Typical developer meetup, mostly developers coming to listen and eat free pizza, occasionally interesting people in the audience but mostly the speakers are interesting linking points
Most value can be extracted by meeting the speakers after or between the talks
take notes on the highlights, jump in to ask a question related to the talk, and use the time during the talk to think of a topic or piece of feedback to have a conversation about with the speaker (notes help here)
link with the speakers through linkedin later, attach a private note referring to the conversation you had during the meetup
this is a more commercial one organised by the react conference organisers (dennis r is the guy to speak to to find out about other frontend related frameworks)
typically attracts more diehard backend and infrastructure people
deeper technical talks, even harder to find people that are very connected, again: speakers usually are quite experienced and are interesting to get a perspective on different types of careers in engineering
loads of different small gettogethers to meet people in completely different industries who share the experience of not being in their home country
speaking yourself
going into speaking
I’ve also come to learn that meeting speakers and talking to them about the path to speaking yourself can massively reduce anxiety and most are quite open to give you tips on this!
choose one meetup you like and go a couple of times in a row to get familiar with the crowd
suggest doing a round of lightningtalks one of the upcoming meetups and suggest a topic you could give a lightning talk on, organisers value people who bring in content
added bonus if you have spotted a friend going to multiple meetups who also wants to do a lightning talk, and propose both at the same time!