[loco-contacts] Meetup.com offering for LoCo teams

[Jono Bacon]

Hi All,

I have to say, I think I might take a blunter view of the situation.

The LoCo Portal is an awesome service and back in the day I encouraged
much of the feature-focus to best serve LoCo teams. Like others, I am
thankful to the efforts that people put into it.

The issue we have today is with *activity* and *awareness*. In other
words, too few teams are actually active and those that are not well
known.

Meetup helps with the latter very, very well. When you create a
Meetup.com group you get exposure to a huge ecosystem of people
interested in local groups. We use Meetup.com at XPRIZE and we have
seen tremendous results and growth.

What it doesn't help with is the former, ensuring that groups are
active. An inactive group on Meetup.com is just a better known
inactive group than one on the LoCo Portal.

My recommendation is this:

 * Keep the LoCo Portal around for any and all groups to use.
 * Create an application process modeled on the one I set up for
XPRIZE Think Tanks where people can apply to form an Official group.
For each application there is a short interview.
 * When approved the official groups get a meetup.com group. It is
made clear though that if there is not a regular cadence of in-person
meetings, new leaders will be sought from the group. To do this, every
group would have a member of the CC or Community Team at Canonical as
an admin with the actual leaders set as co-organizers.

Now, some will express concerns about this harking back the unapproved
and approved teams. I don't deny, this new process will require work,
but much of it could be automated. For example, you could use the
meetup.com API to scan all groups weekly and provide an average
meeting score. If this score falls below a level, it would indicate
the group might be inactive and you can check the number of meetings
and take action if things are not happening.

As for the official team meetings, I would just have one person from
the LoCo Council assess each one. We would need to ensure the LoCo
Council are trained, but this is not an exhaustive process. As an
example, I have personally interviewed all the XPRIZE Think Tank
groups (nearly 30) and it doesn't take that much time.

The other added benefit of meetup is that it includes built-in mailing
lists, photo upload, RVSP functions, sponsor support etc.

As for the issue of Meetup.com being non-free. I don't deny, it is a
problem, mainly due to having data locked in. My personal view though
is that meetup.com know they have to have good relations with their
users or they will move away en-masse. Thus far they seem to be a good
company.

Just my $0.02c.


-- 
Jono Bacon
www.jonobacon.org : www.twitter.com/jonobacon : www.linkedin.com/in/jonobacon