Meetup is this nifty online community I stumbled upon who knows when. But it’s been a great resource for me both professionally and personally.
Its mission: “Revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize.” In plain english it “helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the world.”
Here’s how it works: Set up your online profile then start looking for groups that share the same interests that you do. Once you join the groups, you meet face to face offline to learn from and interact with each other. Plus you have access to the group’s email list and can send out questions and start discussions online. If you don’t find a meet up group that piques your interest, no worries. You can start one yourself.
There is a fee for hosting the group on the community, but it’s ultimately worth it if it meets your goals.
Initially I joined several Web related meetups because it ties back to my career in content management. And they definitely didn’t disappoint. For instance, when I joined the Atlanta Joomla Open Source user’s group, I learned about reasonably priced workshops I can take to improve my knowledge of that CMS. After joining the Content Strategy Meetup group, I learned about the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association and started attending that organization’s events.
One group resolved a problem at work for me and probably didn’t know it – the Atlanta Bloggers group. I set up a blog on Blogger for the International Education department at the college I work for. It’s called GPC Global Connection. I took for granted that the Blogger nav bar pulls blogs it “thinks” are related to each other and allows users to see those other blogs using the “Next Blog” tab on that said nav bar.
For some reason, Blogger decided to associate a very racy blog with GPC Global Connection. When the head of the International Education department happened to click on that “Next Blog” tab one day, she happened upon the racy blog and went nuts.
Thankfully Atlanta Bloggers came to the rescue. I emailed the group on what to do and was referred to a YouTube video on how to take that pesky nav bar off. Problem resolved! (Thank you Atlanta Blogger Meetup Member JB for the YouTube video tutorial link on this!).
The Atlanta Bloggers seemed to be on a roll for me in November. At their face to face gathering, they covered tips on how to create killer content for your blog. The group used a slightly unconventional meeting style. We met at tables in smaller groups and a table leader led the individual discussions. What I found really thrilling about the meeting was how folks who probably would never have hung out under normal circumstances found each other and were connecting about their passions. Among the people I chatted with: Randy Barnes who does a video blog and made me a believer in flip cams, cyclist and Top 50 Influential Blogger Robb Sutton, who I’m soo asking to be one of my mentors and real estate blogger Tom Royce, who’s got over five thousand Twitter followers – another person I’ll be hitting up for mentoring. I also met two new bloggers Lynn Marmulstein and Bradshaw who I’ll also help out with what I know.
Recently I asked Atlanta Bloggers and the Atlanta WordPress Meetup group for referrals on WordPress developer/designers and they poured in.
As I said earlier, meet up hasn’t only helped me professionally. On a personal note, I’ve finally found groups of people who love movies as much as I do. So now I have movie buddies to hang out with.
Are you meeting up? If you are, I’d love to hear your story. Leave a comment about it here.
