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Some of my own experience: Meetup.com is an awful platform that now has a value-extraction owner who will just make it even worse, as bad as it is now. Don't us

Some of my own experience: Meetup.com is an awful platform that now has a value-extraction owner who will just make it even worse, as bad as it is now. Don't use Meetup.com. Second, being a meetup organizer is a thankless task. People have no idea how much work goes into the operation, and this article helps show all of that. But after all the work is done, there's no glory for the organizer. There's no loyalty or appreciation, so if you disappear tomorrow, people will just go somewhere else, and few months later forget you even existed. After running meetups for many years, even big ones, I realized it's not worth it, and I'll never do it again. The same goes for big events, such as conferences, etc. It takes even more work to run and organize those, not to mention the cost, and there's simply very little juice to squeeze.

mofosyne 2y ago
Do you know of any alternative we can do to escape the meetup ecosystem? I would have hoped by now we got at least a federated alternative like mastodon.
- rexreed 2y ago
  There's plenty of alternatives if you're looking for event registration. My preferred at the moment is TicketTailor.com, but there's everything from Eventbrite to Luma to Brown Paper Tickets. Now they won't bring you the community, but you can get community from Discord channels to LinkedIn Groups to X and other social media. Meetup is awful in that they hold your group hostage and you have no way of moving your members, so if you decide no longer to run the Meetup one day, they will let you walk away, but anyone else can just step up and take over the group and do whatever they want. Even worse than Facebook groups.
  - probably_wrong 2y ago
    I find your phrasing of "your group" interesting. I've taken over a Meetup group after the original organizer vanished, and I never felt that the community was mine. I was just the guy keeping the ball rolling, same as the one before and same as the one who took over afterwards. I consider few things as annoying as a single person deciding that a community is done for good.
  - arp242 2y ago
    TicketTailor.com is "Sell your Tickets online". That's a fundamentally different thing than most of Meetup.com. One of the major values of Meetup.com was always "I'm new here and have no friends, what's there to do?", "I'm bored, what's there to do?" and things like that. Random Discord channels or some Tweets don't solve that. Meetup was never super-brilliant, but this is really not a tech problem.
- abnercoimbre 2y ago
  I've built my own [0]. I have to do server maintenance and pay hosting costs, but it's worth it. We run successful meetups with it. If you want pointers shoot a message (see my profile.) [0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups https://handmadecities.com/meetups
- makeworld 2y ago
  https://lu.ma/ https://lu.ma/
yyggvbb 2y ago
[flagged]
- keithalewis 2y ago
  Could you do us a favor and give us a link to his product? He is spot on about Meetup.
- rexreed 2y ago
  What are you talking about? This is nowhere near the truth. I have nothing to sell, especially a competing product to meetup. The last thing I want to do is get into the crappy event management business. Go ahead and use Meetup if that's what you want. I shared my experiences as a meetup organizer for well over a decade. Share yours.
- 1123581321 2y ago
  You're lying about this. I checked his other comments and his submission history.
abc123abc123 2y ago
I've been running a meetup for almost 10 years and I love it! Attendance is usually about 70%-80%, I feel lots of love and appreciation for the work I put in, and it has led to several consulting jobs. My key to doing it for close to 10 years is to do it on my terms. If I have other stuff that takes too much time, I don't arrange, if I have free time, I do arrange. No one can force me or push me to do it. On average I host meetups 3 times per year, maybe 4, some years and I find that to be quite a nice sweet spot. In terms of attendees I shoot for 30-60. I have done 100-130 people meetups, but that's too much work, so won't do that without personnel from the sponsor. So yeah, meetups are fun but do it on your own terms only, and you'll enjoy it for a long time! =)

mofosyne 2y ago

Do you know of any alternative we can do to escape the meetup ecosystem? I would have hoped by now we got at least a federated alternative like mastodon.

rexreed 2y ago
There's plenty of alternatives if you're looking for event registration. My preferred at the moment is TicketTailor.com, but there's everything from Eventbrite to Luma to Brown Paper Tickets. Now they won't bring you the community, but you can get community from Discord channels to LinkedIn Groups to X and other social media. Meetup is awful in that they hold your group hostage and you have no way of moving your members, so if you decide no longer to run the Meetup one day, they will let you walk away, but anyone else can just step up and take over the group and do whatever they want. Even worse than Facebook groups.
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  I find your phrasing of "your group" interesting. I've taken over a Meetup group after the original organizer vanished, and I never felt that the community was mine. I was just the guy keeping the ball rolling, same as the one before and same as the one who took over afterwards. I consider few things as annoying as a single person deciding that a community is done for good.
- arp242 2y ago
  TicketTailor.com is "Sell your Tickets online". That's a fundamentally different thing than most of Meetup.com. One of the major values of Meetup.com was always "I'm new here and have no friends, what's there to do?", "I'm bored, what's there to do?" and things like that. Random Discord channels or some Tweets don't solve that. Meetup was never super-brilliant, but this is really not a tech problem.
abnercoimbre 2y ago
I've built my own [0]. I have to do server maintenance and pay hosting costs, but it's worth it. We run successful meetups with it. If you want pointers shoot a message (see my profile.) [0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups https://handmadecities.com/meetups
makeworld 2y ago
https://lu.ma/ https://lu.ma/

yyggvbb 2y ago

[flagged]

keithalewis 2y ago
Could you do us a favor and give us a link to his product? He is spot on about Meetup.
rexreed 2y ago
What are you talking about? This is nowhere near the truth. I have nothing to sell, especially a competing product to meetup. The last thing I want to do is get into the crappy event management business. Go ahead and use Meetup if that's what you want. I shared my experiences as a meetup organizer for well over a decade. Share yours.
1123581321 2y ago
You're lying about this. I checked his other comments and his submission history.

abc123abc123 2y ago

I've been running a meetup for almost 10 years and I love it! Attendance is usually about 70%-80%, I feel lots of love and appreciation for the work I put in, and it has led to several consulting jobs. My key to doing it for close to 10 years is to do it on my terms. If I have other stuff that takes too much time, I don't arrange, if I have free time, I do arrange. No one can force me or push me to do it. On average I host meetups 3 times per year, maybe 4, some years and I find that to be quite a nice sweet spot. In terms of attendees I shoot for 30-60. I have done 100-130 people meetups, but that's too much work, so won't do that without personnel from the sponsor. So yeah, meetups are fun but do it on your own terms only, and you'll enjoy it for a long time! =)