spectacularly unpleasant for others. Having a second-best solution is still valuable for those of us who experience unstructured meetings with strangers as roughly equivalent to being dropped in the shark tank at the aquarium.
They are spectacularly unpleasant for me too, but I still go them because I want to have a decent salary and choice of job options. Also: don’t forget you can network online in chat fora/mailing lists etc (where you can do your networking without being face-to-face).
Likewise: it’s possible you just haven’t found the right meetups etc to go to… there are a lot of aspie CS people around, and they still tend to like learning new stuff at tech meetups… find the ones that are very specific to your geekiest technology (avoid the ones that are like “web entrepreneurs” and instead choose something for your programming language, or even more specific—some really-specific toolset for your industry… the more geeky you get, the fewer random strangers you find, and the more people just like you—who are also not highly sociable, but will be more likely to be interested in your topics, and help you out when in need.
Also: you don’t have to thoroughly enjoy the experience… you just have to endure it and fake being social for one night a month… and practice makes perfect here (or fake-it-til-you-make-it)
They are spectacularly unpleasant for me too, but I still go them because I want to have a decent salary and choice of job options. Also: don’t forget you can network online in chat fora/mailing lists etc (where you can do your networking without being face-to-face).
Likewise: it’s possible you just haven’t found the right meetups etc to go to… there are a lot of aspie CS people around, and they still tend to like learning new stuff at tech meetups… find the ones that are very specific to your geekiest technology (avoid the ones that are like “web entrepreneurs” and instead choose something for your programming language, or even more specific—some really-specific toolset for your industry… the more geeky you get, the fewer random strangers you find, and the more people just like you—who are also not highly sociable, but will be more likely to be interested in your topics, and help you out when in need.
Also: you don’t have to thoroughly enjoy the experience… you just have to endure it and fake being social for one night a month… and practice makes perfect here (or fake-it-til-you-make-it)