Getting into Meetups

I like meetups a lot

  • Co-ran a meetup with a friend before I moved to New York, made some of the best friends of my life
  • When I moved to NYC, I went for meetups, and my only regret is that I didn't go to more!

The community

  • When we talk about reaching out to the community, half of the time, that means meetups
  • In tech, meetup.com is the real deal
    • FSA even hosts one, if you haven't noticed!
  • In your job hunt, you should consider meet-upping
  • Pre-job hunt -- great if you have time on a weekend, but don't get distracted

Socializing is hard

  • It's okay, it's just other programmers
  • People are generally nice people who want the same thing you want
    • Don't have this fear: people will think I'm just being friendly in case they can get me job
    • "I've never gotten a job as a result of an interview - I've only gotten anything by being recommended by friends" - a friendly person from a meetup

Dealing with creeps

  • Let's address my male privilege
    • It's a lot easier for me to say go hang out with a bunch of random people from the internet
  • I highly recommend bringing a copilot to new meetups - you all have each other now!
  • There are some incredible and active all-female meetups

I don't want to be a n00b

  • Do you like helping people? Most other people in the world feel the same way
    • People will actually like you more if they have the chance to help you

You're in better shape than you think

  • JavaScript is sort of a big deal right now - a lot of experienced programmers are encountering it for the first time
  • You're all actually pretty cool people because you specialize in JavaScript - you may in fact find yourself helping much more experienced programmers!

Some active tech meetups:

  • Beginner Programmers / Hacker Hours (totally cool people, I've talked there)
  • NY JavaScript (FSA has hosted here)
  • Women Who Code NYC (Shanna is an organizer!)
  • League of Women Coders
  • ngNYC (Joe just gave a talk here!)
  • New York Javascript Study Group
  • Hack Manhattan (hardware focus)
  • SQL NYC (larger events)
  • Learn Python NYC
  • Many more!

Summary

  • Be yourself!
  • Be safe!
  • Have fun!
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