| 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. |