TSC : Looking for money for Meetup.com to start EDA Meetup Group

[boyney123]

Last year we had an issue raised about the idea of having a Meetup Group for EDA #175.

Coming into 2022 it would be good to start this going (hopefully).

Who is involved

@smoya @jessemenning @nictownsend @Barbanio @boyney123

(If you want to get involved just comment or reach out).

Why

To start a monthly (for now) meetup group hosted in alternative time zones that allow us to invite people from all over the world to come and talk about Event-Driven Architecture.

Think the general thoughts was not be tied to AsyncAPI only and open it up to a wide range of topics (specs, examples, ideas etc) from the EDA community and see who we can get into talk and share ideas.

Hopefully you can read more over on #175

What is needed

A few of us have experience with meetup.com and it would be a good place to allow people to sign up and for us to contact them (email etc). But we will need to pay for it.

So I'm wondering if AsyncAPI @asyncapi/tsc_members would agree for us to spend some money on this?

Here is the pricing

$30 per group per month billed every six months or $35 per group per month billed month to month. Taxes may apply.

https://help.meetup.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028549711-Meetup-Pro-pricing-and-trial

I think the plan is, we are going to create a holding website (hosted somewhere with details about the events, what we expect etc) with links over to Meetup to sign up etc....

Hopefully there is enough information and would like to know your thoughts @asyncapi/tsc_members

If anyone has any other ideas feel free to share! Open to suggestions of course...

[derberg]

Can you specify 2 things:

• did you try to reach out to them if they support open source and provide free accounts. This is what we always do first, and this is why so far we do not have to pay for anything 😄
• why Meetup Group? what features does it give you that do can't get anywhere else. Maybe we could check some alternative that Linux Foundation provides. But depends on what are your requirements, cause if it is only RSVP then there are better alternatives

[boyney123]

Just now I think @smoya is going to reach out to LF to see if we can get something from there, if not I will reach out to them about Open Source stuff (good idea).

Yeah, good question Why Meetup, to be honest, it's just what I'm used too..... happy to explore others for sure!

I think some basic things like RSVP and Emailing Lists would be good, so we can email people in the group and remind them.

From experience people sign up, forget and don't turn up. I always have to send about 3 or 4 reminder emails to get people to commit.....

[Barbanio]

also consider https://www.gather.town/ for running event, like seriously, I tested it on my kids during holiday break, pretty cool stuff. I know people use it for meetups.

I think this is a great idea. I had a go and it looks like fun and interesting. I've also read good reviews.

[boyney123]

also consider gather.town for running event, like seriously, I tested it on my kids during holiday break, pretty cool stuff. I know people use it for meetups.

@derberg played around with this it's great, can people present from it? If speakers had presentations etc?

[derberg]

dunno, something to explore, I wasn't testing this part. I assume yes because people use it for meetups

[boyney123]

Yeah, I love the idea of using gather.town to meet and present once the meetup group has kicked off, think this is a great thing to explore.

Guess that leaves the other side of it, which is arranging it, emails management, RSVP etc.

About the Linux Foundation stuff, if this was a generic Meetup group would they want it to be focused on AsyncAPI as that is what is under the foundation?

Personally, I think we could try to meet up for a while and see how we get on? I will reach out to them for open source stuff and see what they say. I think meetup is quite well known and gives us a platform to start things?

[boyney123]

Saying that, anybody used https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/?

Might be free for free events...

Edit: Ignore that, looks like it's focused on events, rather than meetups etc, guess we won't be doing one off events...

[fmvilas]

I don't want to deviate too much from the conversation but have to say this somewhere:

Don't you think it would be better to organize multiple Meetup groups from different locations? I mean, we pair with people in Barcelona, Paris, London, San Francisco, Mumbai, etc. They take care of organizing their respective ones. AsyncAPI will support with money and swags. I'm saying because this way people can easily organize events in their own language. I've seen this to be especially important in Spain (except Barcelona) and France (maybe except Paris?). Then people can use the platform they prefer, we just make sure we're there to support them.

What do you think about it?

cc @Barbanio @derberg

[Barbanio]

I think @fmvilas's idea would be a great fit for the ambassador program #239. What do you think?

[derberg]

I think most important is to at least have one meetup, to see how it works, if there is interest.

Then you can grow, but I recommend research on how industry changed after COVID. I personally think that more focus should go on "enabling different time-zones" that "enabling cities" because these meetups are now remote.

But yeah, start small, set some simple goal for this year, like at least organize 2 meetups, start building brand, and then scale like they did -> https://www.writethedocs.org/meetups/

[boyney123]

Thanks for everyone's thoughts and feedback, been good to explore things and get some ideas down.

Next Steps

I think it's important to see what engagement this Meetup would have and see if it has any momentum.

I would like to get testing it out, and I think based on the conversation I'm happy to purchase a couple of months of Meetup.com account to see if this meetup would work.

If it's successful then we can explore ways to fund it going forward (maybe sponsorship etc or moving to a better solution), but for now, I think we should get something out there.

Unless anyone disagrees, I'm going to try and move it forward and go ahead purchasing meetup soon.

I got in contact with Meetup and they don't offer free plans for groups/open source work

[jessemenning]

That's very generous, @boyney123 . And I think the sponsorship sounds like a promising path forward.