As far as finding spaces, I've found that local bars/restaurants/coffee shops are usually quite happy to host events during off-times like Monday through Wednesday nights. I always ask nicely, thank them in the event description, during the event, and in an email after, and try to go out of my way to make things easier for them (checking in with estimated attendees a few days before, helping put chairs back in order afterward, etc.) It's nice because these places are inherently social so people feel more comfortable talking, you don't have to worry about food/drink, and it brings attention to community-minded businesses.

Problem with these things is you can make yourself out to be not welcome despite best efforts, some attendees are utterly hopeless / shameless that they'll decline any offer of drink (soft drink or otherwise), demand free tap water, speak like shit to staff (grunt with no thanks or please), leave no tips, sneak their own beverages in, complain wifi is slow and so on. I wouldn't host an event in a bar unless I knew the people attending, you're judge by your company after-all and if you want to come again then bringing shameless mingebag joe no manners is not a good idea. Note: this shitty behavior isn't isolated to tech groups, bridge groups and other card game groups are apparently worse that they now have to rent out community centres.

Maybe an entry fee that buys you your first drink would help for the first problem at least

A meetup I frequent solves this by having a monthly drink sponsor that spends a few hundred bucks to buy everyone's first drink, and get their logo projected on the wall.

Maybe, I can see it being a little tricky to implement unless you take the fee on meetup.com prior to arriving.

You're not kidding. A group of even a small size brings in a misfit or two. A guy with olfactory problems or a girl who doesn't say anything except the low mumblings to herself. This is not me spreading gossip to bring the rest of the group together, but that one or two people always brings the meetup down. This is not even including conspiracy theorists or people in general who want to rant.

My girlfriend ran a meetup for a while in Barcelona. The meetup took place in a bar on an otherwise quiet night. The bar owner actually paid her for each event she hosted in th bar.

For 100+ person events? What coffee shops have 100+ person spaces? I have the same problem described and space is always an issue. I live in Silicon Valley and i can't think of a single bar that has a space of that size or that would let you use it or that noise pollution wouldn't be an issue.

Outside of Silicon Valley (midsize city) we’re lucky if 5 people show up to the Ruby meetup.

The one in Baltimore is routinely 30 people.

> I've found that local bars/restaurants/coffee shops are usually quite happy to host events during off-times

In bigger cities, bars will usually only host you if you can provide them with a revenue stream afterwards. This works for social events, such as speed-dating or social Meetups (I've run both types), but not so well for technical meetups UNLESS they get sufficiently large.

Also, companies are usually willing to host Meetups because it's free and easy recruiting that's nearly guaranteed to bring out top talent. This is usually why recruiting agencies are almost always totally willing to give up space for events and sponsor for food and/or drinks; it saves them a ton of time that's usually lost to prospecting.

Interesting, we run a lot of tech related meetups, and finding a space is rarely an issue because its an important promotion tool for tech hiring. Whats difficult is finding speakers.

Finding "a" space, e.g. for one or two events, is relatively easy. Finding a consistently scheduled space (e.g. "the second Wednesday of each month") at cheap/free is a whole other thing. Once you have a consistently scheduled space, getting speakers is rather easy, because you can schedule way out into the future. For example, a popular speaker may not be available in the next three months, but I could easily get that speaker for April if I already have my venue lined up.

The first meetup I had was a bit of a vicious cycle - we had no home, which made scheduling hard, which made getting speakers lined up hard.

The second meetup I ran started out a Pivotal Labs which was amazing. Free food, free drink, nice atmosphere, good location - and most importantly, we had "the second Wednesday of every month", which made scheduling ridiculously easy. Actually running the whole meetup was a level of magnitude easier after that. Current venue is also similarly awesome. I wouldn't go back to not having a regularly-scheduled venue.

Maybe its different in your location then, in Munich its the other way around. Where are you located?

NYC

He doesn’t specify that his meetup is tech focused so the hiring thing might not apply.

Bingo. I also run a small Meetup with ~50/Meetup. WeWork (among other coworking spaces) have welcomed my Meetup, for free. Meetups commonly bring in new customers and free drinks/pizza that are then promoted to customers as in-house food, entertainment, and learning. It's a win-win-win.

We have totally different problem. Finding a place is too easy, finding good speakers is the problem. Where are you at?

> getting a good affordable/free space to run the events.

OH MY GOD, YES.

Hounding people for sponsorships is almost a full time job. It is extremely hard to do this while travelling. In fact, most of the Meetups I've been to, and some that I've hosted, took place at WeWork offices!

May i ask if it's a tech meetup or something else?

In my experiences companies, hackerspaces or coworking places are all quite happy to host tech meetups and it's rarely a problem.

Tech meetup (please see my other response below)

This is a strange phenomena. In Prague some meetups have had trouble finding places to host, while others have had multiple firms competing to provide free space and food.

Like so many things, I suspect it's all about differences in how effectively individual leaders access their social resources.