San Francisco Developer Meetups

These meetups range from business entrepreneurship to software engineering tools. For argument's sake, we can organize these meetups into three categories: lecture, booth, or freeform.

Lecture-style meetups

Lecture-style tech meetups are informative sessions where developers of any company can attend to learn about the latest and greatest technologies. These meetups allow a developer to know what other companies are doing in Silicon Valley. Presenters share their experience in using a particular technology, explain why and how a technology was built, or advertise a new product. The content presented at meetups is new and untested. Some of the technologies are relevant in years to come; other technologies will not make a difference. Yet, it is crucial for developers to attend these meetups to stay up to date.

These meetups begin with attendees congregating at the meetup venue half hour before the official start, usually around 6 PM. At larger companies, attendees must register on the attendee list beforehand and are checked on entry. Pizza and beer, sometimes other food, is served. Attendees socialize with each other while the food is being served. Then, the presentation starts with the attendees listening in a lecture-style arrangement. First, an announcer thanking the venue and food sponsors. Then, the speaker of the night presents their talk. After the presentation is a question-and-answer period. Finally, the meetup closes with attendees socializing again. The majority of technical meetups and user groups in San Francisco are lecture-style meetups including the HTML 5, Android, Java, JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails meetups.

Booth-style meetups

Booth-style meetups are less structured than lecture-style meetups. Several companies showcase a working demo of their product. Attendees visit each booth to learn about their products. The onus is on the company presentations to make a clean and well-presented session within a few minutes. There are often half a dozen or more people watching the booth at a given time. One good example of a booth-style meetup is SF Fashion and Tech.

Social meetups

Freeform social meetups are social mingling sessions where entrepreneurs and developers meet each other. It is equivalent to business speed dating. Sometimes an attendee list is provided beforehand for targeting networking between individuals. Other times, its a complete wildcard in the meetup. 106 Miles, Hackers and Founders, and Drink Entrepreneurs SF are excellent meetups that allow attendees to network with each other.

For beginners

From the experiences of our attendance, we recommend that novices start with the tech meetups and booth meetups. Individuals can leverage common ground to start a conversation. The talk's content or presentation serves as an immediate common ground. Free-format meetups can be more difficult to start and sustain a conversation due to the variability in attendees. In all these