Show HN: Engineering Book Club

https://www.engineeringbookclub.com/

by miguelbemartin • 3 years ago

120 85 3 years ago

engineeringbookclub.com

An online community that enjoys reading and discussing engineering books together.

calculated• 3 years ago

You’re kidding right? Charging 50 euro for access to basically a Discord, Slack, etc. channel.

theshrike79• 3 years ago

Also: Spaces are limited to 30 spots.

I can create a free Discord for this right now and it'll cost me (and the people joining it) exactly 0€

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

We want to initially limit only to 30 spots to see how we could manage the community and the online events. We will evaluate if it makes sense to open more spots in the future.

The idea is to create "online coffee chats" where everyone is able to participate.

I have used Circle with other communities and I can say that the experience is much better than using slack or discord.

pessimizer3• 3 years ago

I can create a free Discord for this right now and it'll cost me (and the people joining it) exactly 0€

But the reality is that you haven't.

maccard• 3 years ago

Great, where's your discord link?

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

The concept of paying to be part of a community is not new, you can find many communities that charge more than 5€/month.

You can find some examples here: https://community.circle.so/c/showcase/

We are using Circle for organising it and it costs us money, additionally, it will also take time to organise and moderate the community.

I also believe that paying for something brings more commitment, so this is why we have decided to introduce a small fee for joining the community.

mattgreenrocks2• 3 years ago

I also believe that paying for something brings more commitment, so this is why we have decided to introduce a small fee for joining the community.

Absolutely. People that are willing to pay are more serious and generally more likely to positively contribute. Paying is a way to signal that to oneself, even.

mtlynch• 3 years ago

It takes a lot of work to manage an online community well. 50 EUR/year is probably lower than the true cost.

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Agree, I have been organising local Meetups in the past and I know how much time it takes.

jacurtis• 3 years ago

This group is limited to 30 people. It's not a subreddit with tens of thousands of users.

It is 30 people. If someone's an asshole you ban them. It's hardly a fulltime job. The fact that you took their money could actually complicate your ability to ban them if they really get upset.

I have discord servers of gaming friends that have as many people. I've also managed game servers (like Ark servers) with hundreds of strangers. It's not that bad. Bad people venture in sometimes and you just kick them out. Small communities like this mostly self-regulate because they are so small, people's individual reputation actually means something.

jacobrussell• 3 years ago

The best book clubs I've been in are ones where the members had to pay something to be in it. I think everything should be done to get the people who sign up to actually show up and participate, and part of that equation is usually charging everyone a little bit, especially if the people in the group aren't already friends.

uoaei• 3 years ago

I've seen much the same filtering/curation effect achieved by charging any amount, not just absurdly high amounts.

cush2• 3 years ago

Those people would also organize and run the club. This is just a site to connect people together. That's the easy part.

gppeixoto• 3 years ago

There are actual people working to curate the content, manage the community, etc. And as such, they charge an amount for the work they're doing. If you think the price does not meet the value, then you can... just not pay it.

leglock• 3 years ago

Are people actually curating the content? The website sounds like the members are the ones suggesting books. It is unclear to me what managing needs to be done if the members are pairing up on their own.

mattgreenrocks2• 3 years ago

This is the business version of, "well actually I could do this in a weekend."

The potential for one decent connection for future jobs/coworkers (referral bonuses!)/cofounders is very high with something like this. 50 euro is fine. If it's too high, the market will signal that. If it isn't, it will fill up.

pessimizer3• 3 years ago

If we ever get proper privacy legislation, or harsher penalties for companies that get hacked and lose customer data, or anything that blocks widespread data collection and monetization, you'll be paying 50 bucks a year for your favorite chatrooms and messageboards and be happy about the bargain you're getting.

There's no motivation without the surveillance to give away all of this work for free. When you do stuff peer-to-peer, it always costs money if you want it to be sustainable. Like for example, a book club. Either everyone is going to take a turn hosting, or everyone is going to give the host a few bucks/bring snacks/wine/etc. (or you're going to go to some commercial space that sells food and drink, and buy food and drink.)

None of the options are free. Peer-to-peer (as opposed to sponsor/consumer) will never be free. We should support models like this, not act like we somehow deserve better.

arunkant• 3 years ago

Lol no

gyulai• 3 years ago

I disagree.

If you gave the service away for free and allowed people to be anonymous, there would be no private data that needed managing. In the 90s, a major proportion of websites on the internet had forums like that, which people set up on a weekend (think phpBB). What the hosting provider charges is small change.

