rumored to be (gender == female), but this has yet to be confirmed by UN observers. =)

    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.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 26, 2002 @11:06AM (#3958433)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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?
  • 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.
  • 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.

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