Thanks for organizing these events, they're great talks and it's awesome that you publish the videos afterwards!
However, I think you should try and give at least a minimal response to HNers who volunteer for a short talk, especially if you explicitly solicited ideas before. It's absolutely fine to say you're not interested, but just ignoring community members is not that great.
You are right. I am sorry for not replying to you and other people who submitted talk proposals last month. I have been swamped with work and neglected many emails recently. I know how annoying it is to not receive responses to emails and should behave accordingly myself.
Apologies if we've not responded. We usually do and I'm not sure how your message got missed. I'll have a dig through now and find out.
We're considering a couple of different options to get more community members on stage such as lightning talks and so on so hopefully you'll get your chance really soon.
This will be the first HN meetup I'll be attending. I always wanted to attend one but I lived too far away. I'm looking forward to meeting anyone and everyone.
For anyone that has been there before, is there anything i should know?
* Some people seem to believe that taking an entire pizza for themselves is appropriate. It isn't.
* Go introduce yourself to people you don't know.
* Expect the talks to run past their scheduled time.
* A small bunch of us congregate in The Windmill pub afterwards. You're welcome to join us.
* Please don't engage in conversation with fellow attendees during the talks.
* If you see or hear something inappropriate, offensive, aggressive or suspicious, find me and tell me. I'm hard to miss. I'm the massive Irish guy sitting up at the front.
However, I think you should try and give at least a minimal response to HNers who volunteer for a short talk, especially if you explicitly solicited ideas before. It's absolutely fine to say you're not interested, but just ignoring community members is not that great.