"10-20% actual attendance versus RSVP seems normal."
In my experience, the more niche the audience the larger this number.
In my experience, the more niche the audience the larger this number.
I suppose things become impersonal. When meeting a few friends, you wouldn't not attend unless there's a really good reason. But if it's a friend's party with a decent number of people, such thoughts aren't front of mind any more.
If there was an "interested" option, the flake rate would go way down.
Just went and looked. Thanks. That will help me.
I'm still going to call that a UI disaster. Facebook puts "interested" and "going" in the same drop down. Can't miss it. If they did it the Facebook way, I believe a lot of the RSVP problem would go away. Now, people will still flake, of course. But we won't have the "save"ers.
Meetup uses an unlabeled, non-standard icon.
I strongly suspect that the vast majority of meetup users don't know it's there.
Just FYI: for running tech events in Silicon Valley, I expect about 50% flake rate. That's a few years ago, so there may be more bots now.
The theory is that it would be more of a commitment when you have taken out your wallet.
The solution is to just accept that some people won't show, and that's okay. Many meetups are fundamentally social events, and sometimes people just aren't in the mood for it on the night. That's okay; even the most extroverted person feels like that sometimes. Especially when "social" means "be social with strangers", which at least double the effort. And what's the alternative? Force people to come against their will with a long face? Aside from being unworkable, that would be silly.
Some people get very worked up about this, but IMHO this is like getting worked up over the weather. Perhaps understandable in some cases, but also totally pointless and changes nothing.