Face-to-face meetings - finding them, hosting them
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How do you find local meetings with content that interests you? If you want to host such meetings, how do you find and recruit attendees who will want to be involved?
Meetup.com is a website that manages face-to-face meetings.
On the surface it seems like a location aware meeting calendar, a "what's happening in my town" website. But, it's more than that, it's a resource for arranging and managing face-to-face meetings -- from both sides of that transaction.
As a prospective attendee, you tell it where you are located and how far you are willing to travel. For example, I am in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and willing to travel 50 miles. Then, Meetup.com will list all upcoming meetings scheduled for that vicinity in the next week. All meetings that are using meetup.com that is.
When you find a group of interest, you can "register" for it, which is free. Doing so will add you to their membership roster and their E-mailing list. Once you are a group member, you will receive email notifications for their upcoming meetings and other topics of interest, you can get more detail about meetings, you can RSVP for meetings, and you can contact others in that group. You can also log in and see upcoming events for just those groups for which you have registered.
As a prospective meeting host, you can register then manage your group on meetup.com. Doing so only costs about $10 per month yet gives you a forum for announcing and publicizing your meetings, for attracting members, for registering attendees, for sending Emails to your entire group, for soliticting RSVPs from your entire group, etc.
If you are a "road warrior", you could use meetup.com to find meetings in whatever locale's you will be visiting, or to announce meetings you are hosting in whatever locale's you will be visiting.
"Newfangled" Internet/software technology meets "old fashioned" face-to-face meeting. What a wonderful marriage!
Using the comments link, please share your experiences with meetup.com .
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