Join Meetup CEO David Siegel for an in-depth presentation on the current state of Meetup and the future of online events. This edition focuses on Meetup communities in Central and South America.
Main Takeaways:
- In Central and South America, there are more than 2.3 million members, 8,000 Meetup groups, and 1,000 Meetup events every week.
- We’re expanding our Get Back Together movement. The countries included are:
Albania, and Armenia Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bermuda, Bolivia, Bosnia Bulgaria, Cayman Croatia, Curacao Cyprus Dominican Ecuador, El Estonia, Gibraltar, Guatemala, Herzegovina Honduras, Hungary, Islands, Jamaica, Latvia Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Republic, Romania, Salvador, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia Sweden, Tobago, Trinidad Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay- Organizers, schedule a safe in-person event in the next 2 weeks and Meetup will donate 50% of your next month’s subscription to Global Giving’s Coronavirus Relief Fund.
- Follow your local guidelines. If and when you feel that it is safe for your group to meet in person, here are some additional helpful guidelines.
Top Q&A Questions:
- Do you plan to provide hosted video calls as Meetup or with other platforms? Or will Zoom still be required?
- We’ve integrated with over 100 different online video platforms so that you can use whatever platform you want. We decided that we don’t want to have one integration with one provider, so Zoom isn’t required. We may down the line look into creating a Meetup-specific video conferencing solution, but it’s not on the priority list right now.
- Given that there will be vulnerable populations until there’s a vaccine, how can we ensure it’s safe to meet in person?
- It’s impossible for Meetup as a platform to ensure that 100% of our events are safe. It’s critical that we work with our organizers and provide best practices so that organizers can create the safest possible events. We’ve also had cases where Meetup members have reached out to us about problematic events and we’ve had conversations with those organizers to ask them to reconsider their plans.
- Meetup is no longer owned by WeWork, what’s the new owner’s vision for the company?
- WeWork acquired Meetup 2.5 years ago but since then decided to focus on their core business and on March 27th, 2020, Meetup separated and is now an independent company. Kevin Ryan, Meetup’s new chairman, is not trying to change what we do and wants to accelerate our mission, “Empower personal growth through real personal connections.”
Last modified on June 23, 2021
