My experience with Meetup

I first heard of Meetup in a thread on this forum. A gentleman had posted how he had some fantastic success by joining this group. So, I went to our local Meetup city directory and joined a Meetup group.

66 members. That sounded good. I became number 67. I looked at their previous meetings and noticed the participation was a consistent 6, sometimes but not often 7, members would show up. Not promising.

Brushing that aside I went to the Dec Meetup meeting last night. Of the 6 who signed up, only one attended. That was me. But, and this is the irony, 3 who did not sign up showed up. That made 4 - me and the three.

Of the three, two owned a computer repair store. They were building websites as part of their service but decided about three months ago they no longer wanted to build websites. According to them it was too much of a PITA. They told me they had four or five clients bugging them so they would refer them.

That was yesterday and this is today. Obviously no referrals yet. However, I expect by next week we will get at least two of the 4 or 5. That is pure optimism speaking. I will post how that scenario turns out.

The 3rd person is a PhD Holistic Nutritionist. As it turns out, we subscribe to that philosophy. Her ears were perked when I explained what our marketing company does for clients. She opened her business 6 months ago and it is slow.

That is the scenario as it existed last night. It did not match the scenario described by the person I referenced in the opening paragraph. He spoke of meetings with double digit participation.

That leads me to ask if my experience is the actual condition of Meetup groups versus the presented version? I like the concept behind Meetup and believe it can flourish. However, like any other group, it needs a leader and some direction. Clearly I experienced zero of each.

I'd appreciate any comments about other people's experience with Meetup. I don't care about BNI or LETIP or Toastmasters or any other such group. Please don't comment about them as I'm only interested in Meetup as I can see the potential.

Tom