Recently in Tales from The Road Category

"Meetup is a way of life in Raleigh!" Jean, Organizer of Coffee and Contacts Brier Creek: Power Networking for Women said, and she was right. Around 50 organizers and assistant organizers showed up at Tir Na Nog for our first stop on the North Carolina leg of the Meetup Tour last month. They exchanged lots of ideas for how to make their Meetups better and we got a lot of useful feedback and ideas on how we can help them too.

Dean Logan, Organizer of the Raleigh-Durham Singles Meetup, rose to take on the Great Raleigh Meetups Challenge. He will use $500 from Meetup HQ as seed money for a local campaign to help all Raleigh area Meetups grow. From what we've seen he is cooking up something pretty cool (stay tuned).


Afterwards, Dean demonstrated his social organizing skills and showed us around downtown Raleigh and hung out with us the entire night! We had such a great time.  Thanks Dean!


The next day, after an amazing breakfast at Elmo's and some sight-seeing, we headed on over to our next event at the Blue Coffee Café in downtown Durham.  We had a great discussion with a small group of Organizers. We met again with Chris, the organizer of the Raleigh-Durham Organizer Meetup, and other organizers who shared ideas on how to grow their groups, how to get feedback from members and what to do when their groups start to get too big (they suggested splitting into 2 groups).


Allison, Organizer of the Durham Wine Meetup Group and the The Durham Epicurean Cooking Meetup Group decided to take the $500 Meetup Challenge on behalf of the Meetups in Durham.


Afterwards, we walked around in our red Meetup shirts and were surprised at how often we were approached by folks asking us which Meetup group we were a part of.  Seems like everyone there is in a Meetup or knows someone who is. We walked around the American Tobacco District, took in a Durham Bulls game (that was great but they lost) and people found us in our red shirts and shared how much they loved Meetup.

Ok, did I mention how good the food is in North Carolina?  And how beautiful the Duke University campus is?  Not only did my non-vegetarian compadres eat some fabulous BBQ, I didn't get left out of the action being the only vegetarian in my group.  The Refectory Cafe at Duke's divinity school has some fantastic vegetarian and vegan food!

At the end of it all, we were sorry to leave North Carolina and we really liked meeting everyone, walking around and enjoying both Raleigh and Durham! Andres and I want to open up an office down there (especially when the next NYC winter hits).

Last week Mary, Gary, Matt and I (Jesse) flew down to Texas to connect with Meetup organizers there. Our first stop was a Central Market in Austin, where we had some tasty snacks and talked with about 22 great people. It was a little hard to hear, but Meetup organizers aren't afraid to speak up. We got feedback from our recent features launch, suggestions for new features for the web site, listened to the joys and challenges of running Meetup Groups, and stayed late to answer lots of questions. A new Organizer Meetup started afterwards, to keep the good connections going. It was awesome meeting such a dedicated group of folks working hard to Keep Austin Weird. (Don't worry, that's a compliment.)

We didn't get a lot of time to hang out and explore Austin, but we did grab some great Mexican food (a theme on the trip). And we discovered Mary's secret talent for recognizing repurposed fast food restaurant buildings. Also, we learned that Austin has a lot of police officers, some of whom were kind enough to remind us that even rental cars should use headlights while driving at night.

The next day we headed over to San Antonio, and I for one was blown away by how beautiful the city is. San Antonio (or as Mary calls it, "Austin") has a relaxing "River Walk" that winds through the entire town. We lucked out with some time in our schedule to walk around and enjoy ourselves. I had the best burger I've had in years, and Mary and Matt shared some awesome BBQ ribs (I guess our group happened to have some of the few non-vegetarian Meetup staff.)

We held our San Antonio organizer event in a really cool restaurant, the Blue Star Brewery. We met with a smaller group of people, but had almost 100% attendance. Everyone was eager to share their stories and ideas and help one another with Meetuppy advice, and we all talked for a long time. Afterwards, Chris, the organizer of San Antonio's largest Meetup (Hiking), started up a new Organizer Meetup so people could continue getting together to help each other out. (And Jennifer gave us a great blog shoutout here. Thanks!)

We wrapped up our trip by stumbling onto an awesome Spanish-speaking festival of some kind, with amazing music and food. And, lest I forget, the next day we got to see the Alamo! We had a blast on the trip, and I want to thank all the Meetup organizers and members who met up with us. For anyone reading this who's never been to Texas, y'all should visit straightaway.

Hey All. 

There's a Depeche Mode song that I couldn't get out of my head last night.  Its called 'I Just Can't Get Enough.'  It must have been because we had just left our second city, Baltimore, and when it came to meeting with great folks, well, I just couldn't get enough. 

