The Official Meetup HQ Blog

NYC Dads Organizer on the Today Show!

by Tegan

Congratulations to Lance, Organizer of the New York City Dads Meetup Group!

Yesterday, he was featured in a Today Show segment on how more Dads are staying home to care for their children.

You can watch the clip here (Lance comes in a little after the two minute mark ).

Being at home to take care of the kiddos can be isolating, but it doesn't have to be.

That's why Lance started his Meetup group.

"We get to eat lunch, talk about sports, and talk about how our kids are developing."

The end of the segment includes and interview with a psychologist, who offers up some advice for dads new to the stay-at-home scene.

Her advice? Seek out and connect with other dads. 

Just like, um, Lance and the Meetup dads are doing now...

Way to be ahead of the curve, Lance!

We're proud.  

Tegan is on the Community Support team at Meetup.

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Alachua County Mamas (and the papas) in The Gainesville Sun

by Andrea

Congratulations to Daphne Kiernan and the Alachua County Mamas Meetup. Their Meetup Group caught the attention of The Gainesville Sun! 

Great article!  This five star Meetup sure knows how to keep their members active:

"The group averages three to five events a week, with each one attended by about 10 of the 72 members. That's a big job for Kiernan, who plans the group's crafts, playdates and outings and maintains the Web site. But it's a task she's happy to take on to offer a lifeline to local moms."

Her group welcomes both Moms and Dads, while also catering to working parents:

"For mom Karla Barnett, who came to the park with her 16-month-old son, Cole, the encouragement of other moms — both in person and on the Meetup site's message board — has helped her navigate life as a new parent and stay-at-home mom."

Nice!

Andrea is the Lead Support Specialist on Meetup's Community Support team.

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Weekly Release, January 28, 2009

by Maya

Hi everyone,

The team at HQ is busy at work on some exciting *new* features for you. Until those things are ready for prime time, we've been working hard on making some feature enhancements and fixing bugs.

Launching on Wednesday, January 28 is the following:

Feature enhancements:
* Customizing the appearance of a Meetup Group with themes is a great way to establish a group's personality, and now organizers will see the "customize your group" feature right when they Start a Meetup Group. So now new organizers (or those on their second or third groups :) will be able to immediately set the tone and personality of their group (s).
* If you charge your members dues or donations (or whatever you want to call them - cuz you can call them whatever you want, you know :), you can now add payment information right on the member list or right from that member's profile page.
* You can now set your default currency in Group Settings (Group Settings > Optional Features). Your currency preference will then get passed on when/if you set up Dues and when/if you set up paid Meetup events. What's so great about that, you ask? Well, it saves you a step, and it lays the foundation for some fun new stuff you'll hear about soon.
* And for our fellow developers, we’ve enhanced the Meetup API to now include a 'myrsvp' field as part of Events data to indicate members’ RSVP responses for events.


Bug fixes (and behind-the-scenes stuff, too):

* Meetup Badges for other web sites: Fixed the countdown date and accented characters.
* Fixed incorrect “spots left” number appearing on the Change RSVP page
* Fixed special characters sometimes throwing off keyword searching
* Fixed exporting to Calendar sometimes displaying the wrong time if the event is in a different time zone than your group.
* Fixed link on Organizer Checklist tip
* Fixed “Email members” email sometimes going to ex-group members if you target the email to people who attended a certain Meetup.
* Fixed RSVP questions sometimes being attributed to the wrong event Organizer
* Polls page: fixed the error if you don’t select anything.
* Fixed long message board posts sometimes causing errors
* Fixed IE7 layout issue relating to events using Amazon Payments

Thanks,
Maya

Got feedback? Share away...

Maya leads the Product Management team at Meetup.

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Extra! Extra! The Chicken Whisperer makes the Atlanta local news

by Andrea

We're big fans! We profiled The Chicken Whisperer on the blog last November as a Can't Miss Meetup. The Atlanta-Journal published a super egg-exciting article about his facinating Meetup today. 

Possibly prompting the Chicken Revolution to go mainstream?

“All it’s going to take is Paris Hilton showing up on ‘Extra’ with a Silkie, and the bubble is going to fly away.”

- Andy Schneider, the Chicken Whisperer.

Andrea is the Lead Support Specialist on Meetup's Community Support team.

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Organizer of the Week: Tania Nieves and the Boston Snow Dogs

by Andrea

Boston: Home of the Tea Party and Quincy Market, has an even more unique niche as stomping grounds for the Boston Snow Dogs Meetup. 

