Social events for digital workers?

What are some good social events for people who work in the `digital sphere' in your area?

Do you live in a good area for such things?

Basically, since the hipster is now a footnote in history and co-working spaces have gone the way of the dodo and Starbucks is shunned by the ethically aware, where do the digipreneurs of today congregate? In the early 2010's I heard tell of a digital hostel of sorts (probably in Silicon Valley) which has since closed it's doors.

Today, do machine learning enthusiasts and bitcoin-miners hang out in disused warehouses? What's the scene these days?

I have doubts that a connected hipster community ever really existed. And perhaps by it's very nature it's existence would be oxymoronic. At least I've never found it. Everywhere calls itself the "new Berlin" meaning, I guess, that the rent is cheap. But was Berlin every really that exciting to begin with?

Basically I want to get connected and hang out with the go-getters and visionaries and drink wheat grass frappaccinos. Where would be a good place to hang out?

 

Dunno cos it would involve being sociable.

 

Well, you might say that in these days of the millenial. Being unsociable is the new being socialable.

 

Internet forums. Duh.

 

Seriously? There are tons. Check out meet-up and Facebook for groups in your area. Granted there is a disproportionate amount in my area, but there are hundreds of things going on every weekend.

 

Millennials are literally the most connected generation in the work force but go off I guess.

 

Join the IGDA. Local chapters usually have fairly frequent events. As mentioned before, check Meetup. If you're near London, it looks like something's going on every day. A quick search shows at least three competing lunch meetups on Thursday. Or start your own meetup.

 

Where did you read that? Anyway connected is not the same as social. Unless you count talking online as social. Which maybe it is. Go to a restaurant and everyone's looking at their phones instead of talking to each other.

When I was younger I had a thing known as a phone book. So in that respect 60 million people where just a phone call away. How many phone numbers does the average millennial have?

I don't regard social media as social in much respect more like a drug like crack cocaine. Sure it might seem fun while you're doing it. But then one day you wake up and realise you've been sitting alone in a dark corner for the last five years. (I assume.)

 

I have been to restaurants and the only people who are ever on phones are alone, probably because they want to eat while getting something done. When two or more people go into a restaurant together I NEVER see them on their phones unless they really don't want to be there because it's a bad date/awkward situation.

Millennials also collaborate all the time. Millennials are the most politically engaged group of people in ages. Millennials organise and do things all the time. If millennials aren't talking, socialising, and engaging with each other, why does the millennial market behaviour act as it does?

Who gives a hot gay F*** about phone numbers when:

• Discord/Skype exists?
• Twitter/Facebook exists?
• Email exists?
• Whatsapp exists?

This whole "back in my day" is F***ing ridiculous.

 

How come millennial's don't vote??!

 

Because the two parties in American politics they grew up with both pretty much unilaterally supported a war built on entirely false pretenses, another war built on mostly false pretenses, both of which lead to a whole bunch of warcrimes that were never looked into by the Obama administration because just as many dems were responsible as repubs, then that same action was bragged about by the dems during the 2016 election cycle, the continual erosion of voting rights, purging of voter registration entirely along party lines, the fact that independent parties can't raise enough money to campaign given how campaign funding in the US works...

I mean, I could go on, but the short of it is that they don't vote because both parties are absolute garbo and independent parties can never raise the money to campaign so it's more difficult to even find out they exist.

Like, here's a fun one. You know the DSA? The Democratic Socialists of America? In 2016 they had 6,500 members. As of August, they were just shy of 50,000. And they're not even a political party!

 

S*** like this happens in the first place because people are complacent. If you aren't taking charge of the situation, don't complain when you end up in a place you don't like!

But there is a lot of decent people roused to action this election cycle, so I guess Trump has been good for something.

 

I literally said the opposite of what this implies I did.

 

I didn't think we were talking about you.

 

Melbourne obviously hasn't got the memo yet. Co working spaces still seem to be reasonably popular. And there is nothing odd about seeing someone set up with a laptop in a cafe, park or hotel lobby.

So pick another cafe. There are literally thousands.

IDGA is probably the biggest social group I'm a part of. They organised a decent chunk of events. And pretty much everyone shares any game related events with IDGA, which means there is always something interesting going on.

 

I always wanted to found our own AA (Antisocial Anonymous), but I stuck at one problem:
no one would show up at the meeting...

 

IT's never a true democracy if you can't vote for whomever you please. I'd probably vote for myself really, every year.

 

It's not about "true democracy" but having even a hint of representative government.

 

Yeah it's the same worldwide though, I think it may be even necessary on some level, but I'm just so bad at stopping this conversation because you are interesting to talk to. I'll close the browser

 

TOO BAD, YOU'RE GETTING A REPLY ANYWAY:

Ultimately, while this does end up being the case many times, there are degrees of severity at play. While personally I would like the annihilation of any degree of severity, I recognise that as a long term goal that requires a lot of infrastructure work. In the meantime, however, we could all do well to use the power we have as people, as the ones supposedly being represented, to change things.

 

TOO BAD I CHECKED AGAIN.

(I think that there are necessary evils to break through big walls that require a single vision but as those walls are removed, such a structure becomes less necessary so I think it will resolve in time organically).

 

For us (USA) we are a republic.

Anyway... from what I see @yoonitee Discord communities are a big gathering place these days. Twitter and FB still have massive potential for connecting with like-minded people.

I do see the same thing with very young people sitting continually staring at their phones.

They are extremely social just not in actual talking verbally and such at least not compared to how it was.

