Social stuff

[kjwcode]

One of my back-burner tasks has been trying to be more social and "out there". I'm naturally a fairly extreme introvert, so it can be challenging. I enjoy interacting with people, though -- but that's a pretty recent development for me, perhaps in the last five years or so.

DW is one part of the solution. I'm back on IRC (mostly in #dreamwidth and #dreamwidth-dev -- haven't found any other channels that tickle my fancy yet) and recently joined Meetup and the Ubuntu Vancouver group. I haven't been to one of the events yet, but I'll be at the Ubuntu Jam with Oneiric on Friday.

I'm always looking for new and interesting ways to meet people, though. People here are among the friendliest I've met yet, so I'm wondering if I can pick your brains. What else should I be looking at? Where do you interact with people, both online and IRL? Do you have suggestions of mailing lists (I know -- how archaic! But hey, I'm old skool), IRC channels, websites, groups, and so on?

I'm a late-30s bi male who is pathologically interested in science, computing, maths (though still a relative newbie in this subject), culture, and everything else in the interests list in my profile. My strengths are being pretty easy-going, curious, and fairly knowledgeable. My weaknesses include not suffering fools, bigots, homophobes, etc. terribly well and being utterly addicted to caffeine. I'm in a committed relationship so not looking for singles specifically, though I certainly have nothing against them. :)

Any suggestions?

Comments

[kjwcode]

I seriously love the DW Latest Things page. I normally run through it at least a few times per day. Everyone who's not a DW dev that I'm subscribed to is due to it, and seeing the diversity there was one of my hints that DW was the place for me. :)

I'm looking forward to seeing how the local Ubuntu meet-up turns out. I've had bad experiences at similar events in the past (nothing but big schmoozing and business-card-wanking sessions with lots of "oh, you should come work for us, we're so much better than the fools you work for right now"), but I'm heartened to hear you've had better experiences.

[azurelunatic]

There's a lot of schmoozing and wanking at mine, but I tend to not have business cards (this is partly a function of being broke when I think about getting them, and partly a function of I-do-not-need-to-talk-to-that-person-again, though I regret not having them when I do run into someone I want to continue the conversation with, though in that case there's old-fashioned pen and paper) and tailor my answers to "so what do you do" in the direction of the actual thing I'd like to talk about. Relatively few people are interested in the views of a temp who does office work; quite a few people are interested in the views of a person who volunteers design (and random thankless tasks) for one of the few majority-female open source projects.

[kjwcode]

True enough! I don't keep business cards for a slightly strange reason -- I'm a sysadmin. If I hand out business cards people seem to take it as an invitation to call me at odd hours with personal computer problems. :)

The DW project is interesting to a lot of people. I mentioned I was getting involved to my sister-in-law, who's a reporter. I told her about the project (including the incidence of first-time contributors and the majority of female contributors) and she wants to do an article about it. Would you be interested in being interviewed for the article if she decides to write it?

[azurelunatic]

Ahh, sounds like you need the special don't-call-me business cards, with name/website, and maybe even an email address.

Being interviewed sounds like fun! If she does decide to write about it, holler out in #dw and email denise, and your sister-in-law will be able to pick and choose.