I am running a Web Engineering Meetup in Düsseldorf, Germany [1] since more than 4 years. This group is quite big (~1.600 people) with 40 up to 100 people per Event (depends on the weather, the topic, the day, if side events happen in the city or not). We run it 100% non profit and community driven. No money is involved for paying speakers or accommodation. This is a fact where we are really proud of, because we believe if we involve money it will make things harder and more complicated. Questions like Who do pay what flight, etc.
Of course, we have food and drink sponsors. But they order the food and deliver this to us. No "direct" money involved. We run every month, except of december (because december is a busy month everywhere, company parties, family, etc.). For a german meetup, this is a quite big one (if you compare the topic and the non profit).
I want to tell you what i like and what i don't like about Meetup:
What i like:
- "Advertising" of the meetup via email: This is very good. People will be reminded, it will suggest new people your meetup depends on tags / topics and so on
- Uncomplicated for attendees: Sign up or not sign up, this is quite easy for people
What i don't like:
- The user interface: It is horrible. Especially for a meetup organizer. The editor is so limited, it is not intuitive at all
- Innovation / Change: Since nearly 4 years, meetup has changed nearly nothing. Recently they are working more and more on their iOS app (a lot of updates coming in) and a new brushed layout for the website was released, but it took way to long. Smaller changes, really iterating over it, this is what i am missing.
- Organizing a meetup: They are tools missing. Meetup is a kind of simple CURD app. But really tools for meetup organzers are missing. I know tons of companies who want to sponsor a meetup (location, food, etc.). I see tons of meetups who suffer from finding a speaker or a sponsor. I know tons of speaker who want to test their next conference talk befor eon a meetup to get feedback. Connect them. Make it easy for meetup organizers to organize one. I personally see so much potential in this area. In this regard i often ask myself "What is Meetup doing with all these employees?"
- The "pro" version: This is a joke. I tried it out. I guess the target group are meetup groups that should run all over the world (like the wordpress one). But for normal organizers, useless IMO. I expected so much from it (Statistics, deep insights in my community, what are the members interested in, etc.). So much potential.
The problem with meetup is, that without effort from people meetups will be created, 1 meetup will be held, they are disappointed that only a hand full of people showed up and they will never do it again. Because they realize that organizing a meetup is a huge effort. And only time the number of people will grow. But you need time for this.
I see a lot of groups that were created recently, but never have a meetup scheduled at all. This is sad.
Why i don't create a "better meetup"? I would love to. But the big issue here: Meetup.com has the critical mass. And signing up for a new platform etc. I wouldnt do it as an attendee. Ideas?
My unwritten goal is to provide the opportunity in Düsseldorf to visit a tech meetup every workday.
This is what i fight for and i help other organizers around to do this while connecting them and offer them my support and knowledge. A year ago i wrote a blog article about "Lessons learned from running a local meetup" [2]. I think i need to write a new one. I learned so much new things in the last year. And we try to write/document everything we need to do to organize our meetup on Github [3]. Not completed yet, but it is growing.
[1] https://meetup.com/Web-Engineering-Duesseldorf/
[2] http://andygrunwald.com/blog/lesson-learned-from-running-a-l...
[3] https://github.com/WebEngDUS/WebEngDUS