 

A republic is a type of democracy. It is literally defined by elected representatives and a sitting president rather than a monarchy.

 

I'm not here for politics and was just about to edit my post heavily. There are similarities there are huge differences.

 

You can edit it all you want, but the US is a constitutional republic, which is literally a synonym for "representative democracy."

 

I present to you meetup.com . Just search in your area and POOOF!!!! you will see if you have something going around there.

I live in Miami and thre are a few. I'm trying to find Unity developers because I created MUG (Miami Unity Group) but Unity devs here are far from reachable/sociable (in terms of answering emails and sort).

 

Yeah i meant editing it to remove the political stuff since it is doesn't seem to be needed for the subject of the thread.

 

@yoonitee I know you are talking about irl events but anyway... game jams are always going on and livestreams as well and joining one of those communities might give you some of what you want. Often can at least talk verbally. The reason I mention these is because there is nothing within 100 miles of where I live. I know of only one other person in my area that is into gamedev and I got him into it. He uses GMS. I used to think about advertising in the local newspaper and on FB to see if there was any interest in forming such a thing but then figured if I was going to do that it would make more sense to advertise for local artists and musicians to help me with my game dev.

 

If you build it, they will come.

Meaning, develop visions, and go get them. Then you'll find your crowd. Not the other way around.

 

meetup.com

 

okcupid.com

 

I think life is made of choices.

 

Not if you're a jellyfish.

 

Not really. Each term refers to a separate aspect of government.

Constitution refers to having an underlying document that defines the principles under which a government operates. A constitutional government has a constitution.

Republic refers to the method of choosing the head of state. Republics have an elected president. This is normally opposed to a monarchy which has a hereditary head of state.

Democracy refers to how the governing representatives are chosen. Democracy means they are elected by the vote of the people.

So a country can be any combination of the three. Some concrete examples:

• The United States is constitutional, democratic, and a republic
• Australia is constitutional, democratic, and not a republic
• NZ is democratic, is not constitutional, and is not a republic
• China is not democratic, is constitutional, and is a republic

And so on. I'm sure that if interested, one could find a county that demonstrates every combination of democratic, constitutional and republic.

 

I'll lock this thread as the forums are not democratic, is vaguely constitutional and not a republic... I think.

 

The forums are obviously a brutal dictatorship but you can't stop me from posting hahahahaHAHAHAHAHA!

--Eric

 

what type of developers do you meet there? D:

 

They can't handle the truth!

 

See. Now you are getting it! That's pretty much right on target.

Anyway, dragging us vaguely back to the purpose of this thread. One of the things I've noted about game dev social events is that 90% of developers at these events are at least as socially awkward as me. Which means that many of these events don't form naturally, and when they do happen, people don't socialize naturally.

This means that you often just have to make things happen yourself. I tend to have a bunch of conversation starters that I use over and over.

• Whats your role in the industry?
• What are you working on now?
• Can I see a prototype?
• What engine/technology are you using?

These normally serve to break the ice sufficiently to get a conversation going. Most people are more then keen to talk about them self and their own work. Once the conversation runs out of steam, you politely excuse yourself and go to the next group.

If you are lucky, you'll even remember what you talked about with a person last month and be able to use that as a conversation starter. (On the other hand, if you are like me and have mild prosopagnosia, this strategy can be hit and miss. Normally I get a few minutes into a conversation before I get enough contextual cues to remember who I'm talking too.)

 

The sexy ones. Do you dev with a bunch of uggos or something?

 

But the question is, are you the supreme dictator? Or is it @hippocoder

I think we all understand that @zombiegorilla runs the whole thing from the shadows. But I just need to be clear on who our nominal supreme leader is.

 

Hey, I thought this thread was locked. Brutal dictators just aren't brutal enough these days. (As for who the supreme leader is, well, you have someone who's a zombie AND a gorilla, you have to ask? And a guy who's a hippo AND a coder? And then someone who's just a guy. Pretty obvious.)

--Eric

 

Sometimes you've got to let the crowd loose on your political rivals...

 

its called "diret action"" sweaty

 

Look for a game developer group in your area or something similar. We moved far away from our former home and first thing we did, before we even moved, was look for a group. Now at least we have a few friends here.

I am a social person and am still a bit homesick for all my buddies back in Florida, especially the Unity User group folks. Someone suggested meetup, and that is where I found the group here in New Jersey.

 

Yet another awesome aspect to being a fighter/magic-user (technical artist), is that we get to participate in all the social funsies. Plein air / theater / dining with the artsies, paintball / bowling / movies with the engineers. (and other fun combos)

 

I reckon I have this. I get this thing when I'm watching a movie and I won't realise until the end that there were two main characters. Because both actors look the same to me. This is especially bad if it's those "good looking" actor types because they have very little distinguishing features. What I like is for one to have a beard or one to be bald etc.

That together with not being able to remember names, and my mind wandering off every so often makes following detective movies almost impossible. But I like looking at the pictures.

IDK. Maybe it's not me. Maybe it's just bad filmmaking.

 

I find my problem is the opposite. If an actor changes costumes, I'll think they are a new character. I get by fine in action movies and the like. Its generally easy to pick the good guys and bad guys by context. But where I really struggle is with rom coms. Throw three or four couples on the screen, and I'll quickly loose track.

I once worked several weeks with a guy that I frequently LARP with. It wasn't until he asked me if I was going to the game that night that I realized we were good friends. He'd just thought I was being snobbish. In reality I simply didn't recognize him without the contextual clues.

Its even better when one guy is black. That's something even I can't miss.

 

Kind of... yes :c