State of the Meetup Tech Union
After a record 1 million Meetup Group joins in January, we decided to take a closer look at where all this awesome sauce is coming from.
One community on Meetup that we’ve been keeping our eye on is technology. While it’s still not the largest topic on Meetup, it’s definitely booming — and no surprise, since the tech and internet industries are live wires right now. Where there’s industry, there’s a community of people making it happen.
Here’s a roundup of what’s going in the global tech community on Meetup.
First off, there are over 1.1 million memberships and over 600,000 people in tech Meetups, suggesting that the tech community is an interconnected one. People often join more than one tech Meetup.
All this activity is popping up in very interesting places, and some cities are growing incredibly fast. Hong Kong holds the #1 spot for the city with the biggest year-over-year growth between 2010 and 2011, at over 400%!
Of course, we know that deep down, most people really just want to know who’s at the top overall.
That’s right, according to Meetup RSVP data, the Bay area beat out the NYC area in 2011.
Here’s deeper info on Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley:
Meetup is currently building ways to help members explore and capitalize on the interconnectedness of the Meetup ecosystem, so we’ll be sure to revisit the growth of the tech community in 2013.
Make sure your city stays (or gets!) on the list by RSVP’ing to your local tech Meetup, or starting one of your own.
[Special thanks to Sarah Adams and Richard Boenigk for design, Randy Au for data.]
Kathryn is on Meetup’s Community Team. Reach out to her on Twitter @kathrynfink