If you do charge, you suddenly have sensitive data to manage, either eating into your profit or creating a liability for you and taking away from people's privacy if you don't do it right. So much so, that it might even generate a loss at 50 bucks per year.

kerkeslager4• 3 years ago

I'm with you that people should be paying for services with money instead of their private data. If you were running a Slack/Discord alternative and wanted to charge for it, I'd support you. Maybe not 50 Euros support you up front, but I'd support you. You only need a few thousand users to make something like 10 Euros a year a lucrative side project, and I'm sure you could get people to pay more if you earned any trust at all first.

Where you lost me is that I don't need your help getting people together to talk about books. Sure, that's worth bringing some snacks, in person, which might add up to 50 Euros over the course of a year, but doing it on the internet with a bunch of unknown randos makes the value go down, not up. And putting a fixed price on it means you get less interesting people: on the one end, it excludes the broke intern who needs the mentoring the most, and on the other end, that senior, experienced, well-thought-out guy who brings a fuckton of knowledge to the table brings more value than the host just by opening his mouth.

Where you really go off the rails is this: "There's no motivation without the surveillance to give away all of this work for free." Yes, there is, actually. I don't know what it is about some people on Hacker News who can't comprehend that there are other motivations besides money. If you're only motivated by money, I don't want to be around you, let alone go to your book club.

stocknoob• 3 years ago

Charging money (and seeing who balks) is a good way to filter out people who don’t value their time highly. $5/m for good conversation is a steal.

mym1990• 3 years ago

Really love the design of the website.

Couple nitpicks: In the FAQs: "How is processed the payment?" should probably be "How is the payment processed?".

"Registration closes on Friday, April 28th at 12 midnight PT." at the top of the pricing section. What happens now that the registration is past that date?

All 3 of the FAQs have to deal with pricing. To be honest, I would like to know more about the actual service. How are group scheduled, what platform is used to do the meetings, what if no one joins a group, is there a refund policy, how many members are there, etc...?

At the end of the day, I have paid 10$ for much sillier things, so not a terrible idea. Good luck!

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Thanks for your feedback, really appreciated. Definitely, the texts in the website have been the hardest part of the launch.

apsurd2• 3 years ago

I am also curious about the logistics of the club. It seems to be this: https://circle.so

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Yes, we are using Circle as a platform and we are paying 99$ each month. We have only 30 spots available, so it will basically cover the cost of the platform itself (if we get all the spots filled).

If you have organised a community, you know it's not only the cost of the platform, it takes time to coordinate, moderate and basically build a community.

randunel2• 3 years ago

Clicking on "Welcome Offer 50 €/year Limited only until Friday, 28th April" takes you to a payment page asking for 60 €/year, which is illegal in most of the world.

wink• 3 years ago

How would it be illegal to have an outdated price with a big date of validity attached? Or are you pointing out there should be a year?

Not trying to defend anything here, but that simply sounds unlikely and my example would be supermarket flyers with certain offers that are very often still around here, I don't think just because it's digital it must be destroyed the moment the offer ceases to exist in ANY jurisdiction.

zwieback2• 3 years ago

Sounds like a terrible idea - people are starting to hate the subscription economy, I know I do.

I run a fiction book club at work and it is a lot of work, none of which I see this website solving.

Also, it's unclear whether I still have to buy the book or whether the subscription allows me access to an e-version of whatever is being read.

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Just curious, what are the problems or work when running your book club that this website is not solving?

zwieback2• 3 years ago

The biggest problems:

a) Selecting a book, we want something at least one or two members have already read to make sure there's a good recommendation. Going by reviews has not worked well, it's better if someone brings the selection to the group because they have some personal stake.

b) Coordinating the schedule - you want to give people enough time to read the book but two months out the calendar is still volatile so often I have people drop out last minute due to meetings being schedule over, frustrating for everyone and apparently people don't want to tell their manager bookclub trumps work meeting.

c) Recruiting new members, we usually have a steady core group but want to beef up our roster to where we don't end up with awkward 2 people meetings.

Some of these issues don't apply with technical/business book meetings since it can be done chapter-by-chapter. We've done that as well and it's easier but usually after two or three chapters people drop off or lose interest in specific ones.

You could argue that your website isn't concerned with some of the above (e.g. people preselect books, then others show up automatically) but Goodreads and others already do the same for free.

millzlane• 3 years ago

Couldn't we start a HN Bookclub? we could start with some light reading about software design. Possibly A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout.

all2• 3 years ago

Can we pair it with monthly or quarterly hackathons that implement some facet described in the book?

dancc• 3 years ago

I'd participate - I find it much more engaging to read and discuss with others.

janalsncm• 3 years ago

Go for it. Pick 12 books and create a schedule for the year. Every month just create an Ask HN post for the discussion.

umayah• 3 years ago

every book in the image on the front page isn't an engineering book

alex_lav4• 3 years ago

Would've absolutely done it if it included actually getting the book.

