
Ask HN: Where do you go to meet interesting like minded people? - chunky1994
This could be a website, an actual location, anything! I'm curious to know where you first met your most interesting friends, and whether you still frequent that place!
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sneak
Hacker News, Twitter, IRC. I follow a lot of people on Twitter and I have
interesting tweets, and many follow me back. I have made several new offline
friends this way.

Some of my IRC friends from the 90s are some of my closest friends now, too.
It's cool 'cause they're geographically distributed so I have people I'm tight
with in almost every major country.

Interestingly enough, one of my closest friends in my city I first "met" on
the GNU Screen mailing list. I met him randomly at a conference here after
moving and recognized his name.

Also, local user groups are good places, too.

PS: Freenode irc is full of dorks, but it's a good starting point. Try EFNet
or one of the smaller hacker darknets (e.g. Buttes or hardchats or
antisec/anonops) for the real motherfuckers.

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softbuilder
In my experience "interesting" is often at odds with "like-minded".

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dagw
Usenet, back in the day, was a great place to meet awesome people. I still
have several great friends whom I first got to know via usenet. Unfortunately
usenet kind of died, and for some reason all the replacements that have shown
up since are but a pale shadow of what usenet once was.

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alex1
School.

If you're in college right now, and especially a top-tier university, try to
meet as many people as possible. Don't miss this opportunity; your network
will be invaluable once you're done with school. College is a great place to
step out of your bubble and college admissions committees usually do a good
job of putting a diverse group of interesting people in one place. Meet people
from different backgrounds, countries, and majors. Even though you may not
realize it now, you will one day need most of the people that you meet in
school.

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jakubmal
Try attending local TEDx meeting: <http://www.ted.com/tedx>

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alfiejohn_
I've found that my local Perl Mongers was a great place to meet like minded
people - <http://www.pm.org/> for your closest one :)

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JonAtkinson
This is very location-specific, but if you're in the north of the UK, the
Geekup (<http://geekup.org/>) network has been invaluable. It's a loose-knit
group of groups, which usually meet in pubs and hold a few tech talks.

The Geekup template would be easy to replicate elsewhere (it's essentially a
site and a mailing list, though I don't mean to denigrate all Andrew's hard
work!). Personally, it's been a great source of contacts and friends, and I'd
love to see the model expand elsewhere.

I also find a lot of interesting and smart people at Barcamps; there are
enough regulars that attend a LOT of Barcamps (again, I'm in the UK, and
elsewhere may vary), and they're usually great fun.

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chriseidhof
University, online (if you do interesting stuff people will find you), lots of
meetups (mostly programming language related meetups), co-working spaces /
shared offices and sometimes randomly in bars. Make sure you talk to a lot of
people.

Also: a lot of (most?) people are very interesting if you look well enough.
Not everybody seems to be interesting, but once you get to know people well,
they might surprise you.

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arb
Local hackerspace draws an eclectic crowd. Hardly like-minded in most ways,
but always interesting. (<http://tangleball.org.nz>)

Networking through it also often leads to people from neighbouring groups,
including artists, academics, entrepreneurs, politicians, activists and so on
(many of whom might not self-identify as hackers/makers).

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xradionut
Scour the local meetups that look interesting and research the age of the
group and the average attendance. Contact frequent attendees and query them.

I'm in a large metro area so there are professional, hobby, social and
sporting/outdoor groups of all types. I've met folks from hikers, body
builders, travelers, sci-fi readers, robotics enthusiasts, radio operators to
MSSQL DBAs.

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kellco
1\. Startup Weekend (They might have one in your city.) 2\. Internet Marketing
Summit 3\. Founders Institute 4\. Toastmasters/Rotary or other business clubs
in your city 5\. Tech Conferences 6\. Online Forums/discussion boards
(marketing/biz/tech ones)

Since I'm on my computer all day and at home a lot, I have to go to events to
meet people which I'm getting better at.

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jrubinovitz
I'm from the Philadelphia area, so I head to Philadelphia tech meet ups and
more so hackathons lately now that I'm working and want to keep churning out
side projects while meeting awesome people who, broadly put, like hacking. You
still need to search out for the "interesting, like minded people", but I find
they're worth it.

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seclorum
<http://metalab.at/>

Its the only place I bother going for a good time here in Vienna ... ;)

~~~
waru
That looks awesome. Is there a resource online to find all the start-up/tech
incubators in Europe, or the world? I'll be traveling in Europe soon and would
love to visit more places like this. Thank you!

~~~
seclorum
Get thee verily to <http://hackerspaces.org/> !

~~~
waru
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

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leejw00t354
Try www.meetup.com I joined some local startup meetups. I went to my first one
a week ago and it was a really great experience. I was able to speak to like-
minded people about my ideas to get feedback. I was also able to get marketing
advise and listen to other interesting ideas people had

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orphan
Most of my longterm friends were either in or peripherally attached to the
warez scene on efnet in the 90s.

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monkeypizza
I go to a local go (wei qi) club - it's full of guys who have a tendency to
get obsessed by abstractions...

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johndbritton
I've met tons of really interesting people while traveling. I Couch Surf with
interesting strangers all over the world and some of them end up becoming very
good friends.

<http://couchsurfing.org/people/johndbritton>

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clockwork_189
I am tech minded, hence to meet such people I would either go to Tech
conferences, talks and universities. I find it the best way to get inspired
while at the same time meet new people. Even better is volunteering in such
conferences as you get to meet many new people

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iamelgringo
I started a meetup 4 years ago to solve this problem. It's turned into a
startup of sorts:

[http://beta.hackersandfounders.com/faq/meetups/is-there-a-
ha...](http://beta.hackersandfounders.com/faq/meetups/is-there-a-hackers-and-
founders-in-my-area/)

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marvinsum
Try cold emailing people. Really, it helps. Find a list of people doing like-
minded things and just shoot off a bunch of emails. You can ask them a
question, or comment on something they did or wrote. Some won't reply, but
most do.

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nosse
My roommates at helsinki university of technology have been a real eye openers
for me. I can't say they are really like minded, but interesting as hell.
Roommates don't have to be just roommates, they can be great friends.

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vonstark
I meet interesting guy at meet-up, or friend of friends. that's why I build
meetcliv.com It collect & analyze the information from web and let u meet the
guy u want to meet. :)

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MichaelApproved
<http://Meetup.com>

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monste9
Public Access Unix Systems. sdf.lonestar.org is my favourite.

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ig1
Unconferences/barcamps.

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verdverm
my local hookah bar

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bigiain
Burningman.

