Discussion: Do we centralize our Meetups into one account?

[bencodezen]

CodePen has a model where they have organizers submit events to them and they create the event using Nvite. We could certainly follow the same model with Meetup.com if we wanted in order to better facilitate costs for organizers since there is a yearly fee for Meetup.com.

The potential benefits include:

• A centralized location of all official Vue.js meetups
• Easier to manage

Potential drawbacks include:

• Could get cluttered as the organization grows
• May require the Meetup account to be split into different continents to accommodate the number of meetups which would increase cost

Part of the reason I'm asking this is because one of my goals with this page is to actually provide an easy way for users to query for meetups without ever leaving the Vue.js docs page. However, there is the obvious logistical obstacle of how that would be managed. However, I'll open up a new issue for that discussion.

[atrunelle]

Have you given more thoughts about this? How easy will it be to centralise all Vue meetups/events?

I was looking at #5, and I think this need to be sorted before going ahead with fetching data from meetup as it will make it easier.

Some meetups we display seems to be on Facebook, what will happen to them?

[gustojs]

Being subscribed to countless meetups, I get spam from all of them, but it's by choice - i get to set which meetups can send me notifications.

With centralized meetups, I can only subscribe to all notifications or no notifications at all.

As for Facebook - even in European Union there are countries where people don't use Meetups at all. We've had a discussion about it lately with Romanian and Bulgarian developers and organizers.

People there don't know that such a platform exists, what it's for and what are its disadvantages. The attendees simply will stay away from it and look for their meetings on Facebook. That's why the event organizers keep using Facebook, to cater to their target base.

[gustojs]

@atrunelle sorry for doubleposting. We'd like to invite you to an internal chatroom with meetup organizers from around the world and other community leaders where we discuss similar things from time to time. Are you by any chance on chat.vuejs.org so that we can give you an access to it?

[atrunelle]

@gustojs I just joined chat.vuejs.org, I think I am the only Aurore so you should be able to find me to give me access :) Thanks

[bencodezen]

@atrunelle @gustojs I'm currently in talks with @znck who would like to combine his efforts from Vue.Community so we can allow for people who can't afford Meetup.com to use a lightweight CMS to provide their data, but still allow the flexibility of those who prefer platforms like Meetup.com or even Facebook Groups.

At a high level, I think the strategy will be a combination of APIs as well as some custom page crawlers for non-standard postings.

[znck]

A single point of discovery would be great but it shouldn't force combining all meetups under one account.

As a user, I want a page where I can find Vue events in any random city I happen to visit.