[Chicago-talk] Chicago-pm Meetup group is expiring and will be removed in 48 hours

James E Keenan jkeenan at pobox.com
Thu Aug 12 10:03:56 PDT 2021


On 8/12/21 12:46 PM, Mike Fragassi wrote:
> Meetup's utility seems to be:
> 
> - it provides a discussion system, although we already have on here, on 
> the mailing list.
> 
> - it provides a group home page. Although we also have one at 
> https://chicago.pm.org/ <https://chicago.pm.org/>, there are a few 
> disadvantages to that. I think Doug owns it and bears the brunt of 
> maintaining it, for one, along with the duties of updating it with 
> events. There are events on the Meetup page that aren't mirrored on the 
> .pm.org <http://pm.org> page. (For the record, Joel Berger and myself 
> are both listed as "Organziers" for the Meetup page.) Also if it 
> matters, I don't see a way to comment on the pm.org <http://pm.org> page.
> 
> - because it's a platform in use by many other user groups, in and out 
> of Chicago, announcements of meetings (even if strictly virtual) can 
> have much greater visibility than they do if we only post about them to 
> the mailing list. I've attended a few virtual events Jason Crome has put 
> on for Charlotte.pm, for instance. Although having that outreach doesn't 
> do much good if we don't even have any meetings to speak of.
> 

Some out-of-town perspective.  My impression is that in New York City 
very, very few tech user groups are having meetings right now -- virtual 
or otherwise.  We in ny.pm did have a couple of tech Zoom meetings last 
year, but none so far this calendar year.  The fact that the meeting was 
virtual meant that we could have an out-of-town speaker and had 
attendees from two continents -- but that was independent of meetup.com. 
  (Fortunately, I'm not the one writing the check for that group.)

The NYC Linux group has not met, virtually or otherwise, since the start 
of the pandemic.  The NYC BSD User Group has held several tech meetings 
via Zoom this year -- but we don't use meetup.com for that.

My recommendation is that if you can renew your meetup.com membership at 
a reasonable rate (perhaps by sharing with another *.pm), then you 
should do so; put together a few Zoom meetings just so people know 
you're alive; and hope that sometime in the future IRL meetings can resume.

Thank you very much.
Jim Keenan


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