So hear begins a tale of two cities...

Keith, Aaron, Justin and I headed on 95 South for a sunny four hour trek to DC.  Its a fine place and we couldn't agree more, taxation without representation just isn't cool.  Our first stop was Chinatown, where we ate tastey Burmese food and chatted with some great DC organizers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I look at this photo and I see great minds helping us evolve Meetup into the greatest group organizing tool ever, not to mention, creating and enjoying community. 

Speaking of creating community, we have to give a shout to Diane and Carla for hosting us at their usual Meetup spot, and for coordinating the DC organizers' community.  Here they are along with my travel mates and Carla's bright daughter, Ciana, who is an up and coming DC organizer herself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we made a quick hop on over to Baltimore.  We took in some sunny harbor views and ate some extra crabby crab cakes to fuel up for the next big event.  We arrived early at our destination, and what luck that was.  It turned out that the evening's host was none other than Arnold Dickens, organizer of Balitmore's famous and talented Bluegrass Music Meetup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got in about 45 minutes of sweet harmonies and kickin rythms before guests began to arrive.  Needless to say, we started in good spirits.

The meeting was another excellent one.  Though smaller in attendance, it was just as rich in information and ideas.  The best part was that it reminded my of how diverse Meetup is.  Even with just a small group represented, the diversity of people and purpose was inspiring.  And though I saw diversity in terms of the types of meetups represented, the organizers had a lot in common regarding their experiences and goals.  I was happy that this trip was able to bring them together and I think we'd all agree that the exchange of information and ideas made the trek through a pretty bold thunderstorm worth it.

So that was a wrap of one leg of this tour, but before I go, I want to again say thank you to all of the organizers who participated.  Meetup thanks you for making what Meetup what it is today, for all the people you've touched and the lives you've changed.  You all are pioneers and hats off to you. 

Brian, Aaron, Keith and Justin

Greetings y'all, you'se guys, ladies, gents, friends, members!    This is Brian from Meetup HQ.  I am writing to announce the official kickoff of the Meetup City Tour 2008. We like our desks and the red walls of our office are not so bad, but quite frankly, we are getting cabin fever (office fever more like it).  It's time to hit the road and we couldn't be happier.

Since Meetup represents over 37,000 cities in over 100 countries, we can't visit everyone, so this blog will be our community forum over the course of the Meetup City Tour 2008. Over the next two weeks, we'll post about our visits to each city.  We have some wacky people on our team, and very clever organizers, so expect both entertaining stories and great tips from fellow organizers.

We want to get to know you and we want you to get to know us and your fellow members and organizers.  This is your community, so feel free to participate and comment on the posts.
 
For those of you who Twitter, follow MeetupHQ!   We'll be sending tweets from on the road during the tours.  (Don't know what Twitter is?  Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com and an active Twitterer himself, wrote an amazing beginner's quick start guide and tutorial to using Twitter if you're interested in what it's all about.)

So thats about it for now.  I have to go home and pack, otherwise I could write all night!

We hope to hear from you soon.

Brian and the Meetup HQ.

Nothing beats meeting people face-to-face. So, in a week, small teams from Meetup HQ will visit 13 cities to meet Meetup Organizers. Come share and hear Meetup stories and ideas!

If you are going to be in one of those towns, we'd love for you to join us.

We'll be in:

San Francisco, CA	Sunday, June 15th (afternoon)
Sacramento, CA	Monday, June 16th (evening)
Washington, DC	Sunday, June 15th (afternoon)
Baltimore, MD	Monday, June 16th (evening)
Orlando, FL	Tuesday, June 17th (evening)
Tampa, FL	Wednesday, June 18th (evening)
Austin, TX	Tuesday, June 17th (evening)
San Antonio, TX	Wednesday, June 18th (evening)
Raleigh, NC	Wednesday, June 18th (evening)
Durham, NC	Thursday, June 19th (evening)
Boston, MA	Friday, June 20th (evening)
Providence, RI	Saturday, June 21st (afternoon)
Philadelphia, PA	Tuesday, June 24th (evening)
New York, NY	Wednesday, June 25th (evening)

Assistant/Co-Organizers and potential Organizers are welcome too.

If you can join us, email RSVP to meetuptour@meetup.com by 10PM on Monday 6/9/08, EST. Please include your name, city of the tour, and names of guests. (Also, if you know a great place for the actual Meetup in these cities, please suggest it!)

This will be a blast! We'll blog about it as we go. So check back here for updates & photos.

PS. We wish we could make it to more cities. If you self-organize a Meetup of 25 Organizers of different Meetup Groups in your town at http://organizer.meetup.com, we'll try to make it! (Can't promise, but we'll try!)