As some of you know, I’ve recently moved back to San Francisco after spending a good portion of the past two years nomadic.

SF has a local monthly meetup - it may have beer!

Since then, as much as I spend time online on communities like Flyertalk, Milepoint and the Travel Codex forums, it’s still a fairly slow way to share information, swap stories and get the latest tips on manufactured spending, maximizing routing rules and whether the cpm on a mileage run is “worth it”.

Generally, it’s also hard to hang out with people who’s eyes won’t glaze over when you share how you booked a 8 segment itinerary on Delta using 6 partners and want to spend MORE time talking about travel sites than less.

So two friends and I started a local monthly meetup for people in this hobby that are based in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. It doesn’t rove around like some conferences, so there’s consistency in time and place and the material will always be fresh and gradually get more advanced as the crowd does (or we assume that you’ll learn as you go).

Our next meetup is May 27th @ 7pm at RockIt CoLabs (639 Clay Street). Feel free to RSVP here and join the group to hear about future meetups here (we’re shooting for once a month, on a weekday evening).

We cap it at 75 people solely for space and fire code constraints, so if you know of a larger (and free) venue, feel free to shoot me a note.

The general format is 1-2 presentations on various Travel Hacking topics for about 30-45 minutes with the rest of the time left for socializing, though we’re happy to adapt it as the group evolves. This one in May will be the third one.

Also, we’re always looking for presenters and new topics, so if you have an idea for a short, easy to understand presentation, send us a message on the meetup page or come to the next one and find Marina, Dawn or me.

Hope to see some of you there and finally meet people in person!