[losdos]

The old days were great for tech events. Amazing speakers in every major city. All tech cos and startups fighting to sponsor and host events in their offices. I remember getting some great meals and bridge views at Google in SF at the HTML5 group, hah. If you were a poor, bootstrapped hacker in the city those days, you could pretty much get fed for free and begged to quit your startup and take a job most days of the week.

I’ve just been given the reins myself to be the organizer for a large (defunct) tech group. I’m still figuring out exactly what will bring people back and kickstart things. From my discussions with organizers in other groups, they are having a difficult time finding companies willing to host. Concerns about liability even though the pandemic scare is over still persist, time demand on internal employees and lack of rapid hiring are big blockers. The environment has definitely changed.

I really hope the pendulum will swing back again.

[cookiengineer]

COVID really hit the scene over here in South Germany. There were a bunch of meetups that tried online meetup events during lockdown for maybe 2-3 times, but then eventually they all stopped.

And it's not language- or topic-specific either: Java, JS, golang, cyber security, devops, all types of meetups really aren't what they used to be. You're lucky when you organize an event and more than 20% of registered people show up, even when you made them pay 10 bucks for it that they get back on arrival.

The biggest event I've attended to last year were Chaos events (Gulaschprogrammiernacht / GPN, CCC etc), BSides events, and that's pretty much it. All other events kind of either died out, or have been taken over by software consultancies holding the same old "we are cool with PWAs, Angular and FuGu, now hire us!" type talks that they never change and repeatedly broadcast to as many who will listen.

I tried to start a cybersecurity / devsecops / golang related meetup again, and we're now around 10 regular people of the former ~150+ ones. I am now thinking of starting a dedicated developer forum (maybe even in German), because even reddit isn't what it used to be in this regard.

I don't know what changed specifically, but I think the threshold of "when" people consider going to an event changed radically through COVID, and they rather be a lazy ass in the evening than meet people. Maybe that's the global social depression everyone is talking about. Dunno.

Did you observe similar behaviors?

[Voultapher]

MUC++ organizer here, yes we are probably the exception. We are based in Munich which is south Germany and did stick to roughly one event per month, even though we went online only during the pandemic. We have been doing more on-site events for the last year and are back to a ~40-50% no-show rate. The Rust Meetup is also doing better than ever. So I'd argue your experience does not generalize to all tech Meetups in south Germany.

[arp242]

"Only part of the people who register show up" has always been a thing. Depending on what kind of meetup you have, you've just got to account for that. I don't think it's a big deal. It's hard to tell if it's worse since COVID.

I do know that a lot of these social things (meetup, couchsurfing, facebook events) died out during COVID and that in many places the bounce-back has been lacklustre at best. I don't really know why or what to do about it, but the old days of "move to a new city, meet lots of people on meetup.com events" seem to be gone for many places.

[eecc]

The housing crisis + inflation spike might have contributed to the loss of this "move to a new city..." think you mentioned. Younger generations have a much harder time getting income, a stable one, and paying the exorbitant costs of living.

[datadrivenangel]

Yeah we're back to ~40-50% noshow rate which was normal before the pandemic.

[disgruntledphd2]

> And it's not language- or topic-specific either: Java, JS, golang, cyber security, devops, all types of meetups really aren't what they used to be. You're lucky when you organize an event and more than 20% of registered people show up, even when you made them pay 10 bucks for it that they get back on arrival.

20% is pretty good. As long as you can find a free space, attendance shouldn't matter that much. It does vary by seasonality and weather though (very few people want to go to a tech meetup when it's great weather, or additionally if the weather is so bad they don't want to leave the house/office).

[em-bee]

it's going to bounce back. CCC is one of the biggest events which just happened for the first time after covid (also the summer camp). i think these big events will motivate smaller events to eventually reactivate too.

keep up updated on that developer forum. i am interested in joining (in german or english)

[Dioxide2119]

> Maybe that's the global social depression everyone is talking about. Dunno.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with this, is this a reference to something like [1]?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38935605

[dgellow]

Same in northern Germany :(

[bagels]

People are still out there exchanging Covid. Meetups are a great way to catch it still.

[jacamera]

Is this an argument for or against meetups?

[bagels]

It's an explanation of why I won't attend any, and I assume some others as well.

