> And before anybody suggests it, Meetup isn't a good alternative.
I agree. And Meetup in general is starting to go downhill here in Seattle. More and more, I'm seeing more "meetups" that are actually more on the lines of suburban "mortgage seminars" but for tech.
Example: Company XYZ launches a new API, so they host a "meetup" with free beer at their HQ where 2/3 of the time is spent by a "developer relations manager" advertising the new API. In the other 1/3 of the meetup, the atmosphere is noticeably awkward and nobody really talks to anyone beyond a friendly hello.
> I'm not sure I see the point in using Meetup at all anymore.
Just like any social platform, I think the advantage of using Meetup is that you'll get to a different audience than Facebook. In my case I've found the audience for Meetup to be smaller (i.e. far fewer RSVPs) but much more engaged, perhaps as a byproduct of the sheer volume of things on Facebook making it harder for yours to stand out. The breakdown of where attendees come from is roughly 30/50/20 Meetup/FB/Email, and the incremental time for me to post in all these places is very small.
The pricing is, as you say, odd, and I too have run into the frustration of expanding a single group to a neighboring city without wanting to drastically increase costs.
> * Meetups and Networking Events - seems very inefficient and so far I've come across very few technical folks at these events, at least in digital health
I haven't tested this idea, but... consider starting a meetup that would draw more technical folks. I would personally like to see deeper technical meetups near where I am, but I haven't pulled the trigger to try and organise anything yet.
> I think a lot of non-tech events like D&D/running/board games/birdwatching/crafts/etc. now have left Meetup or never were there. I see a lot of these types of events promoted on Instagram and sometimes Facebook, because there's a bigger audience there. There are still some on my local Meetup, though.
Perhaps that's why I no longer see them, I've deleted most of my social media so I don't have access to FB or IG for events.
OT: Am I the only one who thinks that most meetups are crap? The idea of meeting like-minded people is tempting but the reality is always different: Crowded places, stuffy air, weak talks, lame sponsors, 1-to-n presentations, no real interaction, stale drinks out of thin plastic cups, odd devs
This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com.
Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end.
It feels so corporate and non-human. You get lured into a business' office with free food and drinks or stickers but then you have sign up forms, recruitment pitches and vendors giving talks about some technology but it's all focused on using their service around that tech.
I miss the good old days of 2600 meetups in the late 1990s. Everyone meets in a public place. There's no set schedule other than where to go and when it starts. Then you actually meet up with people and talk about things that you have in common. You can leave in 30 seconds or stay all night. There's no commitment, agenda or sales pitches.
I've had negative experiences with Meetup.com. I've attended multiple meetups around a technical subject with the hope of meeting peers who self-educate and work on side projects. Instead, I have been subjected to sales pitches for SaaS. I get it. Hosting a meetup is work, especially for introverted technical types. People only do work when they expect an ROI.
So this is a bit offtopic (but maybe ontopic for HN), did meetup go through some change in ownership, revenue model etc. ? I can agree with the observation that meetup.com doesn't have as many fun/cheap/random/hobby based meetups any more. Everything feels a lot more commercial compared to a few years ago. Maybe it's area specific, maybe it's COVID, maybe it's a bunch of different factors. I think you need to pay to host a meetup whereas it used to be free earlier ?
I've been to a lot of great meetups that weren't associated with companies but just met up in a Dave & Busters meeting room or whatever pub and talk about some tech topic, so more like a get-together rather than a formal thing. Then it slowly turned into sales events as it became less about "here's some cool tech" (which at the time often meant some new OSS web framework - but through that we got to explore the evolution of the web) and more about someone trying to do the "I have a great business idea, can you build it and we'll split the profits, 80/20" (aka. Work for Exposure, instead of proper startup culture). Then it turned into crypto-pumper events. And then the pandemic thankfully put an end to it.
If you live in SF then it's probably been a much better experience because you probably had a much broader field of participants and events, but in the smaller place I used to live in, it just became an example of hustle culture ruining every shred of joy that's left in tech.
(And yes, I know, "Be the change you want to see", but I've got no interest in running meetups myself)
This is very accurate. I recently moved here and am so fed up with how superficial these meetups are. So I have boycotted from all of it now.
Better stay home and code something than waste time networking.
Biggest one, SMS broadcast to alert attendees of venue changes, gate codes, etc. It doesn't coordinate schedules or assist in transportation. The core site doesn't have to offer these things, but it sure as well could make it easy 3rd parties to integrate with Meetup itself.
Second is discoverability and even seeing what is on the timeline of events, or prediction about which events will be well attended.
Meetup could have been an amazing backplane for coordinating and mediating activities. Could have been. Hasn't been. Needs to be supplanted in the same way that overflow replaced experts exchange.
It is barely an MVP for coordinating multiparty activities. It still feels like a 700 line single file php application that updates a status masthead and sends email.
>I legitimately can't remember the last time I went to a public event and enjoyed myself.
A public event you didn't pay for? Really depends. I can still enjoy a decent meetup here and there. But meetup issues come from the meetup itself or the people being inconsistent. Hard to build relationships when it's a revolving door that claims to meet "every 2 weeks" but ends up averaging 4-8 weeks.
>I would get like, one real person showing up. All the rest were no-shows.
I think that is arguably the absolute single greatest problem that all meetups experience. It's frustrating for the Hosts and the Attendees. If a Meetup-like site could solve that drop-off/no-show rate, that would be the ultimate win.
> Skip meetups, they're mostly for people on the outside trying to get in
Wow. Unfortunately, I think this is mostly true. A lot of great meetups out there, but unfortunately the people "on the outside trying to get in" have way more of an interest/time to be able to do this.
My favorite meetup ever was the VIM meetup. The fact that it didn't seem like a plausible way to get a job meant that only people actually really interested in going went and so there was tons of cool people.
Yup. Twenty-five years ago I could walk out of a job and into another within hours. Things change.
I've done the meetup thing. I'll say that most tech meetups have been a total waste of time. "I have an idea for <x>. Could you be my tech co-founder and build it for nothing?". Please.
The other aspect of meetups is that a lot of them are loud drinking parties. I don't drink. No, not some prudish thing. I just don't drink. The stuff doesn't attract me at all. And, of course, if I my intent is to meet people I kinda want to be able to hear them. So driving to a meetup an hour away, at a bar, with loud music and booze isn't my idea of something productive. Could be wrong.
I first joined meetup when I dropped out of school and the biggest challenge I ran into was the accessibility of events. Even in the Bay Area where public transportation is decent, and the frequency of tech meetups high, I found myself slugging for an hour and a half each way to get to an event.
Ultimately the value proposition diminished to zero, even though I attended a few awesome events run by hard working companies and individuals.
Meetup is one of those ideas that sounds great on paper, everyone says they'll commit to it, but in reality it falls very short.
And wasn't meetup a shining star in the startup scene a few years ago?
I thought thats what Meetup was about, for both tech and non-tech communities. I haven't been involved for a while due to life changes (kids + relo), so not sure if its as vibrant in some cities as it used to be.
I agree. And Meetup in general is starting to go downhill here in Seattle. More and more, I'm seeing more "meetups" that are actually more on the lines of suburban "mortgage seminars" but for tech.
Example: Company XYZ launches a new API, so they host a "meetup" with free beer at their HQ where 2/3 of the time is spent by a "developer relations manager" advertising the new API. In the other 1/3 of the meetup, the atmosphere is noticeably awkward and nobody really talks to anyone beyond a friendly hello.
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