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Meetup.com alternatives

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Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#11
Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me.

Events I'm looking for span a range of interests, artists, bands, topics, hobbies, and causes - hence no one central location has a list of everything relevant to me. So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, individual web pages, AXS, Spotify Concerts, email newsletters, etc.

Building another event organization platform isn't the solution - getting people, venues, and organizers onto it would be an expensive uphill battle, and would further fracture discovery. But a thought of a decentralized open-source aggregation of a bunch of feeds has been popping up in my mind lately. These could be sourced from all of the above mentioned sources and somewhat standardized into a format with name, description, price, location, time. From there, it should be a simple matter to add filtering, subscriptions, and even a recommendations engine.

Has anything like this been attempted? Might it work? I haven't found anything yet.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#12

Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me. Events I'm looking for span a range of interests, artists, bands, topics, hobbies, and causes - hence no one central location has a list of everything relevant to me. So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, indiv…

Yeah, I was thinking about this too: why not try to implement the "Who is hiring" model (i.e. a quasi-standarized text format) to events using social networks that allows to search by tags, such as Twitter and Mastodon.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#13

Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me. Events I'm looking for span a range of interests, artists, bands, topics, hobbies, and causes - hence no one central location has a list of everything relevant to me. So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, indiv…

Mobilizon looks like it's on the right track but my biggest concern is seeding it: the first version of any such aggregator should pull from existing repositories of events to allow discovery (while still forwarding actual registration to the original source site).

I do like the fact that they have an event-publishing tool and the option to self-host.

> Framasoft wants to create Mobilizon: free/libre software that will allow communities to create their own spaces to publish events, in order to better emancipate themselves from tech giants. We want to develop a digital common, that everyone can make their own, which respects privacy and activism by design.

https://joinmobilizon.org/en/

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#14
This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com.

Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end.

It feels so corporate and non-human. You get lured into a business' office with free food and drinks or stickers but then you have sign up forms, recruitment pitches and vendors giving talks about some technology but it's all focused on using their service around that tech.

I miss the good old days of 2600 meetups in the late 1990s. Everyone meets in a public place. There's no set schedule other than where to go and when it starts. Then you actually meet up with people and talk about things that you have in common. You can leave in 30 seconds or stay all night. There's no commitment, agenda or sales pitches.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#15

Somewhat related note: as someone living in a major city I find it increasingly hard to discover relevant events happening soon/around me. Events I'm looking for span a range of interests, artists, bands, topics, hobbies, and causes - hence no one central location has a list of everything relevant to me. So I'm forced to regularly dig through Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, Google Events Search, individual sites, indiv…

The Austin, Texas area has a website that does something like this: https://do512.com/

Obviously this kind of thing only works for events likely to get general attention.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#16

The list: https://emamo.com https://kommunity.com https://joinmobilizon.org/en https://cete.io (not yet launched?) https://eventy.io (not yet launched) And the not-yet-build one by FreeCodeCamp: https://twitter.com/ossia/status/1183845054449930241 I've never heard of any of them. Opinions?

I've never heard of them either. Meetup's demise will be a great opportunity for them, but I think a lot of them will be hobbled by having off-putting names.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#17
post #14

This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com. Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end. It feels so corporate and…

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.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#18
post #7

> I’m considering alternatives to Meetup.com for our meetup (should it still be called like that?) It should be. It's just an English word that predates the app, and is also used in the same setting/context as the use of the word within the meetup.com app, so I really hope there wouldn't be any trademark issues. Kind of a clever name, since it causes this confusion. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but the effec…

If there are trademark issues, it's important for all of us to use it as a generic term immediately. I remember years ago some people organized a meetup using Twitter and called it a Tweet-up. Make sure that if Meetup ever goes to court over a trademark, there's enough evidence of generic usage out there that it's not defensible.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#19
post #14

This is a good reminder of why I stopped going to most local tech meetups ran by meetup.com. Not because of the upcoming $2 fee, but because most of the time it's a 2 hour tech meetup where you spend 15 minutes mingling at the start, then 1 hour and 30 minutes listening to advertisements disguised as talks where you sit down and remain silent and then another 15 minutes mingling at the end. It feels so corporate and…

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

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#20
tl;dr

1. cete - https://cete.io/ 2. emamo - https://emamo.com 3. kommunity - https://kommunity.com 4. eventy - https://eventy.io/ 5. "FreeCodeCamp is currently building an Open Source alternative to Meetup.com. They are looking for contributors, head to this Discord channel to get involved!" (In my opinion this article was made to feature this paragraph tbh)

Anyhow

I'm using meetup for a while

Been extremely useful (especially when i lived abroad. It's a great way to meet some new friends with similar hobbies.

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