[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)