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Thought about this idea, but there is not a simple way to organise this logistic worldwide.

pessimizer3• 3 years ago

It's worth trying to work out. People love exchanging money for goods and services. The more you can do for them aside from actually reading the book for them, the better. When other people take care of things, one can relax and enjoy oneself.

Even if you can only do it for 50% of members because of whatever logistical problem, it's worth it. Although it seems it'd be simple enough to email publishers and offer to buy X number of copies of an ebook in the context of a book club.

blueridge• 3 years ago

It's real simple: Give new members an Amazon gift card to purchase the book. You buy the gift card, then send the code. Or, buy a gift card to their local bookstore so they can walk in and buy a physical copy, or they can use the funds to place an online order and have the book shipped through the store.

The best way to get a book club off the ground is to make sure everyone has the book in hand before the discussion starts. "First book on us" is a great way to build momentum, and it lets people know that you're serious about the project.

petercooper• 3 years ago

Good luck! I think it could work, especially if you can "preseed" it with the right people. A bit like any social experience really. I floated a similar idea many years ago and most of my contacts said it sounded boring and wouldn't sign up, but.. I want to be proven wrong by someone! :-D

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Building communities is not easy. I have already experience organising local meetups and it takes time until people understand the value of being part of it. I do not have rush of growing the number of members, the idea is to start it simple and see how it goes.

sefrost• 3 years ago

People complaining about the price might be interested to know LeadDev also hosts a monthly book club. They interview the author of the book and you can submit questions via their Slack.

https://leaddev.com/series/bookmarked

https://leaddev.com/bookmarked

_navierstokes• 3 years ago

When I open this website it tries to connect to Phantom or MetaMask. Why is that?

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

That should be something in your end, maybe chrome extension or whatever, my website is a simple NextJS deployed in Vercel.

Minor49er• 3 years ago

There's a typo on the front page:

The goal is to create a group of professional with similar interests and share the passion of reading engineering books together.

It should read "group of professionals"

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Thanks for the feedback, fixed :)

free-nachos• 3 years ago

Feedback - consider removing the 50 euro option from the pricing page because the offer seems to have expired a week and a half ago. I clicked on the 50 button then saw 60 on the pricing page, had to hit back and try to figure out why. It's causing a lot of friction.

carabiner• 3 years ago

No mention of civil, chemical, mechanical engineering.

benzofuran• 3 years ago

Is this for software engineers or actual engineers? You may want to specify.

charlie02• 3 years ago

Fee seems high, but if it works it works. Allowing free access just lets in all the spammers, the looky loos, and just too many people to form great relationships.

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Agree, this is why I simply offer a refund option, but not directly opening for everyone. Maybe, I can create a video to show what you will get inside the community, so it will allow people to get a sneak preview.

charlie02• 3 years ago

The way I've always thought of stuff like this is to offer a free tier and a paid tier. Free tier gets access to most of the stuff and paid access gets you the premium things. You can also do a cheaper tier and premium tier if you're concerned about operational costs.

iudqnolq• 3 years ago

These books like irritatingly philosophical. What is there to discuss about "The Leader who had no Title"?

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

The first book that we are going to read is "A Philosophy of Software Design", it's a book by John Ousterhout.

paulrchds• 3 years ago

I was interested but just wouldn't spend that much, would rather try organising something myself.

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

Do you mean organising yourself a community or just reading a book?

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Free MVP:

1. Go on ASK HN about a book you want to make a club for.

2. Create a Discord link.

Animats• 3 years ago

The books in the picture are all management books.

AHOHA2• 3 years ago

As an engineer, I wouldn’t join such thing even for free. But good luck

miguelbemartin21• 3 years ago

why?

AHOHA2• 3 years ago

It’s a personal take, I believe in nowadays tech you can pretty much access anything, anywhere, anytime, and that’s before the whole chatgpt/LLM/generative AI/etc. where you can have a fully customizable assistant at your fingertips at any field. I also believe such communities will eventually be a source of distraction (aka drama) once they get large enough, because we are humans and these types of dynamics are bound to happen. To some, maybe it’s a source of motivation or inspiration as they need that extrinsic motivations.

Show HN: Engineering Book Club

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