Tag Archives: meetup.com

Cate DeRosia 1:13 am on April 8, 2024
Tags: , meetup.com   

Share Your Feedback with Meetup.com

Our Meetup.com contact Marie-Lou, has asked us to pass on this note with information about the company’s acquisition by Bending Spoons and a feedback form that goes directly to their product team. 

If you want to share feedback about Meetup.com, please use the form instead of posting in the comments. Their new parent company is planning to invest in improving the product and would love to hear our needs. Please use the feedback form instead of posting in the comments.

Currently, the form will stay open indefinitely and the team is eager to hear our feedback so Meetup.com can better meet the needs of the WordPress community.

Hello WordPress community,

It’s lovely to connect with you all. I’m Marie-Lou from MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.’s Customer Success team, and I have the pleasure of working closely with the WordPress Community Team to help your groups and events thrive.

I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself, update you on some recent changes at Meetup, and share a new way to send us direct feedback about your Meetup experience.

Earlier this year, Meetup was acquired by Bending Spoons—an Italian-based tech company with an ambitious vision for Meetup’s future.

Bending Spoons acquired Meetup because they believe in our mission to foster human connections. Over the next few years, our new parent company intends to invest nearly $50 million into improving the product and growing membership. In particular, the team has plans to improve event discoverability and reduce the friction for organizers to create events and engage with their communities.

I believe these changes will make your Meetup experience even better, but we’d love to hear from the WordPress community directly! To do so, we’ve created this dedicated form to collect your feedback. Please use it to share how we can improve the Meetup platform.

I’m excited to continue working with this vibrant community during this new chapter!All the best,
Marie-Lou

Share Your Feedback

#feedback, #meetup-com

Isotta 3:00 pm on February 17, 2023
Tags: , meetup.com   

Meetup.com Accessibility Overlay February Update

In November 2022, WordPress meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organizers expressed their disappointment in Meetup.com’s accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) overlay, and brought this to the attention of the Community Team. All details can be found in this post.

Below the latest updates from the meetup.com team:

  • meetup.com team completed an assessment with Deque on Dec 31, 2022. 
  • After the holiday break, they kicked off planning of the scope of work for remediation. 
  • The Deque assessment identified a total of 732 issues. 
  • meetup.com team plans on addressing the issues as follows:
    • Phase 1: Design remediation issues (Design/Color Contrast – ~40% of all issues):
      • they plan on hiring an external consultant who will both guide the design/engineering teams on the best way to fix the issues and also train the Meetup staff & help update the processes to ensure future releases are compliant.  
    • Phase 2: Web remediation issues (Remaining issues – ~60%):
      • Website Components 
      • Component Library Components 
      • Remainder 

Thank you @angelasjin for the input to share these updates.

#accessibility, #meetup-com

Angela Jin 6:24 pm on June 22, 2021
Tags: , , meetup.com   

Announcement: Adding Global Sponsors to Meetup.com

There were a number of changes to the Global Sponsorship program for 2021, to reflect the current status of the WordPress events program. A new benefit to global sponsors this year was to feature sponsor logos on WordPress MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. chapter homepages and event pages. In recent months, the Global Sponsorship Working Group has been working with Meetup.com to implement some design changes so that global sponsors are featured alongside the people who make WordPress events possible: the organizers and attendees. 

I’m excited to share these changes with you! In the coming weeks, all meetup pages will have a new, rotating shelf of sponsors. Global sponsors will automatically be added to all Chapter meetups starting July 2021. Local organizers won’t be able to make edits to the global sponsors, but will still be able to acknowledge local sponsors. Local organizers will also be seeing some improvements to the user interface for managing local sponsors come August 2021, although all functionality will remain the same.

The maximum number of local sponsors that any meetup group can feature is 15, according to Meetup.com. The global sponsors do not count toward this limit. At the moment, this shouldn’t impact any chapter meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., but if you want to add more than 15 sponsors, please send an email to support@wordcamp.org.   

Please comment below if you have any questions about these changes. Major gratitude to organizers, attendees, and sponsors (both global and local!) – WordPress community events aren’t possible without your support and efforts!

#global-sponsors, #global-sponsorship, #meetup-com

Courtney P.K. 7:27 pm on February 20, 2018
Tags: meetup.com,   

Handling Dormant Meetup Groups

With 575 meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. groups on the chapter account (and always growing!) we like to check in every so often to confirm if the groups are active. However, there are some meetup groups in the program that are inactive or dormant, and we need to figure out how we should manage them going forward.

A few weeks ago, I exported a list of current chapter meetup groups to a spreadsheet and sorted them by the date of their last event. A quick guide to this spreadsheet:

  • Groups highlighted in Red haven’t had an event in over a year.
  • Highlighted in Orange haven’t had an event in 6–12 months.
  • Highlighted in Yellow haven’t had an event in the past 3–6 months.
  • You’ll notice a column titled “Upcoming Events”, which we’ll need to investigate for each group, as it can mean they have an event listed, but don’t have a location and/or date yet.

In some inactive groups, organizers are still interested, but they are struggling with attendance and/or finding event topics. We should check if this is the case, and if we can help advise/support them in any way.

I propose the following plan:

  • Email existing organizers of dormant groups that we have contact info for (according to the Meetup Status doc).
  • Also reach out to the organizing team via message on Meetup.com (this will help ensure that the message reaches organizers that we don’t have email addresses for, and/or if their contact information has changed).
  • If we don’t hear back from any organizers for a particular group by 5 March 2018, we will then reach out to all the members of the group via Meetup.com message to ask if anyone is interested in organizing.
  • If no members of the group volunteer to organize the group by a 12 March 2018, we will remove the group from the chapter account.

