It's easy to find/work with fellow hackers asynchronously through sites like github. However, what if I am bored and I post up at a coffee shop to hack on things, wouldn't it be cool if I could set a flag somewhere to say "hey, I'm here, come hack with me". I'm sure it's not an issue in San Fran, however in places like Hollywood (where I am currently posted up at a popular coffee shop), I am surrounded by film industry folks (writers, producers, etc) but I rarely see any hackers. I know there are lots of hackers around here, I have meet some of them, but there is just no easy way for us to assemble ourselves spur of the moment in real life. Someone should fix this...
Is it enough to identify yourself as a hacker to everybody in order to potentially signal fellow programmers, or do you want to "out" yourself as a hacker only to fellow Hackers? The former is easy... slap a bumper sticker with your github on the reverse of your laptop screen. Maybe make sure you have a picture of yourself on your github (to prevent false signalling by people pretending to be you).<p>If the latter is what you want, though, you have to think about how do you prevent people from gaming the system to learn about you. For example, you (you being a user of whatever system you might set up) may not want people hitting on you based on your github profile.<p>As an aside, a quick google search brought up <a href="http://lamakerspace.com/" rel="nofollow">http://lamakerspace.com/</a>
Like a grindr for hackers, huh? ;)<p>You might try looking for local meetups and meeting people there:
- <a href="http://www.2600.com/meetings/mtg.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.2600.com/meetings/mtg.html</a>
- <a href="http://meetup.com" rel="nofollow">http://meetup.com</a>