Top Tech Events in London
I have built my career around events, meet-ups and conferences. I’ve blogged, spoken and lectured on the topic and I’m constantly asked to recommend the best events and meet-ups, primarily by people like me who are hoping to use these events and meet-ups for the purpose of hiring.
The following is a list of meet-ups (in no particular order of preference) that, over the years, I have personally found to be incredibly useful for varying reasons.
NS London
NS London
The numbers: Average attendance circa 150 people. Occurs monthly.
Who you will find: iOS & OS X developers, designers, product people, entrepreneurs.
Reason for inclusion: A brilliantly curated, exceptionally welcoming group with amazing speakers and content.
ProductTank
The numbers: 3.5k members, average attendance circa 300 people. Occurs monthly.
Who you will find: Product people, designers, developers, entrepreneurs.
Reason for inclusion: Unequivocally the biggest concentration of decent product people of all levels of seniority in London.
Design+Banter
The numbers: Average attendance circa 200 people. Occurs monthly.
Who you will find: Designers, product people, developers.
Reason for inclusion: Brilliantly curated content, superbly social attendees, always a full house.
HN London
Disclaimer: I am one of two organisers of HN London.
The numbers: 6.5k members, average attendance circa 400 people. Occurs every other month.
Who you will find: Engineers, designers, graduates, entrepreneurs, CTO’s, recruiters.
Reason for inclusion: It’s the largest tech meet-up in Europe. It’s free, the people are extremely friendly, the content is accessible and interesting and it’s impossible to not get something useful from the meet-up.
Front-end London
The numbers: Average attendance circa 150 people (educated guess). Occurs monthly-ish.
Who you will find: Front-end people, designers, product people, entrepreneurs.
Reason for inclusion: Decent talks, decent people, decent community as a whole.
London Ruby User Group (LRUG)
The numbers: Average attendance circa 150 people (educated guess). Occurs monthly.
Who you will find: Ruby engineers, CTO’s, recruiters.
Reason for inclusion: Strongest and largest concentration of ruby/rails people in the country. Incredibly tight community but largely open and welcoming… unless you’re a recruiter or a racist.
Silicon Drinkabout
The numbers: Average attendance circa 100 people (educated guess). Occurs weekly.
Who you will find: Start-up types, entrepreneurs.
Reason for inclusion: If you’re looking for an opportunity to mingle with all sorts of start-up type people, then you really can’t go wrong with Drinkabout. Aside from the attendees, it’s usually a pretty good chance to have a peek behind the scenes at various tech companies headquarters.
PyData London
The numbers: 1k members, average attendance circa 180 people. Occurs monthly.
Who you will find: Data Scientists, engineers, analysts, BI people.
Reason for inclusion: Organised with near military precision, the PyData team run an incredibly high quality event where the content is far beyond the comprehension of recruiters meaning you’re left with a pure concentration of super smart, super friendly Python/Data people.
London Node User Group (LNUG)
The numbers: Average attendance circa 120 people. Occurs monthly.
Who you will find: JavaScript people, designers, entrepreneurs
Reason for inclusion: The incredibly passionate organisers are infectious which inevitably results in a fun, friendly and thoroughly enjoyable monthly event.
Girls in Tech London
The numbers: Average attendance circa 150 people. Occurs monthly.
Who you will find: Entrepreneurs, product people, developers
Reason for inclusion: Anything that supports the visibility of women in technology and entrepreneurship is a good thing in my books. Lora & the team get a nod purely because of the incredibly high quality content they deliver time and again.
London Java Community
The numbers: Over 2k members, average attendance circa 100 people. Occurs weekly.
Who you will find: Anyone and everyone who uses Java in anger.
Reason for inclusion: It’s one of the longest running, well curated meet-ups in London. Yes, Barry (the organiser) runs a recruitment company but I’ll challenge anyone to say that he doesn’t run the best Java event in the country.
What did I miss?
As mentioned in my preamble, this is a list based on my own personal preferences and experiences and is limited to meet-ups and doesn’t include workshops and so on. I’m always keen to hear about new events so if I missed something, tell me on twitter.
Got your fill?
If this list doesn’t keep you busy, watch this space for a new post covering my recommendations for the best tech conferences.
