Prepare to be disappointed, especially by the meetups. The meeters-up may not be a bunch of "greasy salespeople", but that doesn't make them (the meetups) awesome by default.
In my experience most meetups, unless they are specifically culled, super narrow (language, stack, hardware, industry specific etc...) or invite-only are typically made up of "wantrepreneurs," people who want you to sign an NDA to talk to them, grease-ball recruiters, a few rare independent people and the token public sector person trying to do tech-transfer or some other hare-brained initiative that is only good for the city/state/federal government.
Comments
Prepare to be disappointed, especially by the meetups. The meeters-up may not be a bunch of "greasy salespeople", but that doesn't make them (the meetups) awesome by default.
In my experience most meetups, unless they are specifically culled, super narrow (language, stack, hardware, industry specific etc...) or invite-only are typically made up of "wantrepreneurs," people who want you to sign an NDA to talk to them, grease-ball recruiters, a few rare independent people and the token public sector person trying to do tech-transfer or some other hare-brained initiative that is only good for the city/state/federal government.
LOL at "the token public sector person". So true. You have to sift through a LOT of trash to find the treasures.