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London Hacker News February Meetup
- dmitri1981 14y agoIn case people are interested, the talks from previous events are online at https://vimeo.com/hnlondon https://vimeo.com/hnlondon
- buro9 14y agoHey Dmitri, a couple of questions... Will you be reducing the involvement of sponsors now you're raising £3k per event? What are the additional events and projects now in the pipeline as a result of the extra funds? Having just got back from San Francisco and seeing a lot of the pay-it-forward culture in action, I'm glad there is a fee at it means that we're able to contribute to something that can help build something larger and be part of a difference in the London startup culture. So I'm really keen to hear about how those funds are now going to be invested to make that change happen.
- Peroni 14y agoI'll let Dmitri give his own response but one thing I will mention is the fact that the cost of putting on the event each month is in excess of £2k and that's not taking into account Dmitri's time & efforts (or mine for that matter). Dmitiri's plans for improving the event are solid but it's not my place to reveal them.
- dmitri1981 14y agoNot at all. I think many of the sponsors are providing huge value to the community and I don't see much point in reducing their involvement. Another event that I am hoping organise very soon is a screening of The Startup Kids film. There is also a hackathon in the pipeline, though I am still working out some of the details.
- cbeach 14y agoI see first hand how much time and effort Dmitri puts into organising this event, and I can't imagine how he (or anyone) would be able to make this event sustainable without getting an income from it. When you consider transaction fees, tax and expenses, Dmitri is being generous with his time.
- alinajaf 14y agoI was at this event (the 'freelancer' in the front row getting picked on by Sanderson), it was brilliant. Big thank you to yourself and Steve for putting on such a good show.
- dmitri1981 14y agoYou are totally welcome :)
- phatbyte 14y agoI'm going to miss this by a week =(
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoAnd conflicts with the other decent grassroots event in London - find-a-tech-job-in-London meetup - aaargh I am sponsoring that one ! :-) Slightly weird coincidence.
- throwawayx3 14y agoSee above chain about £££.
- ig1 14y agoThere's absolutely no-way to run a tech/startup event in London without clashes now. There's multiple events running pretty much every single day.
- danmaz74 14y agoOT: I'm thinking about moving from Rome to London in a couple of months. During the first months there I'd like to work part time as a programmer: I'm very experienced with Ruby on Rails and Javascript/CoffeeScript and I would like to see from the inside how it works in the London startup scene, while I also work on my side project for which later I'll be looking for investors. Any suggestions about how to start looking for contract or temporary work while not residing in London? Of course I'm willing to travel to interview and/or make arrangements, but I can't leave my current job immediately.
- Peroni 14y agoHey Dan. Drop me an email (address in my profile). I'm looking for contract ruby folk at the moment and know quite a few others looking for contractors.
- danmaz74 14y agoHey Stevie. Thanks! I'm writing right now.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoReally - my contacts in recruitment world say the contract market is dead in London ? Perm work is five times the volume and teams are all in house now? Am I wrong?
- alinajaf 14y agoYes, you are wrong. "Contacts in the recruitment world" are probably right about contracts with clients that use recruiters. I'm currently turning down more work than I know what to do with through my network.
- Peroni 14y agoVery. I'm an inhouse recruiter myself however I used to work on the dark side as an agency recruiter. Contract work (particularly for rubyists) is still surpassing perm work.
- EnderMB 14y agoOut of interest, how many people from outside London go to these meetups? I'm in Bristol, so a bit far to travel.
- ig1 14y agoNot sure numbers but there's definitely people who travel a couple of hours from outside London to get to it. Alternatively why not setup a local HN meetup for Bristol and the south west ?
- estel 14y agoI'm unconvinced that Bristol (or any other region of the UK, especially those commutable to London) has the critical mass necessary to support one. Perhaps a worthwhile experiment though.
- Peroni 14y agoTo be fair, HN London started off with 15-20 people in the living room of one guys apartment and now we've got over 4,000 members.
- ig1 14y agoIIRC it was 15-20 in Songkick's original offices at the back of Spitalfields market (although physical size wise it was probably about the size of a living room), it frequently over-flowed into the corridor. They used to make everyone introduce themselves at the start, modern HN meetups lack that sense of intimacy :)
- dmitri1981 14y agoI'd say critical mass is around 20 passionate people who do cool stuff. Once you have that the rest is surprisingly easy.
- cfn 14y agoWell, there are two MS/.NET usergroups in Bristol, one of which has had 100+ people in attendance a couple of times and there a few other user groups in human factors and such.
- rvkennedy 14y agoI enjoyed the last one of these I went to, but it's not much of a networking event. You can get a bit of meet-and-greet in between the speaker talks, but everyone pretty much left after the last one, as the venue closed down. Anyone who wanted to network had to move on to a nearby pub, and few people made the effort, or knew where to go.
- dmitri1981 14y agoSeveral people have made the same comment and it's especially important for people who are new to the scene and don't know many people. It's something that I would definitely like to improve and welcome all suggestions. I'll post an update with pub details on the event page too.
- maxer 14y agowith so many startups and hackers in the room- Setting aside 10 slots of 30 seconds (or min) each to pitch to the room on what they are working on may help people connect and find like minded people? kind of like show and tell..
- rvkennedy 14y agoI also attended some HN meetups in Munich and those worked very well. You show up, you talk to people. The organizers set aside a short time for anyone who wanted to talk about their project to do so, apart from that it was just a meetup, focused on the attendees rather than pre-prepared content.
- ayers 14y agoI have always found the best time for networking was at the start of the event but that might be because I usually get there early.
- easytiger 14y agoit's london... we need excuses to talk to strangers.
- Peroni 14y agoHere's a longshot: PG, when are you going to grace us with your presence and come give a talk? (we have pizza & booze)
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago+1 for sheer chutzpah :-)