[PSF-Community] Looking for alternatives to meetup.com

[Steve Holden]

Hi Ludovic,

Apparently (http://www.meetup.com/about/) there are 9,000 meetups a day.
Supposing each group meets once a week (and many meet less often, so this
is clearly an underestimate) that would mean there are 63,000 meetup
groups. So while I like your thinking, I suspect that we could not claim
that Python groups are sufficiently popular to have much "clout"
(credibility of threat in a negotiating position) with Meetup.com.

Free events that I have organized through Eventbrite have usually been
largely trouble-free, but usually they have been limited to low numbers
(<50). One thing I like is the ability to have people pay a significant
amount (say $100) which is refunded on attendance. This is a useful way to
avoid too many no-shows (and at least make sure that you get some funding
from the wasted places).

I've organized conferences of up to 500 people with Eventbrite, but many of
them had sufficient revenues to justify the cost of handling the
administration of drop-out refunds, place substitutions and the like. Maybe
we should talk to Eventbrite about some deal on reduced commissions, and
particularly on the provision of a more "lightweight" user interface on the
admin side. In my experience they are happy to listen to suggestions, at
least, though clearly they are guided largely by commercial priorities.

They might also be able to offer better ways of organizing meetings such as
meetups. They acquired Lanyrd a while ago, and Lanyrd is a good Python
company too, but I don't know whether that would win any credibility with
the management.

regards
 Steve

On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 9:59 PM, Ludovic Gasc <gmludo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Marc,
>
> I'm agree with your approach to try to optimise PSF ressources.
>
> However, at least in Belgium, I must recognise that we have now more
> people since we've migrated on meetup.com.
>
> At least to me, I prefer to increase the potential audience of a meetup
> than reduce cost.
>
> Nevertheless, keep meetup.com and reduce costs shouldn't be incompatible:
> With the number of Python groups on their platform, we should have a big
> argument to negotiate a better group price.
>
> It isn't a good signal for them if Python groups leave their platform: the
> network effect should play in our favour to negotiate.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Ludovic Gasc (GMLudo)
> http://www.gmludo.eu/
> On 18 Nov 2015 22:39, "M.-A. Lemburg" <mal at python.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello PSF Community,
>>
>> as many of you know, meeptup.com is pretty much the standard when
>> it comes to organizing user group meetings - at least in the US,
>> the UK and probably also some other countries.
>>
>> Now, meetup.com is also a rather expensive service to use and
>> with the PSF funding the fees, I'd like to investigate, whether
>> encouraging use of alternative services wouldn't result in a better
>> use of the PSFs grant funds.
>>
>> These are some services I've found:
>>
>>  * http://www.eventbrite.com/ (free for free events)
>>  * https://www.farornear.com/ (free)
>>  * http://attending.io/ (free)
>>  * https://www.xing.com/de/events (free for free events,
>>    much like eventbrite, used often in Germany)
>>
>> For BarCamps:
>>
>>  * https://www.barcamptools.eu/ (again, mostly in Germany)
>>
>> Some questions:
>>
>>  * Do you know other such services ?
>>  * What's your experience with these ?
>>  * If you're running a group on meetup.com, would you be willing
>>    to move to a different platform ?
>>
>> I think it would be good to collect this information on a python.org
>> wiki page to better guide new user groups to meetup.com alternatives.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> --
>> Marc-Andre Lemburg
>> Director
>> Python Software Foundation
>> http://www.python.org/psf/
>> http://www.malemburg.com/
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>
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