I found this tale of a blogger meetup, on the other side of the world.
The anecdote regarding attendance sounds familiar:
Last month I was fortunate enough to host the inaugural Sydney weblogger meetup, where I got to meet Sisi, Petra, Ian and John. I missed out on meeting Sara and Emma, who were at the same pub but didn’t find the rest of us. Therein lies the problem of meetups:
- it’s difficult locating others in the same meetup group in lieu of a visual cue (my fault entirely as the organiser);
- venue/meetup time may be inconvenient
- (I don’t know about you but) face-to-face is hard work
In a meetup group still in its infancy (though 30-strong), we had 20 RSVPs but only seven actual attendees that we know of.
Although meeting face to face is a challenge for any group who has met through the Internet, finding the will to get to an event in another city is especially tough. I was impressed by last year’s turnout of ~22 people at the Regina BBQ, and hope we’ll build on that number some this year. With efforts to expand the Saskbloggers community using Facebook, I think we’ll easily exceed the 22 attendees this year.
The Sydney blogger meetups have turned into a regular event — you can see the details here:
http://blog.meetup.com/371/
Some of the things that helped get the group going are:
1. We made Babe the stuffed pig our mascot. She makes it easy for everyone to find one another, because people only take a stuffed pig to the pub if their crazy or meeting bloggers. (Whereas asking everyone to wear red doesn’t work.)
2. We moved the meetups from the scruffy backpacker pub to one of the nicer post-work-drinks pubs in the city. The new venue has a great vibe, which certainly helps.
3. We hold meetups to coincide with conferences where possible, so some interesting interstate and overseas bloggers can come along too. It helps keep the crowd varied.
4. When I find a cool new blog by someone in Sydney, I personally email them and invite them to the meetup. The ones who don’t think I’m a crazy stalker come along and have a good time 😉
5. I make a big effort to get a variety of people to come. At last night’s meetup, we had tech journos, science bloggers, fashion bloggers, Star Trek fanatics, blogging newbies, partners of bloggers… it made for some really interesting discussions.
6. Our group’s now big enough that we formally book the event in with the venue, so their staff put up signs and know where to send anyone who’s lost.
The main thing is to get people to turn up — once they’re there, all you need to do is make a few introductions, and let things go from there.
Thank you for leaving details TBQ.
Hey Saskboy,
I am pretty happy to find this blog. Thanks for pointing out to me.
I have been on the internet since 1999. I have mostly hung out at places with Americans on the Net.. It’s nice to see home grown blogs!!
This is a good find!
Monty Loree