[fishpen0]

Boston here and what we see now is the only company consistently hosting is google and exclusively for kubernetes meetups. Organizers for several meetups have communicated struggles to get anyone to host. A big part of it seems to be the bigger companies that used to host literally left Boston as a side effect of acquisitions or downsizing closing the Boston offices, leaving only buildings further out in the burbs (Burlington for example) open. A lot of the hosts that were acquired but sill in town were bought by companies like Vista Equity Partners who seem to have an outright distaste for engineering community as a whole and reject requests from their own staff to host events.

The flip side is even when a host is found, its sometimes in the burbs because that's where the bigger office space is that's still a tech space and asking people who work or live downtown to commute to a specific suburb just for a free slice of pizza and a pitch to work for a company who is RTOd and has no downtown presence gets zero interest

[hugocast]

Personally, I wouldn't get on a car or the train for a slice of pizza, but I would to catch up with friends and talk shop :)

I wonder what individual-led meetups look like in your area. I host in person in a sprawly Southeast US city and get 20-25 folks showing up consistently. I find that if you offer value, people will show up.

[losdos]

Yeah I get that distance issue. At least I’m in Wilmington when I visit family there so I’ll see what’s over in Burlington next time I’m out. I recall going to a devops meetup at Datadog when they first opened their doors in Boston. It was a nice change-up from all the ones run by consulting partner firms.

[mooreds]

Help run the boulder ruby meetup and have for a few years.

I'll say that the energy is building and we're seeing more and more new faces at meetups. We're also able to do both in-person and online, which leads to some nice recordings: https://boulder-ruby.org/

I've been speaker wrangling for years and it's still pretty easy to get quality talks. Some local, some from folks zooming in.

We're lucky enough to have sponsored space and zoom subscription, but there are ongoing costs (primarily food) that we're trying to figure out. Used to be easier to get a company to kick in $50-100/month. Now, as you mention, there's less hiring, so there's less incentive to sponsor. I think something similar is happening with tech conferences in general, just from anecdotes.

It's hard for me to know what is general slowdown and what is specific to the ruby language, though. But I've definitely seen a number of other tech meetups stop meeting over the past few years. I get an automated message about wantint to take over the group.

[MenhirMike]

I've been to a lot of great meetups that weren't associated with companies but just met up in a Dave & Busters meeting room or whatever pub and talk about some tech topic, so more like a get-together rather than a formal thing. Then it slowly turned into sales events as it became less about "here's some cool tech" (which at the time often meant some new OSS web framework - but through that we got to explore the evolution of the web) and more about someone trying to do the "I have a great business idea, can you build it and we'll split the profits, 80/20" (aka. Work for Exposure, instead of proper startup culture). Then it turned into crypto-pumper events. And then the pandemic thankfully put an end to it.

If you live in SF then it's probably been a much better experience because you probably had a much broader field of participants and events, but in the smaller place I used to live in, it just became an example of hustle culture ruining every shred of joy that's left in tech.

(And yes, I know, "Be the change you want to see", but I've got no interest in running meetups myself)

[KingOfCoders]

Back in the days I've started eBay Tech Talk Germany. We started small, with only people from my company attending (as CTO I kindly asked them to attend). We grew steadily to nearly 100 people attending, my employer payed the pizza and the location was (later) a coworking space (free). When I left others then grew the meetup to 150+ people attending and made it really successful.

Later in the small startup of my wife, we started a sofatalk meetup. Starting small, we ended up with up to 100+ monthly people attending and made it to the Berlin Olympia Stadium (free) as a location and caterer - with the stadium in company pink :-) But this took lots of effort, lots of talking to people on Linkedin, inviting them, lots of work to get free catering etc.

I think, start small, keep a constant pace, have good talks and the meetup will grow. But it will take many months and hard work (my wife successfully started a literature meetup last year).

[olegp]

Just to provide another data point, I've been running the HelsinkiJS meetup (https://helsinkijs.org/) for 12 years and our upcoming event has had 230+ people register within a day, which is a record. We've also got sponsors lined up for the next 6+ months.

I should add that we ended up building https://meetabit.com/ to make it easier to run the events and it's now being used by around 10 tech meetups in Finland. So, if you're looking for a free Meetup.com alternative, you should check it out. If you have some questions, drop me a line at [e-mail].

[disgruntledphd2]

> . From my discussions with organizers in other groups, they are having a difficult time finding companies willing to host.

