Where did all the meetups go?

In the case of my city (Indianapolis), I have found that many meetups are now coordinated on specific Discord servers instead of meetup.com. There are probably other places I'm not aware of where others have moved to. The result is that in 2022, it's probably best to search for meetups via Google rather than relying solely on meetup.com.

I hope to see more pure virtual ones like one I started on software internals this January [0]. Means anyone within a few timezones can present and attend and there's no hassle finding a physical space. Of course you miss out on chatting and free pizza but I think it's awesome to be able to get speakers from anywhere in the Americas.

The only hazard is zoom-bombers. Don't make your zoom link public or you'll have weirdos join.

[0] https://meetup.com/hackernights

Here in the SF Bay Area some meetups have resumed in-person events, but I'm not attending them yet. I still attend lots of online ones. People aren't going to offices as much, which is where many meetups used to be held, so we've probably permanently lost a lot of those in-person meetups that no longer attract enough people to make it worth it.

I kind of feel like that era is also over. Tech, start ups, and the ruby community used to be really fun. People were genuinely excited to do the meetups. And I'm sure some people still find it to be, but it feels to me like most of that energy is gone, even before the market crash. And I certainly don't see it getting more energized from here any time soon.

Who knows, maybe I changed more than the communities.

For technical topics I agree with everyone else that they've moved online; probably not Zoom or whatever other video things, but more text based chat rooms to facilitate technical discussion. Depends on the tech, I guess.

One thing that confounds me is that physicality-based meetups in my region have moved entirely online and show no indication of changing despite miniscule chances of disease. Look, I didn't join a yoga meet-up group to spend half my time trying to focus on my 13" laptop screen while balancing on one foot. I didn't join an escape room group so that I can play a shitty $3.99 Android game together while staring at everybody else's faces on a 13" laptop screen. I didn't join an animal husbandry experience group for us to sit inside and talk about what we did or will do.

Remote is not the future if you move beyond the bits. Disease is not a factor unless you're too feeble to be doing some of these things to begin with. This exaggerated fear shit needs to stop.

Hmm. I wonder what could have happened recently? A mystery that will forever go unsolved.

I have been organizing meetups since last August. Initially we are purely online- mode through Zoom.

Starting May this year, we tried out the Hybrid mode - in-person meetup for people who miss the deep engagement (and perhaps free pizza ;-)) and are comfortable to show up, while broadcasting the sharing and discussion live - and the past three events turned out pretty well.

Location: SF Bay Area. Meetup group: https://www.meetup.com/bay-area-cloud-native-database-meetup...

Discord and Reddit! It's great not to have to interact with people on person or carry on a conversation beyond 1-2 sentences if you don't want to. Meetups with prerecorded talks are also great, because I can just watch them later, instead of a specific time, in some arbitrary specific place.

Good question - I definitely noticed not a ton of activity on that specific site

Knowing generally where you're located may help in getting suggestions.

I keep paying for its subscription but not able to host one. unless hosted at a brewery it is difficult to get people to show up! Beer is the new Pizza.

I have noticed the same thing in portland, or. Finally found one or two, and we'll see how it goes. But nothing like what it used to be.

Pretty difficult with covid still rampant, yet onlines still come handy!

In-person events aren't really happening where I live (Seattle).