On 17 May 2011, at 12:05, Alex Stinson wrote:
On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote: 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.
Interesting; thanks for sharing these insights. This is rather different from how wikimeets have been run in the UK thus far. Given that events like this are happening, perhaps we should explicitly brand the social meetings that happen around them as meetups? E.g. after the British Library event in January we ended up in the pub for general discussions, but that wasn't advertised beyond a mention on the event page...
Thanks, Mike