What Meetups Tell Us About America

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.

People who say "i'll attend" on a meetup are typically 1/3 for show-rate. And that's only if you actually remind them a few days before the event.

In my experience it comes down to the organizers actually caring and putting in a TON of effort. A bit like organizing a successful conference really. It's absolutely exhausting but every meetup I know that works well has someone (or multiple people) slogging their guts out and draining their emotional energy on connecting people, finding new attendees/speakers, and keeping it going.

When a meetup turns into a mere "get X people in a room and do little else" it starts to tail off and people split off into cliques and eventually meetups die (but I did make two great friends recently out of such a situation).

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.

Meetup groups amplify the best and worst qualities of the people that organize them. It takes a strong core of regulars to establish a safe/inclusive environment for newbies and offload the event organizing work so the head doesn't burnout.

Usually groups fall apart when they lack a strong core or the core members start hooking up. Any negativity expressed by the 'regulars' will reverberate throughout the group and likely split its members into separate tribes.

You can usually tell which groups will fail within the first year by looking at the head and core members. If the head of the group makes it about 'me myself and I', or the core members fork off into exclusive side groups, the group will start to diverge at the first sign of conflict.

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As for the inactive members. They don't really matter in the long-run. Some groups wisely cull inactive members, others don't. For those that do, culling priority can be separated into 4 groups.

1. The Flakes

RSVP for multiple events but consistently don't show up. They probably have the right intentions but lack the followthrough. Unfortunately, they take up slots that would otherwise go to active members so they should be cut if they're consistently unreliable.

2. The Window Shoppers

Indistinguishable from the Lurkers. They join a group for the same reason guys indiscriminately swipe right on Tinder. They're a waste of space. If/when they do show up, there's usually some hidden motive. Ex show up because 'cute girls', get drunk, embarrass themselves, leave the group the next day. It's not a bad idea to cull them if the group is established and has a lot of members.

3. The Lurkers

Members who would really like to participate but are nervous about being out of their element and could use some welcoming encouragement. They're the sole reason why it's not always a good idea to cull suspect 'window shoppers'. It would be awesome if there were better tools to help get these members involved.

4. The Dalliers

Members who RSVP but only occasionally. I think most active members fall into this group. They haven't found a personal connection to the group for one reason or another so they only participate if the group is hosting an interesting event.

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In a lot of cases, it's not hard to tell which groups will overwhelmingly attract one (or more) of the 4 types above.

Any group that advertises 'partying', 'singles', 'nightlife', or 'dating' will overwhelmingly be dominated by flakes or window shoppers. The flakes mostly being women who want a B plan if their other plans fall through, the lurkers usually are guys on the hunt for some 'strange'.

Groups that advertise ideals like 'fitness', 'foreign language', 'book club', anything related to being 'active' will be dominated by window shoppers. These are things people 'would like to see themselves doing' but they won't join a group to do those things for the same reason they don't try to do them alone.

The vast majority of groups are dominated by Lurkers for the same reason dating apps are dominated by users who rarely (if ever) date anybody from the app IRL. There is no barrier to entry and most people are too chicken shit to step out of their comfort zone.

Some groups overwhelmingly attract Dalliers for a few reasons. There's no strong common interest. The events are consistently uninteresting. The group lacks a strong core. Some members participate but never found a personal connection with the group. Some groups host good events but are nothing but thinly veiled marketing/advertising platforms.

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I've been all 4 of these at one point or another. It all depends on the culture of the group. Being a core member of a really successful group was a hugely rewarding experience. I made a lot of friends, had a ton of great experiences I otherwise wouldn't have had on my own, and had an awesome time. I would do it again in a second if I could find another group worth the effort. Unfortunately, I moved to a different area that is dominated by a very superficial/materialistic culture and the Meetup groups mostly reflect that culture. People never drop their guard and 'be themselves' when they're constantly sizing up or being sized up by others in the group.

Meetup has always been made up of mostly lurkers and even more so as it grows in popularity. For every 1000 members a group has, maybe 100-150 are active members, and if lucky 10-50 are core members.

Statistically speaking, the inactive members are 'noise' so making assessments by numbers will likely produce meaningless results. In other words, garbage-in-garbage-out.

Not only that, but I'm a member of quite a few groups that had one meetup and ended. I find this odd because meetup costs money to the leader.

I've found that the best ones are the meetups that have a narrow theme and a committed leader. It is always a bad sign when there are many organizers. The ones that are super general like "let's have random fun!" never seem to work out.

I think it partly comes down to the culture and general interests in the city. A live music or hiking meetup in Austin is pretty pointless. The former because there is so much of it out here, and the latter because there really isn't enough challenging hikes to really pull it off consistently. LA has live music, but considerably less free music than Austin. LA has amazing views and mountains, which Austin appears to be lacking.

A few good ones in LA were the hiking groups, which had very consistent leadership and had too many meetups for me to attend. The programming meetups were very much hit or miss. The programming meetups in Austin are more or less advertisements and tend to last for way too long, which makes me, and I'm sure many others, abandon them quickly.

For the most part, I've found meetups in LA to be more interesting, but the main thing that bothered me out there was all the "I'm having so much fun!" posts when there was clearly no one there having fun.

I wish I had a good idea for a group, but I don't and I'm not quite feeling committed to running one full time either.

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.

One of the more popular groups in the Baltimore / Washington / Annapolis is the Second Half Fun Rally group -- a group for people in the second half of their lives who just want to have fun. The activities can be anything from an easy hike to a get together for a concert, happy hour, museum visit, community festival, or most anything else that nearly anyone can take part in and enjoy. Beyond the range of activities, the organizer is able to arrange and attend several meetups each month which seems to help in a "maintain the momentum" sort of way.

> I found myself slugging for an hour and a half each way to get to an event

You must have a vastly different definition of "decent public transportation" than I do.

I don't attend a ton of meetups, but of the ones I do attend, easily 90%+ of attendees spent 30 minutes or less (each way) to get there.