Having been to many of these, they are enjoyable and cover an incredibly wide gamut of topics. It is great to see the invite upvoted.

I'd like to see one of these in Orange County. Who organizes them? I'd come to this one if I had time for the drive.

Maybe HN should have regular meetups in every city?

I started one in Seattle three and a half years ago. I handed it off to someone else a year ago, but I was getting ~150 people per event, and the meetup list has grown to 2000.

All you gotta do is pick a time, a place, and get the word out. Then boom! Done. :)

Organize one! I'm in north San Diego county and for a little while we were doing them up here occasionally. I just poked the SD list and found enough interest. If you did one in South OC I'd show up.

I usually post the event details. The event is pretty much self-organizing at this point.

Definitely in Orange County. I can host in Laguna Beach. :)

What should I create? Meetup is workable but kind of annoying IMHO.

+1 for OC meetup :)

Working on it.

Up: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ochackernews

Another +1 for OC (South OC/Irvine preferably)

Would anyone in San Diego be interested in getting together for coffee or lunch during the day?

Sure, I'd much prefer 1-1 sessions rather than a group meetup. Don't get me wrong -- the meetups are great, and it's fun to meet new people. But you don't get to dig into much of anything.

I'm in SD (live in PtLoma, work downtown) and am down for a cup of coffee or lunch. Can do during the week if it's close to downtown, otherwise I'm sure we can figure something out. Email is in my profile.

Any Austinites out there? Looks like there haven't been any recent ones in ATX.

Look out for fake hotspots and things of that nature 'hackers'.

Such a ripe group...