Finding the right peer group at first can be rough. One point I made in the post that should be underscored is being 'the first follower.' If you scour your town enough, there is probably someone who is looking to get started. I recommend going with their plan first.
People in the doers group I've met through meetup.com, other friends, and other networking groups. If you stick around long enough, you'll find the right people.
I feel for you. In college I was the lone CS major living in the fine arts dorm! When I did try to get a group together (no reason they can't work on sketches or whatever while I code, right) it always descended into me trying to help people with their homework.
I think a virtual one sounds reasonable. It might not be the exact same effect as in person but I imagine it would still be motivating. I'm also in an area without many nearby programmers so shoot me an email if you're interested in giving it a go.
Not everyone shows up at once. But people also break into groups keeping it small. We try to be pretty selective with who we bring in to keep it productive to everyone.
I think the most interesting part of this post is the "Bloggin with friends" tagline. Isn't this the real social network? I would love to see a platform that facilitates this (a la posterous groups).
We ended up starting a similar thing at Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It began as a group of friends coding together, and over the past year or so it has developed into a series of Hack Nights and we get sponsors sometimes. We've even done a few Hackathons, one of which is happening right now. 24 hours of straight hacking! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119736848105223&in...
This would be an awesome idea, if I knew anyone that stayed up past 10pm (besides myself -- I'm up 4pm to 10am) and didn't have to take the kids swimming every weekend. Being the only single workaholic daydreamer with ambition in your circle of associates and friends and coworkers pretty much blows. :)
I have a few social circles and if I didn't expand beyond my dayjob friends I would probably have the same problem. Once you start mingling with other entrepreneurs you should have no problem finding them.
I started a similar group this semester at UMass Lowell called Maker Club. However, instead of just coding we work on hacks and crafts of all kinds.
In the month since our first meeting we've done a variety of things like making catapults/trebuchets out of popsicle sticks and rubber bands, made giant bubbles, and played Portal using the kinect.
The semester is winding down, but I'm planning on having some hack nights next semester, both general and themed. On general hack nights the club will provide the food and caffeine as long as people are working on something. On themed hack nights everything we make will involve a certain theme. Also, if there's a student or professor who wants to show how to do something like knitting or creating a web page we'll provide them with the supplies they need, take care of the paperwork, and promote it. All they'll need to do is show up.
That's one of a few things I have planned for next year, and I'm going to be planning more over the summer.
We did this for about 2 months (on Friday nights) at my current organization, but then the guy who organized this got busy with something else and no one else picked up the initiative.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 74.8 ms ] threadPeople in the doers group I've met through meetup.com, other friends, and other networking groups. If you stick around long enough, you'll find the right people.
And since I'm part of the campus CS group, we even have food :)
I highly recommend doing something like this.
If you're interested, sign up for the east bay hacker news list: http://groups.google.com/group/east-bay-hacker-news
It's probably parabolic with some max number of people for optimal productivity before the next guy just starts ruining it for everyone else
Yeah, I could see that being awkward.
In the month since our first meeting we've done a variety of things like making catapults/trebuchets out of popsicle sticks and rubber bands, made giant bubbles, and played Portal using the kinect.
The semester is winding down, but I'm planning on having some hack nights next semester, both general and themed. On general hack nights the club will provide the food and caffeine as long as people are working on something. On themed hack nights everything we make will involve a certain theme. Also, if there's a student or professor who wants to show how to do something like knitting or creating a web page we'll provide them with the supplies they need, take care of the paperwork, and promote it. All they'll need to do is show up.
That's one of a few things I have planned for next year, and I'm going to be planning more over the summer.
A group of 40 or 50 people that meet every few months.