Since moving to San Francisco, I’ve been attending 2 technology meetups a week. Prior to that, it was about one a month. These “meetups” have always been the same format but since I was in Florida before and we’re a bunch of hicks down there, it was my assumption that Floridians just weren’t doing it right. I’ve now realized that all of these gatherings are the same. Unfortunately, they usually suck and I go home feeling more lost than I did when I showed up.

Here’s the format for a successful meetup:
1. Pick a product, technology or company that interests you.
2. Get a friend of yours to give you space in their office or find a quiet bar that isn’t too packed.
3. Place the meetup info on Upcoming.org and have people blog about it to spread the word.
4. Show up and either A. bring food & drinks or B. ask other people to bring food & drinks.
5. Find people you already know, stand around, swap business cards and talk about anything you want. You don’t have to talk about whatever it was that the meetup was focused on.

That’s pretty much it. It’s the same 15-50 people meeting at different places around the city to talk about the same stuff and you might meet some new people if you’re outgoing. If you’re popular, they’ll come to you.

Why I hate this format: It’s pretty simple. I go to a Twitter, Flickr or Wordpress meetup to learn about the product more but that never happens. The conversation is never about the product and it’s incredibly hard to break into a circle of friends chatting away and introduce yourself. There’s needs to be a format and some kind of organization to these things.

1. Let’s have an RSVP list and each person can bring a guest or two.
2. Let’s get more organization as far as freebies. Drinks are free or they’re not. Please specify.
3. FORMAT. Someone needs to be the organizer / speaker and maybe we all meet in a room and they introduce themselves, there’s some kind of name tag deal and other roundtable discussions for the first hour. From there, we can mingle and meet other people.

At the Wordpress meetup, no one was talking Wordpress and it was a bunch of personal conversations and everyone knew each other already. I didn’t know if food and drink were included until I got there. The only icebreaker for me was my LaughingSquid shirt. I wanted to learn more about Wordpress but who in the group worked for the company that I could ask questions. I left that evening learning a couple of things from Matt of WP but he and I didn’t chat until the after-party so at the actual meetup, I learned squat. Maybe it’s my fault for thinking a meetup resembles a barcamp but I am wanting more and not getting it. It’s fun meeting new people but that’s all I see in these meetups.