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No, don't host your own site. I ran the DCPHP group for years on our own site. We grew from ~10 to 400 over a span of 5 years. It was great. When I moved, the

No, don't host your own site. I ran the DCPHP group for years on our own site. We grew from ~10 to 400 over a span of 5 years. It was great. When I moved, the new leadership moved it to Meetup and grew from 400 to 1000 in a year. Meetup is the discovery platform for just about everyone out there. In covid times, most groups stopped meeting in person (some stopped meeting at all) but Meetup is still THE place for discovery. If you're deep and well connected into your local community (based on geo, not tech), you personally can probably skip it but you're also probably an outlier. Anyone less connected or new to your city or the field itself won't know how to get started without it. Side note.. for 5 years, I ran ATXTechEvents - https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents https://twitter.com/ATXTechEvents - and 50+ other cities broadcasting out via Twitter what was going on and that helped double meeting attendance but I realized pretty quickly, it was existing members. It drove some discovery but was more of a reminder system.

omarhaneef 5y ago
I think caseysoftware pretty much captures the value proposition. I'll add that as a user who wants to go to meetups, I don't want to be hassled by emails, chats, logging into a discord (that I use just to participate in this one community), and so forth. I want to look at a single app, see if any talks are of interest, click yes and add to my calendar. And because that app is already meetup, I don't want to add a second app. Its like adding a second or third chatting application. p.s. most (not all) of the other criticism seems to be aimed at the issue of getting people to consistently meet up at all. An alternative app or messaging system would not solve this issue, and may make it worse.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
But....10->400 over 5 years is quite close to being the same raw rate of growth as 400->1000 over 1 year? And given the challenges of the initial stage of growth, it arguably translates to a significantly higher stage-adjusted growth rate? On these numbers alone the best we can probably say for Meetup is that it performed about as well as your self hosted site
- caseysoftware 5y ago
  Valid point.. I should have put it in terms of the effort/ROI of each approach: In that first five years, it was entirely word of mouth. The only people who found us did because they met someone in the core group or knew someone who met someone in the core group. It required us to talk about it regularly everywhere in addition to organizing the actual meetings, etc. In the next year on Meetup, they only had to organize meetings. Fundamentally, it's not all that different than any early stage startup except that we were driven by passion, not pay.

omarhaneef 5y ago

I think caseysoftware pretty much captures the value proposition. I'll add that as a user who wants to go to meetups, I don't want to be hassled by emails, chats, logging into a discord (that I use just to participate in this one community), and so forth. I want to look at a single app, see if any talks are of interest, click yes and add to my calendar. And because that app is already meetup, I don't want to add a second app. Its like adding a second or third chatting application. p.s. most (not all) of the other criticism seems to be aimed at the issue of getting people to consistently meet up at all. An alternative app or messaging system would not solve this issue, and may make it worse.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

But....10->400 over 5 years is quite close to being the same raw rate of growth as 400->1000 over 1 year? And given the challenges of the initial stage of growth, it arguably translates to a significantly higher stage-adjusted growth rate? On these numbers alone the best we can probably say for Meetup is that it performed about as well as your self hosted site

caseysoftware 5y ago
Valid point.. I should have put it in terms of the effort/ROI of each approach: In that first five years, it was entirely word of mouth. The only people who found us did because they met someone in the core group or knew someone who met someone in the core group. It required us to talk about it regularly everywhere in addition to organizing the actual meetings, etc. In the next year on Meetup, they only had to organize meetings. Fundamentally, it's not all that different than any early stage startup except that we were driven by passion, not pay.