I am an organizer of a Web Engineering Meetup in Düsseldorf, Germany, for > 6 years (https://www.meetup.com/Web-Engineering-Duesseldorf/). We run the event every month, with 50 up to 90 people. Indeed, our no-show rate is something between 40% and 50%. This is heavy, but we know it and calculate it in.
We run the complete meetup non-profit. Never put a euro in. Never got a euro out — everything based on sponsors. Our motivation is to learn, share knowledge, and have fun together. And we want to make it accessible for everyone to learn about web engineering.
Switching to the new cost model will reduce the no-show rate, but makes it 1000% times less accessible. In my opinion, Meetup.com is creating a higher barrier to enter a community. If we, the organizers, would pay for the attendees, we would pay 100$ up to 180$ every month. We have no interest to afford this.
Furthermore, what I don't get: Meetup is charging a lot of money for thousands of groups. The web platform is stale for>2 years. The last major feature was a facelift in design. But no feature that helps the organizers or users. The iOS app had some releases, but the app is far from a great UX. Flaky everywhere. I ask myself: What is this company doing? Where does all the money go?
Friends who run similar groups are thinking already to move away. Many people from the US think the same.
It's also going to make it more likely companies that want to market to developers will pay to have a lot of 'meetups' that are really mini conferences for that company w/ lots of sales and marketing pitching the attendees
There’s https://github.com/phoet/on_ruby which is the software used by a few ruby meetups in Berlin and other cities. It’s a bit bare-bones but relatively simple to host.
We run the complete meetup non-profit. Never put a euro in. Never got a euro out — everything based on sponsors. Our motivation is to learn, share knowledge, and have fun together. And we want to make it accessible for everyone to learn about web engineering.
Switching to the new cost model will reduce the no-show rate, but makes it 1000% times less accessible. In my opinion, Meetup.com is creating a higher barrier to enter a community. If we, the organizers, would pay for the attendees, we would pay 100$ up to 180$ every month. We have no interest to afford this.
Furthermore, what I don't get: Meetup is charging a lot of money for thousands of groups. The web platform is stale for>2 years. The last major feature was a facelift in design. But no feature that helps the organizers or users. The iOS app had some releases, but the app is far from a great UX. Flaky everywhere. I ask myself: What is this company doing? Where does all the money go?
Friends who run similar groups are thinking already to move away. Many people from the US think the same.
I think this tweet sums it up: https://twitter.com/obfuscurity/status/1183831607821656068