Where are the people that hack together in meatspace?

I’ve got a flu and am hopped up on ibuprofen and Nyquil.

This year I’ve been telecommuting and co-working. I’ve made a few friends, but we don’t hang out much. I’ve actually been blown off by a few people to, but you know what? You’re hardly worth the thought.

This rant is addressed to those of you I haven’t met or haven’t hung out with this year, but I truly feel you can do something awesome for the tech scene that’s more than just about your career. Actually if we do this shit that I’ll mention later, you’ll see that it’ll enhance our careers.

I’ve seen you folks in cafes: the guy with the latest Apple laptop tailing server logs with an ev-do card, or the woman compiling drizzle on some beater Lenovo laptop converted to Linux. I’ve seen the creepy and utterly lame pick-up that you engineer dudes do at co-working places. Life’s more than eating where you shit.

Next year, let’s do something awesome. Let’s fucking hang out in meatspace and build something awesome. Let’s have awesome discussions and turn a particular cafe as the place to talk tech.

Let’s meet on some night during the week and actually build and learn shit, and actually help each other. San Francisco has about 17,000 people per square mile in some places. Why aren’t these folks hanging out and making there lives more awesome. Insert Matrix Quote Here.

I know some of you hackers are one pay check away from disaster (if you’re not already there), or some of you are doing okay. Let’s all combine forces and create an awesome network and see if we can actually build something.

You’re the kind of person who knows there’s gotta be better than Facebook or Google. Technology wasn’t meant to pigeonhole and objectify people as consumers but in some weird way liberate their human potential. Ya, it’s pretty hard to buy this BS given what a rough year it was, but if you are reading this here’s my proposal to you:

We meet each week at some common space and work on technology together.

This might sound too simple, but ask yourself this question: What community do you belong to?

Having a hard time answering? Working on a tech project? Then the community I’m proposing might be the one for you.

Maybe there’s already a group out there. If you’re out there, I’d like to talk to you. We have to stop isolating ourselves and unite in a really powerful way.