Has anyone built the #indieweb version of Meetup? (Opt in to groups that then plan localized events - perhaps inclusive of online ones?) it’s tricky as it takes some good practices to avoid spam, scams and other bad behavior and actors. But reoccurring (as well as one off but low barriers to entry to holding) events is really good for community building (regardless of the topics)
@Rycaut I'd love to see upcoming.org evolve into this!
We're working on providing a basic listing of Fediverse events in WordPress as a discovery experiment, but the end goal is to basically federate with different communities across the network and promote what they've got going on.
@Rycaut also Gath.io, but that's for one off meetup logistics. A lot of the benefit we (Write the Docs) get from meetup.com is the discoverability for local events, which makes it hard to migrate off. Though I'd love to.
@plaindocs @Rycaut This. Meetup dot com isn't just a tool, it's a community, a platform. It does have network effects. And also honestly with all its flaws nothing comes close for organising recurring community events.
Aaron Parecki wrote Meetable - more info - which isn't quite a replacement for the platform and it's social aspects, but is used in a few places including https://events.indieweb.org
@Rycaut I'm working on something now but it's too early to start using. The project page is at https://EventHunt.org
I think Meetup made a lot of mistakes but they did try to make something great. Their original business model was flawed and then the acquisition by WeWork really hurt them.