Quoting Adrienne Foster ([email protected]): > So, I can immediately think of three options on how BASFA wants to > deal with it: > > 1. WCPE and BASFA can split the cost. > 2. I can turn the organizer (admin) privileges over to an officer > and BASFA can take complete ownership over its page. > 3. Remove the group from Meetup altogether.
As someone who's seen this very same dynamic play out repeatedly with multiple Bay Area technical groups for which someone created a Mettup presence and then the organiser fees became an issue, I would strongly urge option #3, for exactly the reasons I outlined in http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/meetup.html . See in particular the passage about Silicon Valley Linux User Group's experience. Quoting: Meetup Users Have the AOL Nature What I mean by that admittedly unflattering comparison is that Meetup, Inc. has successfully created a self-contained walled-garden ghetto adjoining the Internet (just like AOL), whose denizens tend strongly to ignore everything outside it (just as with AOL). In 2012, a core member of Silicon Valley Linux User Group volunteered to attract new members for SVLUG via a Meetup presence, which indeed seemed a good idea. He was careful to annotate the Meetup.com page as saying that SVLUG is an independent group with its own off-Meetup Web site and mailing lists. A year later, he stopped paying Meetup, Inc. fees, and thus the page ceased being updated. As one of the core SVLUG leaders, I observed a remarkable thing: The large number of Meetup.com denizens who'd found SVLUG via the Meetup.com page were now utterly convinced that SVLUG had ceased to exist, because, despite the careful annotations, they _could not conceive of it as anything but a Meetup_. Ergo, it was now a _dead_ Meetup. Just because one guy had ceased paying those clowns in NYC $180/year. In 2014, SVLUG found another kind gentleman willing to include the SVLUG Meetup among the three groups (I assume) he's paying for, but meanwhile the lesson — and the certainty of this problem recurring — is obvious: Basically, you don't own your Meetup in any way; Meetup, Inc. does. -- Cheers, "I am a member of a civilization (IAAMOAC). Step back Rick Moen from anger. Study how awful our ancestors had it, yet [email protected] they struggled to get you here. Repay them by appreciating McQ! (4x80) the civilization you inherited." -- David Brin _______________________________________________ Basfa mailing list [email protected] http://lists.basfa.org/listinfo.cgi/basfa-basfa.org