Don't rely on companies to host. Myself and my co-organizer tend to use a co-working space that we are members of, and tend to refuse the corporate sponsorships we are offered.

We probably don't get as big a crowd, but the people we do get tend to be really into the subject matter so it's a great group of people.

Mind you, the core of us have been at this for over a decade so that probably helps too.

[losdos]

Yes, I’m looking at joining a new space and part of my selection process is asking if I can have events there (without paying). More neutral territory is great.

However, someone’s got to get the pizza bill! I’ll probably cover it to start and maybe reach out to dev tool / B2B startups to see if they are interested in helping out.

[hugocast]

I second this. Coworking spaces or maker spaces are great if you are doing a show + tell metup. The one I host is more of a social one, so we can get away with meeting at pubs.

[wahnfrieden]

In my experience these meetups at offices typically relied on uncompensated overtime from several employees. I wish employers would compensate or give time in lieu for such recurring overtime asks, rather than pretend it’s extracurricular fun that the workers asked for and shall get as a favor. For hosts and organizers, a pizza meal isn’t substitution for compensation that pays the rent.

[rmbyrro]

The employees used to ask employers to allow usage of office space and to sponsor food.

It's not the employer who's asking for a task to be done.

Why would you expect the employer to consider this work time that should be paid?

[wahnfrieden]

Sure, often hosts and organizers employers use the events as a recruiting strategy and to promote their engineering brand and so on

[rmbyrro]

Yes, that's their upside and why they used to sponsor. But I've never heard of an employer asking its employees to run these events.

[wahnfrieden]

It’s common!

Besides if the employer uses it as a recruiting event and has recruiters involved and so on, it is work regardless of who asked for the work. Stop giving your labor away for free

You wouldn’t take unpaid time to fix tech debt you had to convince your employer to allow either

[em-bee]

i have been hosting events at my workplace before but i think that's different. tech debt only affects work. but if i want to host an event, and i get the option to host it at my work place or elsewhere, the chosen location should not affect my pay. in fact, i would not want to get paid so as to remain independent, and be allowed to run the event however i want. i'd appreciate my employer offering the location and even sponsoring food maybe, but once i get paid, it is no longer my event, but my employers, and depending on the nature of the event, i may or may not want that.

of course, if my employer does host an event and directs me run it, then i'd expect to get paid for that.

[gumby]

> they are having a difficult time finding companies willing to host

I’ve enjoyed using my company space to host group meetings (the first one I remember doing was the cypherpunks). But these days my current company is basically virtual with only a small lab space so it’s not so much that I’m unwilling but rather no longer able.

[vpontis]

Hi! I'm a founder of lu.ma which a lot of Meetup hosts have migrated to in the past year. We're kind of a mix between Meetup + Eventbrite. You can see some tech events we've featured here — lu.ma/explore

I'd love to see if I can help you get your community up and running again. Feel free to reach out - [e-mail]

In terms of funding / sponsorships, I think it's certainly harder than the market a few years ago since there is just less free money for tech / startups, but we've seen a lot of new tech communities thrive. Also, a lot of people are willing to pay to attend events!

[Rescis]

The lack of an easily accessible search function/option to select a city (Seattle) other than SF/NYC/London/Paris/Dubai was a little annoying to me, and then the login gate when I try to click explore again was a little frustrating.

[vpontis]

Thanks for that feedback! We are still pretty early on discovery so we don't support cities other than the cities listed there for public discovery.

We do have many events happening in Seattle tho so we should add discovery there in the next couple months .

[em-bee]

this looks great, as does meetabit.com, mentioned in another post. the problem is that having so many different sites makes it difficult to find events in one location.

i think it would be good to consider a protocol to exchange event information so that a visitor can look up events from all these different meetup sites on one place. an aggregator or something the way how mastodon shares channels between servers.

[pryelluw]

Organizer of python Atlanta here. Reach out anytime.

[losdos]

Thanks! I went to the relaunched Python meetup group event in LA to talk to their org leads. Nice peeps. They were looking for speakers and places to host as well. Just had it at a beer garden, which seems to be a popular “venue” right now.

[pryelluw]

If you see this and have their contact info, please have them reach out to pyatl through [e-mail]

[nunez]

100%. COVID ripped right through the tech scene, and doing it online is nowhere near close to the same experience.