Thanks go out to Angela for Tania's fun and interactive inteview in the Organizer Center here!

Tania's Meetup Group encourages pack bonding for the dogs and team building amongst the membership.  A recent member's testimonial says it all: 

"Boston Snow Dogs is a great idea and a wonderful time for our furry friends and ourselves. We have a great pack leader, Tania who works timelessly on improving our meetup site and getting the pack together and involed. Paws up Tania!!! As a memeber, I am really thankful I am meeting others who share the same passion about the Siberian Husky breed as well as the other northern breeds. The more the merrier!!" 

Check out their Boston.com article right here.  Paw's up from your friends at Meetup HQ too!

Andrea is the Lead Support Specialist on Meetup's Community Support team.

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New sponsor from Meetup HQ: Bruce Springsteen!

by Cindy

We are so excited that Bruce Springsteen’s new album “Working on a dream” is sponsoring 50 groups across the country for the next 2 months. They are even giving each group free CDs, including the brand new album!

 

Cindy is an Account Executive for Meetup Sponsors.

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I love the stories of how Meetups save people money -- the power of people, organized!

by Scott

There's tons of them out there -- here's one I just noticed, The Frugal Golfer, a Fort Lauderdale Meetup Group:

Organzer  Bob Schecter writes on this Meetup Group's description:

LOVE TO PLAY! HATE TO PAY!

The game is just too damn expensive. Especially in hard economic times.
Through this group, we hope to leverage the power of numbers to gain discounts at courses...

 See previous posts:

"For a recession-friendly alternative"

"Your Meetups are more important than ever"

Scott is Chief Organizer and Co-Founder of Meetup.

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The Layoffs Cafe: "Lose your Job, Gain a Life"

by Andrea

Congratulations to Nilo, Organizer of The Layoffs Cafe, whose Meetup Group hit the ground running and made the news! 

The Stats:  Start date: January 14, 2009  & Members: 57 (within 9 days!)

The Buzz: From New America Media:   "Saraff, who is in her 30s, last week formed a Silicon Valley online networking group on meetup.com – Layoffs Café (http://www.meetup.com/Layoffs-Cafe/) -- where the recently unemployed can not only find people to talk to about job hunting, but also socialize, commiserate and even distract themselves by going out."

Her group description says it all:  "During this 'gloomy' time, we are not going to give up 'shining'. This group is about unlimited possibilities of growth and the exciting world of face-to-face networking with people from all walks of life. This is NOT a 'pity-party' group!"

Andrea is the Lead Support Specialist on Meetup's Community Support team.

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Meetup HQ goes to Washington!

by Kate

Hello, my fellow Americans! My name's Kate Fink and I just got back from a fantastic trip to D.C. with Meetup HQ and friends.

You can imagine how excited we were at the idea of millions gathering in Washington for the Inauguration! Many of them proud Meetup Organizers like Kisha, Matt, and Brian.We were there to distribute 500,000 "Hello, my fellow Americans, my name is..." stickers, to help turn this amazing crowd into a community. On the back of each sticker were instructions for how to become a Community Organizer.

You may have already read about the partnership between Meetup and the Huffington Post. They graciously invited us to attend their Inaugural Ball the night before too. It was charged with energy and packed with people, including my childhood crushes Val Kilmer and John Cusack!

The Inauguration was overwhelming.  The view from where I stood overlooking the incredible crowd on the Mall brought me to tears. I'll fondly recall people wearing the Meetup stickers and feeling that they weren't strangers but compatriots! I was so proud to have participated.  I'm confident that I'll continue to revel in the positive momentum and excitement that led up to that day.

Kate is on Meetup's Community Support team.

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Inauguration Countdown: "Hello, My Fellow American, my name is..."

by Andrea

Here's Kate from Meetup HQ, sporting a "Hello, My Fellow American, my name is..." sticker.  She's one in a million (for sure) and one of a million folks heading to the Inauguration in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the induction of our new President.

Keep an eye out for her!  She'll be handing out the same stickers with Meetup HQ friends, family, and the Huffington Post.

You can read more about this historical event here:  "In an unprecedented blitz against social awkwardness, Meetup.com and The Huffington Post have decided to hand out half a million name tags to the crowd at Inauguration."

Stay tuned...We hope to see you there!

Andrea is the Lead Support Specialist on Meetup's Community Support team.

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