>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.
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'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.
This 100%, but a warning, this consistency also applies to the people meeting. And that is much more difficult to encourage than anything else. Funding, organizing and advertising meetups ends up being the easy part.
I have run a LUG now for half a year now, and it has been impossible to get people to meet up more than once. This is regardless of content, free food, event weeks, high quality talks by members, encouraging social interactions, holding discussions with experts on interested topics, etc.
Mind you, the members we have are still fiercely for the LUG to continue, they do not want to see it gone, but also continue not showing up. I have worked with frequent members individually to try and find alternatives like better time slots, as many complain about being "busy", but I have now learned its really not a time issue either.
Not really sure why its so hard getting people to show, it just is, even if you give people exactly what they want plus unique spins on topics that are cheered on in the public channel when announced, but follows to nobody showing up.
>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.
> 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 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.
You're not. I too am subscribed to a lot of groups, so are my friends, and I guess many, many other people. Meetup groups basically work in the same way as Facebook fanpages - you subscribe to them in order to get notified about new events, or to see them popping up when you open the app. There's really no other use for subscribing.
For the group I help run, as well as those I know locally, Meetup only serves two purposes: first, to manage event attendance (give/sell tickets), and second, enabling your group to be found when people open up Meetup app and search the place they're in for interesting events.
> While true, a side effect of this is that groups that aren't active anymore eventually get deisted, because nobody wants to pay Meetup's prices to keep a dead group online. Once you get discovery up and running, I'd be curious to see how cluttered the website gets with inactive groups, especially over time.
Yeah, that would be interesting to see! If a free option was always available then I'd assume the amount of groups dying would be fewer.
> Genuinely curious what you think the marketing issue here is. If anything, I think they've cornered a term pretty well.
Yep, I think the term is great for what the platform is! But sorry, what I meant was that it limits the scope of events that people associate with them (which I guess is fine if that's all they want to focus on). I associate it with clubs and actual meetups (tech and the like) - I wouldn't expect to find a page for a weekend vegetable market there for example. When I'm looking for things to do, I want to see every type of event/activity rather than just clubs etc.
Funnily enough, my mother (having never used Meetup) thought Meetup was a dating site. Perhaps that was their problem all along, haha.
> Second, what % of users rarely go to the same meetup group more than once or twice but remain subscribed?
My group has over 500 subscribers, and yet I've never had more than 10 showing up in the almost two years I've been part of it.
I blame it on my poor leadership, of course, but I wish there were tools to check whether this is to be expected or not. My theory is that it is, but it's not good for Meetup to let you know that.
> I wonder what the science is behind creating a successful, sustainable meetup.
I've been running meetups since ~2005/6, co-founded a few, and currently run the AustinAPI meetup.
I've found that the single most important thing is having something of value. Education and relationships are the best with food and swag far behind. People want to know that they'll go and either a) learn something or b) enjoy the other people, everything else should support those.
Immediately after that is consistency. If you have a given night of the month, location, and theme, stick to it. It will help the "regulars" know when, where, and how to find you. If you shuffle around the night or location, you'll inevitably run into "well, I was there on Tuesday, where was everyone!?" (And notice that harms the relationship point above.)
After that, I try to nudge the group members occasionally. If there's a group discussion list/forum, share a relevant article once a week. If there's a group twitter account, retweet that article or relevant events. When a member writes a blog post or does a presentation - in your group or elsewhere - celebrate them.
> 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.
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
>That said the Bay Area "If it's Tuesday, it must be a Kubernetes Meetup, if it's Wednesday..." thing pretty tiring pretty quickly.
Depends on where you're at in life, honestly. I'd never want to do it again as a grown adult with a family, but when you're young it's a blast. Eventually it doesn't even matter what the meetup is about anymore, it's just about the free pizza, beer, and networking. And as a broke 22 year old paying bay area rent prices, I practically lived off the stuff.
>How would I "discover" events on meetup.com or another event service?
Meetup has a search engine that allows you to find events by date, location, or subject matter. So I could
- look up events near me for this coming week.
- look up events within a certain radius from a location.
- look up events based on my interests.
> if I'm looking for an event I Google.
That's the fallback. I think what Meetup provided was a single site that people visit to find local events that fit their interests, which also allowed community-building.
>When I hosted meetups, paying $20/mo wasn’t the end of the world.
>So just give the $2 back to each attendee in that case, solved.
Under the new model, organizers will be paying $2/mo for every attendee that RSVPs. For meetups attracting a large audience, this easily comes to >$200/mo, which is a 1000% increase.
>I think for meetups where the hosting companies are getting value, ie: recruiting at tech meetups, it’s reasonable for hosts to absorb attendee costs.
>Now, finding cost effective space for large groups was very hard.
Many large meetups are run by volunteers who have to seek out companies to sponsor the space, which you've already acknowledged is hard to do. $20/mo is affordable for them and can be done without seeking out additional sponsorship; $200++/mo isn't.
Ultimately, I think organizers will self-select: those who can afford Meetup.com's model, or who're already charging attendees, will stay; those who can't afford the new charges and don't believe in charging attendees will leave. This dissatisfaction isn't an overnight thing anyway, and the new pricing policy will be a push factor for some to do their own thing.
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.
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