Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

I co-organized a weekly hacknight meetup of 40-70 people.

I wrote a script to make Anki spaced repetition flash card decks with avatars and names pulled from the meetup API. I would use GitHub Actions to run the script a few hours before the event, then drop the importable deck into a Google Drive folder. I'd review the deck before the meetup, and then at the event, I'd not stress about names. I'd pretend to introduce myself to new people like I didn't already know their names, but I'd be able to make them feel very welcome when I remembered, or introduced them to others.

Why do this arguably creepy thing? Because I am really forgetful with names, and when I forget, I become reluctant to approach people, which comes across as less friendly than I prefer to be. But I believe using people's names is REALLY important to community organizing. When I know names, I am really great at using them a lot, helping others learn them, generously making introductions, and helping people to feel a sense of belonging.

It was the best community organizer hack I ever came up with, until meetup locked down their API and broke it...!

https://github.com/CivicTechTO/anki-meetup-memorizer

That sounds like it would have indeed been a nice way to run a group. I like that you pretended not to know their names when first introduced.

I remember going to an arduino hack group once. When I went to introduce myself to the organiser he cut me off mid-sentence with a flat "I know who you are Lio" and a unblinking stare.

Now, in tech circle we often have people that are a bit "rough" when it comes to human interaction so I make allowances.

I think what he meant was I recognise you from Twitter or something. As far as I know we get along fine and I've had absolutely no issues with him before or after.

All the same, it freaked me the fuck out at the time. :D

The college president at my alma mater memorized the names and faces of every incoming freshman in my class (~200 people).

Unfortunately, I didn't know who she was, so my first encounter was having a seemingly random stranger stop me on the sidewalk and ominously declare:

"You didn't have a beard in your picture, Matthew."

Yes Anki. I've also written my own code to convert markdown and yaml files into anki cards. So amazing.

>>When I know names, I am really great at using them a lot

I once broke up with a girlfriend, PatCon, because, PatCon, she would use my name PatCon multiple times in a sentence, PatCon and after a while it was annoying enough to where I had to break up with her, PatCon.

Anki (and Mochi) are great for names of neighbours, other kids‘ parents at daycare, and people you don‘t meet often. My wife just remembers any name she‘s heeard once. I can cheat.

In another context, I recall someone doing something similar, but they didn't have images in advance. So they would study the list of names, but wouldn't know who is whom. Supposedly made it faster to learn people's names anyway.

Cool trick either way!

I could see this being useful for work stuff. Learn the names and faces of all the people in your department as well as other info like what projects they're working on, expertise they have (this person knows all about databases, that person knows Linux really well, etc.), who they report to, etc.

Then when it's time to collaborate on something, or when you need to keep the appropriate people in the loop, hopefully the right people just pop into mind. And if you get invited to a meeting with 5 people you don't normally work with, you can probably make an educated guess why they're attending.

Interesting. I tend to have the opposite problem - girlfriends (and wife) typically end up calling me by the first letter of my name, so I actually find them more attractive when they use the whole name. I guess the novelty would wear out with your ex.

I dont disagree, I think w=this was a unique situation....

I wish I had this, with data sourced from Slack (pic, title, name) and Salesforce (for sales staff, what accounts do they manage) and maybe for developers, GitHub (what areas of code do they contribute to)

Pingboard has this as a feature not sure if others — https://pingboard.com/know-your-coworkers

Seems genuinely useful if it gets meaningful engagement.

bwahaha oh god, this sounds like it would be grating...!