I wonder what the science is behind creating a successful, sustainable meetup.
In my experience it comes down to the organizers actually caring and putting in a TON of effort. A bit like organizing a successful conference really. It's absolutely exhausting but every meetup I know that works well has someone (or multiple people) slogging their guts out and draining their emotional energy on connecting people, finding new attendees/speakers, and keeping it going.
When a meetup turns into a mere "get X people in a room and do little else" it starts to tail off and people split off into cliques and eventually meetups die (but I did make two great friends recently out of such a situation).
In my experience it comes down to the organizers actually caring and putting in a TON of effort. A bit like organizing a successful conference really. It's absolutely exhausting but every meetup I know that works well has someone (or multiple people) slogging their guts out and draining their emotional energy on connecting people, finding new attendees/speakers, and keeping it going.
When a meetup turns into a mere "get X people in a room and do little else" it starts to tail off and people split off into cliques and eventually meetups die (but I did make two great friends recently out of such a situation).