On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
On 17/05/2011 09:40, Michael Peel wrote:
> Just to note: WMUK doesn't own the geonotices; any admin can change them in the usual Wiki fashion. ;-)
>
> Also: to be honest, it's a little difficult to see how WMUK can give much support to meetups. They're volunteer-led, advertised on-wiki, and don't really need anything to support them to make them successful as far as I can see. The London wikimeets have never asked for anything from WMUK (despite me prompting them to occasionally ;-) ). There are things WMUK could provide: for example, room hire (but most wikimeets are in a pub or cafe, without room hire costs), transportation costs for a speaker (but most wikimeets don't have speakers), internet access costs (but I know the London wikimeet pointedly avoids having internet access) or Wikipedia posters (not too useful in a pub, though?). I'd love to see us supporting the establishment of many more wikimeets, but we need some input in to how we could usefully do that.
Advance publicity and reporting are of course the basics. But if you
look around the world, or listen to participants, there is the chance of
tying meetups into other things (e.g. photography initiatives ...) to
have some variety and purpose.
In DC, we usually have an early afternoon activity before the Meetup at a resturaunt early evening, before some people retreat to a bar for Drinks (we don't really have the pub atmosphere in the states). For example, last Summer, we had one meetup where we did a guided tour of the Air and Space Museum, talked to some GLAM people about a collaboration, and then went to a Pizza joint to hang out and chat. Another recent one, included a photo scavenger hunt in the morning, a meeting at a library discussing the structure of the chapter and then a trip to a resteraunt. Almost all of these events had some users leaving and arriving part way through. I know New York does similar structure for events. It seems have something exclusive tied into the meetup (such as a tour or event) sometimes draws more people.
Alex Stinson