I run a "meetup" that is not on Meetup, in part because of the cost (I'm fortunate that in a technical niche community in NYC, word of mouth spreads fast).
I would say that fee keeps things a little more professional than otherwise.
- have one company as the sponsor, providing venue, food and one technical talk - this ensures that the organizers don't need to deal with money which is a big admin headache - have around 3 talks total, but keep them short, to around 20 minutes + 5 minutes for Q&A - start the event 15-30 mins late to allow for people to show up late and giving those that turned up early the chance to talk to each other - make sure you end quite early, leaving time for people to mingle afterwards
We also built our own Meetup.com alternative called Meetabit (https://meetabit.com, see my other comment to this post) and to promote it wrote a few blog posts which go into more detail, which you can find here: https://blog.toughbyte.com/tagged/meetup
But for Tokyo, these are the results:
> Events
> No events in your city
> Communities
> No communities in your city
> Sponsors
> No sponsors in your city
Or do you mean that now we can create events, communities and sponsors?
I do front-end, and didn't realize of this until now that I was on the receiving end.
Especially if you are coming to a new city it's a great place to find out what's going on and find your group. It's nice to have a centralized place for that and makes it very easy to connect with people. (At least in my experience here in Berlin)
2. How is that meetup's fault? It's like saying HN is bad because of bad comments.
Another huge problem are co-organisers. You bring them onboard because they're happy to take turns organising events and it takes the load off.
I never start meetups with the intention of getting a job or business opportunities, but that's often why co-organisers join. You think, sure, everyone's a volunteer so it's fine if they get something out of it.
Then years pass and those co-orgs are deeply involved to the point where their livelihoods depend on the subject matter (Ethereum in this case). And they want to keep the sales pitch lecture model, since they almost always slot themselves in as speaker when it's their turn to organise.
You suggest changing the meetup name to be less tribalistic and to change the format to drop speakers and sponsors. HUGE drama. You put it to a vote, 5-3 agree to the change. The other 3 decide to clone the meetup under the same old name, email all members telling them to join, steal the Facebook and Twitter accounts, harass me everyday for a week over Telegram until I snap, then screenshot my response and spread it through the community.
Communities man.
But you're right. Not every meetup organization is the same.
And 2) about 15% of attendees went to a bar afterward to talk shop.
I’ve really started contemplating adding #2 on my own to meet-ups if the organizers don’t.
Running a monthly meeting is a lot of hard work and many people get it wrong, or can’t keep the wheels on.
But I could see how some of the meetups that I am a 'member' of but don't attend regularly could be vendor driven.
So it is a fine balance between good talks, and how much they will advertise their recruitment business. I can stand a little, but not too much. The ones I have been to have had a good balance. LJC in London is/was organised by one and seemed to have a good balance.
But I have been a little annoyed at other companies creating rival meetups on the same topic in the same location. Especially if the original group is not oversubscribed. It just creates some confusion and people miss out on some meetups.
The 90s bbs meetings were more fun and usually less tech focused.
So much has changed in ~20 years around tech in general. I wonder what a current day 2600 meetup is like. I may go check one out.
Most tech meetups in my area are just friendly get-together.
Hopefully the new charge that meetup is foisting on attendees will kill the platform and we'll see some of these alternatives take off.
Remember, you can't make friends unless you pay your corporate masters!
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.