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Comment by spike021 | Hacker News Reader

I run a club for a certain car.

The thing is, people generally don't want to be responsible for organizing meetups. Many will happily attend but not host.

My guess is you need to find community leaders who can handle and own the responsibilities involved with hosting meets in their areas.

At the end of the day I don't think a website is going to help convince people to take on that kind of role. It's more of a personality thing.

With my club, we use Facebook events and generally just screenshot the details and further disperse them that way to discord, slack, instagram, etc. But none of that is enough alone for someone to host. Even when it's as simple as picking a meet location and time and sending out invites.

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In my experience (which is a lot), like 80% of having a successful gathering is: Picking a date, Finding a location, Letting people know, Keeping it consistent.

I've been involved in organizing well over a thousand geek meetings, either as the primary organizer or on the "steering committee". You're probably right, most people don't want to be responsible for organizing it. But, at the end of the day, someone has to find a place and pick a date and let people know. You don't even have to go crazy with any of those, you could pick a coffee shop or restaurant, unless you get real popular.

>But, at the end of the day, someone has to find a place and pick a date and let people know. You don't even have to go crazy with any of those, you could pick a coffee shop or restaurant, unless you get real popular.

This is exactly what people don't want to do. Even when the meeting location or time haven't changed in two years.

Believe me, I've had people ask about when the next meeting will be. I tell them I'm unavailable to set things up. I tell them they can feel free to go through the motions, just create the event in the calendar and really just make sure nobody makes a mess or anything during the event.

It sounds simple but again, unless someone has the right personality and drive to be responsible for this...

Thanks for the perspective!

I think I have a communication problem with meet.hn.

People seem to assume it has been created to setup these kinds of large meetups.

In fact, I created it for small or even 1-1 meetups in the first place. Meeting a single person or a small group of people seems much more interesting, easy and valuable to me.

Of course I'm not assuming everyone thinks the same way, but don't you think there is an audience for that in the HN community?

I'd consider the demographics of people who regularly visit HN. Not to put a slight on anyone but I think a good chunk of people on here probably don't enjoy in-person meetups.

Again, IME it's not the size of the meetup but the responsibility.

Even in my example, the average attendance is maybe 10-20 people. Sometimes as low as five people.

And some areas only have 5 or fewer regularly.

We can't even get lead devs on camera.

Hmm if I wanted to meet up with one person from HN, I would just contact them using the details in their profile. If there were no contact details, I wouldn't meet with them. I don't quite see the value for 1:1 meetups I guess.

How would you know this person is located in your area or in the area you might visit some time?

I guess you would have to dig, right?

Well, with meet.hn:

1. You don't have to dig

2. People are more willing to meet on average than a random person on the internet

3. You can also check other locations and other people super fast

For in person with unknown people I think large gatherings can break down the fear wall as people can assess before commiting.

For most hn users offering something virtual would be more more inline with expectations and removes those local barriers.

What might work better is an HN forum with regional or city subforums (structured based on HN member density). First get HNers living close to each other to communicate, then they will meet up by themselves.

Of course, there’s the moderation issue.

In my opinion (as some who recently moved out of a big city) it would be very valuable to have an easy way to meet local HN’rs. Either for group sessions or 1-1 or something in between.

I think you’re drawing premature conclusions from the dropoff in signups.

All users are probably in the “now what?” Stage. And if more people knew your site was a way to connect with nearby HNers (ie the value prop was higher and better known), you’d have a lot of interest. So classic chicken egg problem I believe. But there are many successful sites that have broken through this phase. In my opinion you should keep it up.

Kill two birds with one stone:

1) Add functionality to auto-setup digital meetups and invite people within 200mi or something. 2) Let people meet in groups digitally, and maybe that spurs them to meet in person.

also, many will signup to attend and bail last minute

Very true. About Meetup.com specifically (a couple of years ago at least), attending rate was something like 15-20% of the people who RSVP'd.

I get about ~40-50% attendance rate from meetup, but we've been going for years so the regulars are pretty consistent.

Higher indeed. 40% no shows for a meetup I run (60-100 slots, meeting monthly)

This is solved by charging $19 or so.

Well yes, but 100% attendance of zero people is still zero people.

Great way to guarantee I won't attend your meetup

If you distributed the $19 to the people who did actually show up... you would actually get people to show up... maybe there's some kind of business plan embedded in your comment.

That is a fascinating idea that I'm surprised I haven't heard before. I guess implicitly it sort of happens when the money is spent on food or drinks.

Double-digit is too high, you'd have people showing up just to get paid - which is not what you want.

There might be a sweet spot around $3-5 for that model.

Even better: charge $5 to book; attendants will be refunded the fee; any leftovers will be used for refreshments at future events.

True, but this is also an emergent behavior of the Meetup UI. It has no (clear) way to say "I'm interested, might attend, can't commit right now, please remind me day-of." So if you want that reminder — if you want it on your calendar — you have to RSVP as if you were really 100% coming. Meetup doesn't (clearly) offer any other option.

I've RSVPed myself with this intent plenty of times. I'd use a "maybe, please remind me" button if it existed.

Contrast Doodle.com, which offers a "yellow maybe" option intermediate between "green yes" and "red no."

Can that role be automated? Some sort of community vote on a text proposal from the system, along with rsvp, reminders, etc? people may have more skin in the game if they voted on a time/place.

Automate place and tine selection: under eight in the community? Beer hall with 4+ stars that don’t need reservations. 1:1? Coffee shop. Etc. send over some date time location tuples, hold a vote, maybe do a runoff, whatever.

I know that if I got a flash meetup invite to a coffee shop along with instructions on how to meet people (to the left of the door at 10am sharp) I might actually make time. Worst case I drink coffee, which I was planning on doing anyway.

Basically: take the initiative?

You can but I think people like the human element that "someone" has put this whole thing together.

At my events for that club, I don't lead anything at the event. I basically make sure people aren't causing any trouble or littering (none of this ever happens but it's just my assumed responsibility).

But I'll notice people asking around to know who set things up. Usually they find me and thank me because they enjoyed meeting other people and learning from each other.

Again, very human kind of thing I think.

That’s been my experience too. I have a friend who is very involved in a large (250+ people every week, same time same place) - she has a group of volunteers and a rota, who help and set everything up. Her job is mostly keeping those volunteers happy and dealing with the occasional troublemaker (usually in the form of someone forcing themselves into the volunteer role and trying to “make things better” without understanding why things are the way they are.

Community leaders I feel like leads to having meetups conform to one personality.

Ideally, users need an actual reason to meet.

I don't know about calling them community leaders; someone has to find a place to have the meeting and let people know about it. That can be done without the entire meeting conforming to their personality. But at the end of the day, someone has to do some legwork or it just ain't gonna happen.

The community leaders in this scenario aren't leading the meeting. I guess it depends on the format of said meeting.

In my case, they really just set the location and time, in addition to making sure nobody is causing trouble, littering, etc.

Other than that, it's a free-for-all.

I think its more subtle. Whoever is organizing is setting the tone/nature of the meetings.

For example, there is a chess club I wanted to participate in, but the organizer always picks some loud bar, which just isnt my idea of a chess club.

Internations, a social platform for the expats & locals, actively encourages people to become event organizers. It makes sense to recruit people willing to host.

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