MHV on "Meetup"?

Committee
1

As discussed on Tuesday evening, I have investigated putting MHV events onto the Meetup site (http://www.meetup.com/).

I started to create a MHV page and got as far as the payments section. After abandoning it, I then magically got an email telling me I qualified for a discount “coupon” if I “act quickly” (I do love internet marketing).

COST

Naturally, there are “plans” associated with different cost structures and billing cycles.

Here’s what we’d be up for for a year on the middle level plan - “Unlimited Members and Organisers” (The lower level plant is limited to 50 members which I think is too few to be useful in our context):

Amount billed today: $58.47 (with coupon discount)
Renews every 6 months at: $89.94

ie. $148.41 for the first year

(They only take credit cards, but I am happy to do this and get reimbursed if we go ahead)

REACH

Meetup tells me that it has 827 people in the Canberra region who match our target group (based on the keywords Robotics,Electronics,New Technology,Microcontrollers,DIY (Do It Yourself) Hacking,Arduino,Canberra,Makers,Makerspaces,3D Printing,DIY Technology …
which were the only ones I could find that were relevant.

SO…

What should we do? Meetup does offer a new avenue for getting the word out, even though it is “event” based. People who join our Meetup group would get invitations (and reminders) about our Maker Meetups and Community Meetings, if that is how we choose to use the page (we could also add workshops, etc).

On the other hand, weekly invitations and reminders might be overkill (spam) for people with a casual interest - in which case we could just limit our use of the page for notifying the (now) monthly “Maker Meetups”. But does that justify the $148 a year cost?

Although the “discount coupon” expires today (I think), I don’t think that fact should drive an immediate decision.

Perhaps we should discuss this again at the next Community Meeting. People who haven’t used Meetup would then have a chance to have a look at it and make up their minds about its value.

2

Is there any obligation? Or can we cancel the account if we no longer wish to use it (ie. we find out it doesn’t work for us?)

I think $148.41 for a year to try is a reasonable investment for advertising and getting the word out. If after the year we find it isn’t working, then we simple don’t renew it.

3

Yes, it is my understanding that payment is six-monthly in advance - a simple matter for the card-holder to stop payment before the next one is due. There is also a (more expensive) monthly payment plan. I think a year is a reasonable trial period.

4

$148/year is a small price to pay to expanding our reach.

+1 from me

5

I think it’s worth giving it a shot. Especially if someone is willing to take on the role of administering it.

6

Thanks people. I have created a MakeHackVoid Meetup account and added tomorrow’s Meetup to the calendar.

http://www.meetup.com/MakeHackVoid/

We can evaluate its usefulness before the second payment is due.

7

Thanks Paul.

Happy for MHV to be paying for this as it’s not very much. If we get one regularly paying member out of this it’s more than paid for itself.

8

it helped me get my butt through the door :slight_smile:

2 Likes
9

Hi All. Long time no see. I have received a notice from Meetup that the account for another year is due on 1 December. There are now 148 members of the Meetup group - http://www.meetup.com/MakeHackVoid/ The Credit Card I used to start the account has expired so it will not automatically renew.

Paul Harvey and Peter Baker are both admins so can change the billing info if you want to keep it going.

Regards

Paul Garrett

1 Like
10

Thanks for the heads-up Paul!

11

Hrmmm $14.95 USD per month… Until now I wasn’t even aware it cost any money at all!

I suppose if we even get one member to contribute $30/month out of it, it may have paid for itself.

Need to think about this.

12

I’ll pay you Monday for a burger today? I can probably find the money to pay for this for one year.

Is there a way to get events posted to Meetup based on Google Calendar, or vice-versa? At present to notify people of opening the space on a Wednesday night I post separately on Google Calendar and Facebook Events. Please don’t make me also create an event on Meetup >.<

OTOH that gives me an itch to scratch in terms of solving the problem myself.

13

Committee can pay (it seems we paid last time), and yes we need better integration. I’ve been manually cross-posting events everywhere (I’ve been adding yours too :slight_smile: and at some point we need to automate.

I do think it’s probably worthwhile for committee to go for paying for another year of meetup.com.