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Meetup doesn’t “run” these. You’re just picking boring ones. The only meetup I attend is a bunch of random motorcyclists who go up the coast highway every week. Never felt bored.

They don't run them, but it's sort of intrinsic to their platform that low-budget meetups can't access it, and those can be some of the best because they don't have to answer to sponsors.

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).

The cost is like 50 euro a year - which is only really significant if you have less than a few meetups every year.

I would say that fee keeps things a little more professional than otherwise.

I've started a few meetups and a format that works well is the following:

- 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

Why do you limit Meetabit to specific locations? Give us a free form search area and let me start a group anywhere :D

We soft launched it in a few cities only and it was easier to implement that way. I've added Tokyo for you now though. If there are any others you'd like me to add, post them in a comment here please.

Pls add Belgrade, Serbia

Added

"I've added Tokyo"

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?

That's right, you can now start adding them.

BTW, as a non-english native having "sign in" and "sign up" is a bit confusing. It took me a couple of seconds of thinking to know which one to click.

I do front-end, and didn't realize of this until now that I was on the receiving end.

Good point, didn't think about this myself either. Will take this into account when we update that part of the flow next.

Could you also add Mumbai?

Added

possible to change the name? it's a bit mealymouthed

What would you suggest? We pronounce it "meet a bit"

I'm not sure to which meetups you are going, but Meetup.com is just a platform with a great reach. There'll always be corporate sponsored meetups in cities, but if there would be no Meetup.com they'd post it on Twitter or sponsor conferences in the city. I actually like it to check out other offices in the city from time to time and I don't mind the one talk from a person of that company, it's just fair as they provide the venue and food.

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)

I use it in the distant past for language and photography socializing in a big capital city. I looked not long ago and most groups were now tech based that were clearly startup pitches and other "business" related things instead of cultural and social. Everything seems to get ruined by people trying to squeeze money out of it like the internet in general. I was just thinking today for some reason about when Omegle started and it was cool talking to normal people all over. Less than a year later it was overrun with scammers, spam for websites, and other nonsense. Skype is another example even further back. Everything that gets any attention ends up like this...twisted and ruined for profits. Has really ruined my faith in anything and anyone at this point because it all just gets gobbled up in pursuit of riches.

1. Anecdotal. Not all are bad, and in my experience, most were good.

2. How is that meetup's fault? It's like saying HN is bad because of bad comments.

So this is the norm? I thought the only meetup.com thing I ever want to was just a bad one. Was advertised as a meetup on a very specific hobby I had recently taken up. When I got there it turned out to be more like 10 minutes of discussing that hobby and an hour of listening to a pitch about joining their hackerspace. It was pretty disappointing and I left with a bad taste in my mouth about the whole thing.

Exactly. I started and run the largest crypto meetup in Aus (~3300 members). I've been very conscious about this problem for a few years and have been wading through trauma/drama to steer the ship back to basic pub meetups with no sponsors and no speakers.

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.

I actually find this isn’t my experience in NYC, admittedly I actively avoid such talks and go straight to collective hack nights or special interests (Eg. Postgres devs or similar niches).

It's been my experience in NYC for every Docker / Kubernetes meetup I went to.

But you're right. Not every meetup organization is the same.

I've never been to a specific Docker/Kubernetes meetup. Have you considered specific DevOps meetings or SRE specific stuff to ask for recommendations? My sphere is in postgres, python, and HackR. Again, avoiding talks in general and more going to community-oriented meetups like hack nights.

I'd say that it's not that shocking that attending a meetup about two enterprise grade deployment tools has a bit of a corporate vibe.

I'll second this. I've only experienced what the parent describes once or twice and, IMO, it's usually pretty easy to suss those groups out.

The oldest meet-up (not Meetup) I went to I think worked because 1) bald faced ads were not allowed (except during a ten minute period at the beginning) and you were not invited back if your presentation turned into one.

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.

Maybe the topics were too trend related. I can assure you that emacs / clojure / haskell meetups I attended were nothing but great times. Good crowd, some famous guys, 99.99% interesting talks.

I agree. The Boulder Ruby meetup (which I help run) has what I'd consider to be a great community and the talks are definitely not ads.

But I could see how some of the meetups that I am a 'member' of but don't attend regularly could be vendor driven.

2600 still meets, you should hit up your local one.

DefCon groups being a solid alternative if you live in an area that doesnt have a 2600 group.

On top of that large majority of the Meetups now seem to be run by companies trying to sell you stuff of recruitment companies trying to poach people

I am ok with recruitment companies organising meetups. But mostly as it is in their interest to attract plenty of relevant people to the meetups over and over again.

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.

2600 meetings still happen.

The 90s bbs meetings were more fun and usually less tech focused.

Bro, 2600 meetups never stopped happening, you just stopped attending.

I know, I'm just saying a bunch of other tech meetups that I've been to have been the total opposite experience of what those 2600 meetups were like back then.

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.

meetup.com is just a tool, the content of the meetup is what the organizers do of it.

Most tech meetups in my area are just friendly get-together.

90%+ of all tech meetups in Austin are this. Such sad garbage. I'm in NYC now, and haven't been going to meetups because I feel burned out on them from having so many bad experiences.

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!