Hacker News London Meetup

[Matthew Hughes]

Hi all, 

As some of you know, Hacker News has monthly meetups in London, where between 400 and 600 like-minded entrepreneurs, hackers, technologists meet, eat pizza, watch talks and drink beers. I've always wanted to go. Sadly, as a student, I find that the cost of transportation, a hotel and food can be pretty prohibitive. I also imagine that a lot of people who aren't students/unemployed/poor still would think that dropping £200 to attend an event is pretty unappealing. Also, a lot of people have families and wouldn't want to spend a night over in London.

With all that said though, I imagine there are still a lot of people who would want to attend one of the biggest monthly technology events in the UK and would appreciate the opportunity to network with their peers in London and the South East of England.  

I decided to do a bit of research, and spoke to four different coach companies. I asked them for a ballpark quote for the cost of getting to and from London. The costs given to me by these coaches ranged between £1000 and £1250 for a 30 seater coach, not including the cost of parking and a meal for the driver. This means that if we get a full coach, the cost of transportation would be around £35. The cost of a ticket to a HN London meetup is £6. 

I think the advantage of what I'm proposing is that it'd be significantly cheaper than getting a train down, and you wouldn't have to worry about catching the last train back home. Also, you'd be able to get home on the same night. 

So, right now, I'm just trying to gauge interest. I want to see if this is something people would be interested in attending. 

• Would you want to attend a Hacker News London meetup? 
• Would you want to go there, and return on the same night? 
• Would you be willing to pay £35 to get down there? 

So, yeah. Let me know what you think! Feel free to comment on this thread, or ping me an email at me at matthewhughes dot co dot uk. 

Best,

Matt

[Tim Dobson]

I'll be straight up front: I'm not interested in going to London for a
meetup - you can only actually physically talk to a specific number of
people in one even, and the North West has an incredible number of
awesome people that I've yet to speak to.

Here's a second idea though: why not organise a HN meetup in Liverpool,
or try to visit as many different User Groups in the North West as
possible - when I was a student (3 years ago) - I did a lot of this, and
I don't regret it for one moment - I've met friends, colleagues, and
employers like that.

-Tim

[Matthew Hughes]

Hey Tim, 

I appreciate that. Thanks for your honesty. It's actually really helpful. The aim of this entire exercise is to ask people for their thoughts before I proceed with doing anything. 

I'm not sure how I'd go about organizing a HN event in Liverpool. I'm also not all that great at organizing events, as anyone who has been to Breakerfaire can testify. ;) It's definitely something to consider though. Ditto with attending usergroups and the like. There are a few I've been intending to attend for some time now (Jelly Liverpool, Lug Liverpool)!

Thanks for your feedback!

Matt

[Paul Freeman]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Matthew Hughes <m...@matthewhughes.co.uk> wrote:

I'm also not all that great at organizing events, as anyone who has been to Breakerfaire can testify.

It's more you're not that great at listening, as people keep tell you you've done a great job of organizing Breakerfaire, it was well attended and reached a niche we don't always reach with out "core" events. - You should hold another one! ;o)

--

Paul Freeman

DoES Liverpool CIC

[Hakim Cassimally]

On 19 March 2013 17:16, Paul Freeman <pa...@doesliverpool.com> wrote:
> It's more you're not that great at listening, as people keep tell you you've
> done a great job of organizing Breakerfaire, it was well attended and
> reached a niche we don't always reach with out "core" events. - You should
> hold another one! ;o)

Definitely!
H