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Meetup.com alternatives

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Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#41

Post by manojlds »

nickjj wrote: 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…

1. Anecdotal. Not all are bad, and in my experience, most were good.

2. How is that meetup's fault? It's like saying HN is bad because of bad comments.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#42

Post by ausjke »

what about just the old way, google groups or email lists?

otherwise, I still see certain business model shall work for meetup, how about when meetup charges a fee for its members then it shares some percentage of that fee with meetup? otherwise it will be free.

and what about eventbrite.com

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#43

Post by ethagnawl »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #26
nickjj wrote: 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…

I actually find this isn’t my experience in NYC, admittedly I actively avoid such talks and go straight to collective hack nights or special interests (Eg. Postgres devs or similar niches).

I'll second this. I've only experienced what the parent describes once or twice and, IMO, it's usually pretty easy to suss those groups out.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#44

Post by jumpingmice »

nickjj wrote: 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…

Meetup doesn’t “run” these. You’re just picking boring ones. The only meetup I attend is a bunch of random motorcyclists who go up the coast highway every week. Never felt bored.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#45

Post by dewey »

nickjj wrote: 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…

I'm not sure to which meetups you are going, but Meetup.com is just a platform with a great reach. There'll always be corporate sponsored meetups in cities, but if there would be no Meetup.com they'd post it on Twitter or sponsor conferences in the city. I actually like it to check out other offices in the city from time to time and I don't mind the one talk from a person of that company, it's just fair as they provide the venue and food.

Especially if you are coming to a new city it's a great place to find out what's going on and find your group. It's nice to have a centralized place for that and makes it very easy to connect with people. (At least in my experience here in Berlin)

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#46

Post by spartas »

degenerate wrote: post #3

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?

https://upcoming.org

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#47

Post by dewey »

nickjj wrote: post #38
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find this isn’t my experience in NYC, admittedly I actively avoid such talks and go straight to collective hack nights or special interests (Eg. Postgres devs or similar niches).

It's been my experience in NYC for every Docker / Kubernetes meetup I went to. But you're right. Not every meetup organization is the same.

I'd say that it's not that shocking that attending a meetup about two enterprise grade deployment tools has a bit of a corporate vibe.

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#48

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

ghaff wrote: post #25
emptybits wrote: post #10

I fear this $2/attendee grab by Meetup will drive more people to Facebook for finding and planning and advertising events. Sadface. The understandable reason: Facebook is "free" and most of these better alternatives will be fragmented and mainstream unknown for a long time. Maybe one overarching event-search service could help the fragmentation problem, if it doesn't already exist.

A per-person charge makes free/volunteer-organized events largely a non-starter. Any charge is a huge friction for people signing up for something. And unless it's a corporate sponsored event (and often even then), the $5 or so per person who actually ends up attending is significant. Probably people/companies will just depend on word of mouth and other channels to promote events and not depend on discovery through a…

Yup, if this goes through, we'll need to move all our meetups to email notifications, which will kill virality but given that no-one's going to pay for a meetup, is probably the better solution.

I fucking hate WeWork (i was really worried when Meetup.com was acquired, and it appears that I was correct to be).

Re: Meetup.com alternatives

#49

Post by Endy »

Thank you for sharing this article. I was not aware of WeWork killing Meetup until now. I've already told three groups I'm in that I will be deleting my account by 10/30.
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