Below is the email that I’ve drafted, which is based on an old annual survey email that we sent to dormant groups. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for changes and/or additions.

Continue reading →

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Chase Livingston 5:57 pm on August 29, 2014
Tags: meetup.com,   

This Week in Meetups

Rolled in two meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. to the chapter program this week:

Scheduled a couple of chats for next week to roll in more groups.

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Chase Livingston 3:38 pm on August 22, 2014
Tags: meetup.com,   

This Week in Meetups

I’m hoping to begin posting what happened with meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. each week as a recap so everyone can stay up to date and get involved if they’re interested. So here it goes:

  • Rolled in Cumbria meetup to the chapter program
  • Created Lehigh Valley meetup group.
  • Processed all remaining applications that were in the meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. queue
  • Scheduling chats for creating and/or rolling in other meetups to come

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Jen 4:04 pm on August 20, 2014
Tags: meetup.com,   

New Process for Existing Meetups

As you know, the process for existing meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. to join the chapter account has been a pain since day 1. They apply, we say yes, they go on a spreadsheet, we wait for meetup.com to contact them, meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. org has to reply to email and fill out form, half the time the meetup email goes to spam, we ask meetup to resend, repeat, repeat, and eventually meetup.com adds the group to our account. ARGH! (says any meetup organizer who had to go through that)

Shiny new process:

  • Existing meetup org applies (same as before)
  • We review, chat with them, approve (same as before)
  • We have the WordPress account join the meetup group
  • The current owner uses meetup.com tool to nominate WordPress to be the new primary organizer (pay the dues) following the meetup.com instructions in the section labeled Nominate a new organizer.
  • We receive email from meetup.com and accept the role.

Donezo!

Why did we have to follow the old process for so long? No one seems to know, and the person who started us doing it that way has moved on from the company. In any case, now it’s easier. @chaselivingston has been handling meetup applications, but we could use another volunteer or two to help.

If you’d like to volunteer to help:

  • You should have excellent written and verbal communication skills.
  • You should be capable of recognizing when someone is not respecting the WP trademark and/or license.
  • You should be someone who’s known to Jen or Andrea and considered trustworthy (via this team is fine, doesn’t need to be known in person), since the limitations of meetup.com require us to share a username/password with this volunteer.
  • You should be part of a meetup group that’s on the chapter account, unless you are in an area that doesn’t use meetup.com, in which case you should be part of a meetup group that can be approved as meeting the guidelines (since we’re now starting to approve non-meetup.com groups outside the US).

If you’d like to volunteer, leave a comment and/or mention it in tomorrow’s meeting.

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Jen 2:07 pm on April 24, 2014
Tags: meetup.com,   

Meetup.com Update — April 24, 2014

Good news on the meetup.com front: the personnel change that had us in flux has turned out to be a good thing. Now that Laura at Meetup.com is handling the chapter program, she has agreed to let us do existing group roll-ins monthly rather than quarterly. This is great news, because the once-every-3-months thing was a pain in butt logistically, and sometimes meant that dues came up for renewal before the next roll-in (though meetup.com has generally been good about prioritizing people in that situation). With this new schedule, we can keep forward momentum going a lot easier from the moment someone applies to join the program.

Emails were sent from meetup.com to everyone on the current quarterly roll-in list. So far in this round, these meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. groups have been added to the WordPress account:

These groups were sent the opt-in form at the same time by meetup.com on 4/21 but have not yet responded.

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Jen 6:48 pm on April 18, 2014
Tags: meetup.com,   

Meetup.com Status Update

The quarterly roll-in is a little behind. For some reason we didn’t get confirmation of our payment until April 8 (about a week later than expected), and the person who does the roll-ins of existing groups hasn’t been in touch (normally that happens immediately upon payment of the quarterly bill). I contacted that person and the person who runs the chapter program yesterday expressing my nervousness about the timing, especially since a couple of the groups joining the program had expiring dues and were marked in red on the spreadsheet. I’ll do everything I can to make sure no group has $$ trouble because of this delay.

There are 18 existing meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. waiting to be rolled in (some were from the last time who filled in the application so close to the end that they didn’t make it in that round). There are about half a dozen new meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. (no existing group) applications in process.

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Jen 6:44 pm on April 10, 2014
Tags: , meetup.com,   

New Team Member Chase Livingston from South Carolina…

New Team Member! Chase Livingston from South Carolina (@chaselivingston) will be starting to help out with meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. administration as well. Trained him on processes like I did with @andymci a couple of weeks back, and will likely have have him focus on reaching out to existing groups in between-roll in periods.

Note: We are smack in the middle of the quarterly roll-in period for existing meetup.com groups, so I’m working through all the outstanding requests to join the chapter program. To that end, I’m going to start a series of meetup organizer hangouts similar to the ones being done around WordCamps. Will start out with a split between existing groups who want to join the chapter account and people who want to start a new group from scratch, since the orientations are so different. Once we get those started, I’m hoping we can standardize a few other topics (esp as tied to the mentorship stuff @andymci is working on), and where applicable, have some that work for both WC and meetup organizers (how to find a venue, budgets and running money through foundation, etc).

We’ll use the WordPress google+ account for these, and I’ll post details on this blog later today with dates and times.

#hangouts, #meetup-com, #meetups-2