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Comment by datadrivenangel | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's now been running a data viz meetup for almost 5 years now, I can confirm that this article is full of good advice. It boils down to:

1. Consistently put on actually good events!

2. Be consistent about marketing the events to make it easy for people to find them!

View on HN

Do you have recommendations for which places to market your event? I run Handmade Meetups [0], which are gatherings for low-level programmers usually at coffee shops.

We put on good events reliably at the same date and time. However, aside from a mailing list and word of mouth we don't know how to advertise better to widen reach.

[0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups

The Meetup website is the major source.

I also promote the events in local slack channels and on linkedin and twitter. Over the years we've built a newsletter and web presence and all that, but for discovery meetup is still king, though eventbrite and other places are okay.

The process here is to hype the event on multiple channels (Twitter, FB, IG, LI, etc) and measure which ones pop (eg: I track metrics across like 12 networks). Then lean in to the ones that have the engagement. Measure natural posts and compare to "boosted" as well.

This sounds suspiciously like real work. I can't bear to simply read social networks any longer, much less actively engage with them or track statistics.

It's a labor of love.

HN comments are a social network, my friend.

And sometimes barely tolerable, but usually fine.

I find it useful to distinguish between social networks (based around people/accounts; e.g. Facebook, Twitter) versus forums (based around topics/posts; e.g. Reddit, myriad phpbb instances, etc.). HN is more of a forum than a social network.

I didn't know you guys had Sweden as the location. That's fantastic! Looking forward to attend one in-person. I will share this with my network.

Awesome! The host there is a friend and people consistently report having a lovely time. If you're into game dev, Freya Holmér [0] has been known to attend these sometimes.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@Acegikmo

I’d attend your data viz meetup if by some chance I’m nearby. Where can I learn more?

Data Viz DC is local to DC (with the occasional online event)[0] There are a lot of global meetup groups that are often affiliated with the Data Visualization Society or on meetup in your area.

[0] -https://www.meetup.com/Data-Visualization-DC/

I mean, since we're boiling things down.. I guess you could say

1. Make a good thing

2. Market it

Which the OP does very well, and has done with this post on HN which will no doubt boost his meetup even more.

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