In April 2019, I've moved from a medium-sized city in Poland to London, one of the biggest cities in Europe, with really big front-end community.
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In local meetups I have space to confront the speaker, questioning and interacting directly in the moment. There may be some real world not curated experience from other developers from their day to day work. These may help a lot more than curated talks that serve more as an spectacle than knowledge sharing.
I'm an introvert as well, and not very comfortable being in a roomful of strangers. That said, my favorite meetup, and the only one I attend, is the local LUG (Linux Users Group). I don't attend very many meetings, as most of the topics are too advanced for me. One that I recently attended was on how to set up and use an Arduino to control a model railroad.
Discussing advanced topics is also one of the reasons I don't attend other meetups, as well as many of them being scheduled at times when I can't attend.
Hi! Thanks for sharing this. I remember that few of the first meet-ups I attended to back in the days were way more advanced for me. Although it only gave me more motivation and guided me into direction of what to learn. I’d recommend to try those advanced topics anyway. Even if you have no clue what they talk about!
As another introvert, I’ve found it quite valuable that when I do manage to strike up a conversation with someone at a meetup, I try to exchange social network or personal website details with them. Great way to make friends, find new meetups to attend through your new networks, and widen your horizons further!
It seems to also be popular these days that meetups have some sort of messaging platform, e.g. on Slack or Discord. That can also be an introvert-friendly way to get involved and explore what else is happening.