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Yes. Please, yes. I run Hackers and Founders, Silicon Valley and SF. http://hackersandfounders.com http://hackersandfounders.com. We've been going for aroun

Yes. Please, yes. I run Hackers and Founders, Silicon Valley and SF. http://hackersandfounders.com http://hackersandfounders.com. We've been going for around 2 years and have around 900 members. About half come from HN, the other half through word of mouth, or Meetup.com. I don't make any money off this, I just enjoy having a beer, and geeking out with startup geeks every 2 weeks. I also try to contact other people that post meetup listings on HN, and try and help them get off the ground if I can. I've been in contact with meetups in NY, Chicago, Indianapolis, Tel Aviv, and Wellington, NZ. The churn on the front page is so great that unless you're in a major metropolitan area, you're not going to get enough upvotes to have a meetup posted. So, it would be helpful to those in non metropolitan areas to have a venue to post their events in a place where it wouldn't fall off the front page in 8 hours at best. Honestly, just a simple "events" tag at the top of HN would be great, and allow people a self-referencing post Ala "Ask HN:..." I think there's a big demand from HN readers for something like this. For instance, we just hosted a meetup for 6 guys coming in to SV from the UK for a week to check the area out. The only reason that they knew about Hackers and Founders was because our first event 2 years ago was a meetup before startup school, and the organizer of the group came to the meetup before startup school. The guys that came in were really cool, and I picked up a lot of great ideas for my startup from them. I try not to announce hackers and founders meetups here anymore much, because I really don't want to pollute the front page with event listings. We have events every 2-3 weeks, and I think it would be a pain in the ass for HN readers to read event announcements from us every 2-3 weeks. I'm pretty sure that Brennan that runs the Indianapolis meetup and Dave that runs the NY meetup don't post here that often either. Brennan uses Meetup.com and Dave uses a twitter feed + Anyvite. The Chicago meetup uses a Google group.

daveambrose 17y ago
Agreed regarding an "events" tab at the top of the page or even a way to call out events on HN more so. There's certainly a lot of churn regarding news stories, so I've typically used our own Twitter handle (http://twitter.com/hackersfounders http://twitter.com/hackersfounders) to post updates from those who attend and if we change the location (depending if it's rainy outside, we'll go somewhere else other than Shake Shack). I'm also a HUGE fan of Anyvite to organize all the invites.
- Murkin 17y ago
  +1 On the event board idea. With some supportive upvotes we got the first HN in TelAviv to around 40+ members. Afterwards we weren't as lucky with timely upvotes (being a rather small community) so I am relying on our existing 90 user Facebook page. Which results in the exclusion of new members. 1) Would be nice if there was a place to post in advance and have it stick 2) Some way for events that were upvoted on that page to appear on the bottom (or any other visible but not too prominent area) of the main HN page for 24-48 hours so all members can see. 3) Still keep some control, so people don't just post events and then change their minds.
bknotts 17y ago
I organize Hackers and Founders Indianapolis. Our most recent meetup had 40 people. Like @iamelgringo said, I don't post our meetups to Hacker News because the post falls off the page immediately. I know there is a community of Hacker News people in Indiana who aren't connected but would be if there was a way on Hacker News to see when others are gathering for a meetup in their area. i.e. an events listing. Other than that, meetup.com really serves all of our other meetup organizing needs.

daveambrose 17y ago

Agreed regarding an "events" tab at the top of the page or even a way to call out events on HN more so. There's certainly a lot of churn regarding news stories, so I've typically used our own Twitter handle (http://twitter.com/hackersfounders http://twitter.com/hackersfounders) to post updates from those who attend and if we change the location (depending if it's rainy outside, we'll go somewhere else other than Shake Shack). I'm also a HUGE fan of Anyvite to organize all the invites.

Murkin 17y ago
+1 On the event board idea. With some supportive upvotes we got the first HN in TelAviv to around 40+ members. Afterwards we weren't as lucky with timely upvotes (being a rather small community) so I am relying on our existing 90 user Facebook page. Which results in the exclusion of new members. 1) Would be nice if there was a place to post in advance and have it stick 2) Some way for events that were upvoted on that page to appear on the bottom (or any other visible but not too prominent area) of the main HN page for 24-48 hours so all members can see. 3) Still keep some control, so people don't just post events and then change their minds.

bknotts 17y ago

I organize Hackers and Founders Indianapolis. Our most recent meetup had 40 people. Like @iamelgringo said, I don't post our meetups to Hacker News because the post falls off the page immediately. I know there is a community of Hacker News people in Indiana who aren't connected but would be if there was a way on Hacker News to see when others are gathering for a meetup in their area. i.e. an events listing. Other than that, meetup.com really serves all of our other meetup organizing needs.