As I drove down Convoy in Kearny Mesa, past many signs that I recognized only as "Asian" (white boy that I am), I wondered to myself, "Where the heck is this place?". Then I saw the glowing sign for the Pangea Cafe (along with "Asian" below it). After driving a little further past more "Asian" and a car dealership, I found some street parking down a dead end street and made my way to the agreed upon location.
I had been asked by a coworker, after discovering our mutual love of both startup culture and tech in general, if I wanted to check out a Hacker News meetup. Truth be told, we had not gone to the last one he had invited me to. Having normally had to "get my geek on" at work, I looked forward to the opportunity to speak with others who shared some similar interests. Needless to say, I was excited.
My coworker and I are were some of the first to arrive and casually chatted about work, family, etc while we waited to see who turned up. Other than that, we scoped out the various pastries and other baked goods on display and grabbed a couple lattes.
As people filtered in and introductions were made, it was immediately apparent that everyone fell into one of two camps: Hardware or Software. This was usually made in the form of "I'm a _________ guy" statement. After letting someone else know what I worked on, the gentleman politely told me and others in the vicinity "Hey, he's got an elevator pitch!" Even now, I'm not sure if that was a compliment or an insult (but I will think of it as the former, if only for my ego's sake).
Disclaimer: I have just really started getting into actually coding websites.
I've been a project manager for ~3 years now, primarily dealing with websites, but I got tired of telling people what needed to be done and wanted to know how to do it myself. I'm starting to watch Github projects, have contributed exactly one spelling error to a single project, and have dabbled in creating websites using things like Zurb's Foundation. I'm really starting to understand at least the references and how things connect and work in the web development world, but I know that I still have TONS to learn. I watched A LOT of Tech TV as a kid (and followed nearly their whole staff after it was taken off the air), asked for "the internet" for christmas one year as a child, and have been fairly involved in what you might characterize as "online culture" since I got that first 9600 baud modem. I may not be an expert, but I know my tech.
In short, I know just enough to be dangerous (and foolish).
Enough about me though... back to the reason I was here. I wanted to connect with some other nerds and chit chat about startup/entrepreneurship. The people who I met were much more than that. They shipped their own products (and not just software). They were hardware and software engineers for Fortune 500 companies. They were developing new ways to measure buildings. They were figuring out how to let a cellphone know how far it had traveled in space. They were making games. In short, these people were insanely bright.
Introductions were akward at points, but if you touched on a particular topic, this guy or that guy would quickly step into their element and engage you in an incredibly interesting conversation about anything from practical matters ("But how will it make money?") to the philisopical ("Is hardware or software better?"). I was impressed by each and every person and terrified that I might waste their time with an idea. Everyone listened patiently to my opinions, challenged me when they needed to and entertained my questions about their ideas very diplomatically. Before I knew it, 2 hours had passed.
I was outmatched in the best way possible. It was not what I expected, but exactly what I had come for. I'll be going the next time around and goading more people into coming along for the ride. It was well worth it.
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