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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

We've bumped into each other. I'm also a Miami dev and part of the 00s brain drain. It's been exciting to see this city change so much. And I've gotten to meet so many amazing developers and engineers.

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Probably. I've been down here 7 years now and I used to be pretty active in the local scene in terms of going to meetups, talks, etc.. I am not as active these days but participated in Hack Week.

We probably have a few folks in common. Do you participate in any of the meetups like Brickell Tech Tuesday, the Wynwood Tech slack group, etc..?

On my way to the miami tech happy hour now. I participated at ‘22 and ‘23 Hack Week. I was really impressed by the winners, Yenta.

Neat - I was in the Social House this year during Hack Week. Hack Week is great but it just kind of adds to the whole notion that Miami isn't really a city to grow in, it's a city to come down for a little bit, do something, and leave. Very transient, almost too transient. I was one of 3 people in my house that actually live here, even though the house's roster was close to 40 people. Everyone was from SF/LA.

Is wynwood tech slack group still around? There was a period a few years back when there were like 5 competing slack groups (MIA Tech, Miamitech, RefreshMiami, WynwoodTech, etc). Also Hey Joe!

I used to be much more active in the local scene, but having a kid + covid shifted my focus to other things. But it is wild to see how much it has changed here in 5 years.

I mean, it kind of is (i recognize your name - aren't you one of the guys who started the group?). I joined it as well as Refresh and some others back when I moved here 7 years ago. Now it's just a small amount of people who occasionally post there. It's pretty much dead, though.

The local scene here is, well, sort of dead. CIC is no more, The Lab isn't hosting (m)any community events, Wynwood is now overrun by tourists more than it ever was since I've been here, and the Brickell event seems to be the only thing going (shoutout to Chuck!).

There are crypto-focused events i think but i'm not really into crypto so I wouldn't really know.

Also - side note: I founded an EdTech company here in 2017 and recently closed it. I checked out your latest project, looks super cool - congrats!!!

I didn't start wynwood tech, but did start refreshmiami back in 2006. None of the chat groups that I know of had the density or momentum to thrive. Lots of activity moved to whatsapp and telegram groups during the wave of newcomers during covid. Refresh stopped doing in person events as well, so we only restarted that a few months ago after a 2+ year hiatus (events are super time consuming to do well, and hard to make sense financially).

CIC space is re-launching soon under new management as CIC moved on from this location. I do miss the early days of the LAB when they were the nexus of all the activity. Sadly I haven't set foot in the LAB in over 4 years.

What's sad to me is that most of the newcomers don't really engage with people who have been here for a while.

Happy to hear Refresh has started doing events again.

I miss the intimate events that were under 100 people where you could actually talk to people who were doing something besides crypto. Really miss when LiveNinja's staff would make waffles every week and let locals do presentations about whatever technical or business topics they chose.

Sad to hear that CIC moved on from that space - that location was great for both businesses and events....loved their kitchen space and the game room next door (and the hidden listening room!).

I have only been here since 2016 but I loved the LAB when I first got here (maybe I'm biased because I'm a Wyncode alum and the classes were out of the LAB). So many events, cool companies, interesting people, etc... but that's all in the past now....Wynwood lost the little amount of soul it still had by the time I moved here.

Shit, there's very little community here these days it seems.

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