Tech Meetups Around the World
Yesterday was Wiki Wednesday around the globe, with web-o-philes gathering for casual networking in Montreal, San Francisco, London, Portland and Vancouver. What happens at Wiki Wednesdays? “People get together to chat, learn about wikis, find jobs, talk deals and generally cavort.”
Wiki Wednesday isn’t the only tech meetup franchise. The OpenCoffee Club started in London offers another informal meetup for those interested in tech, this one aimed at providing a venue for entrepreneurs to meet with investors. The website lists groups from Memphis to Milan to Maribor, so the concept seems to have some reach.
Saul Klein, who proposed the idea for the first OpenCoffee Club in London, said, “We want to create some density for people — a few places where people know they can meet or bump into others.” This is a terrific idea. As web workers we certainly don’t lack for professional networking opportunities because they’re ubiquitous online. But we can still benefit from being hooked in with people working near us geographically.
In my own state of Colorado, there’s the Denver Tech Meetup and the Boulder Denver New Technology Meetup. A quick search on “tech meetups” will probably find one in your city too, if it’s of reasonable size and wiredness.
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One of my projects has been trying to make a list of all the tech meetups and user groups in Portland, OR (and it’s on a wiki, so people can add their own).
Upcoming.org has been useful for finding these sorts of events, too.
You didn’t mentioned the genuine Budapest Tech Meetup – pictures about the last event: http://flickr.com/photos/lenardgabor/sets/72157600320654814/show/
Budapest Tech Meetup page: http://newtech.meetup.com/42/
Held regularly / monthly in Budapest / Hungary.
Tech Cocktail Started in Chicago they are now branching off into other cities. I know they have done one in DC already. The event is put on by Eric Olson of feadburner & Frank Gruber from AOL. It is a very good event. http://www.techcocktail.com.
-Jeff O’Hara
http://blog.zemote.com
Toronto also has a very active “tech-meet up” community, and just wrapped up the first annual Toronto Tech week – http://www.techweek.to