Using upcoming.org to organize Metafilter meetups

April 13, 2005 2:38 PM

Upcoming metafilter meetups meet upcoming. The kids at Whedonesque recently started using upcoming.org to organize their events. If we did something similar to what they're doing here I could just pull in a RSS feed from the event search for "metafilter" and display it here, as a sidebar. Also, anyone could subscribe to the search and keep track of new events around the world. Sound good?
posted by mathowie (staff) to MetaFilter Gatherings at 2:38 PM (20 comments total)

Like this! Perfect!
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:39 PM on April 13, 2005

So, we'd use upcoming for mefi meetups instead of metatalk, right?

Sounds delish to me, if folks can get used to it.
posted by frykitty at 2:46 PM on April 13, 2005

Well, the upside is that I can display the current ones at all times, on MetaTalk, in the sidebar. Folks can still make posts about it and whatnot, but this way people can find them in other cities, leave comments about it on upcoming, etc.

I think upcoming provides some nice tools for it that make no sense in replicating here. Just like how photos seem to work best at flickr, in the metafilter group. No sense in having to code a photo gallery into mefi if we can just keep using that.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:48 PM on April 13, 2005

Sounds like an excellent idea. One of the nightmares of the London meetup was keeping it on the front page long enough that people would actually know about it.

Also, speaking of photos - would this mean meetup photo posts would be prohibited from the front page of MeTa too?
posted by dodgygeezer at 3:06 PM on April 13, 2005

Sounds like a fantastic idea. As long as the sidebar displayed current discussions about meetups, it would kill two birds with one stone - keep meetup threads alive at least until they have occurred and keep other threads on the main page until we have well and truly picked all the nits.
posted by dg at 3:26 PM on April 13, 2005

No, neither new meetup announcements or photos from past meetups are prohibited nor are they discouraged. I just thought this would make for a nice tool to keep them visibile at all times on the metatalk home page.

So it goes like this:

I want to have a meetup in chicago, so I post on metatalk, we decide on a place/time/date, then I make a new listing at upcoming and tag it with metafilter. Other mefi members can indicate if they're going or just thinking about it on upcoming. A few days pass and the original announcement has slipped off the front of metatalk.

But, if I'm displaying all upcoming events tagged with metafilter, that "MeFi meetup in Chicago" link will be there until the date passes.

Afterwards, people can post photos on metatalk or upcoming, whatever works. I could tweak the feeds so that the last three past events also show up, as past events, below the upcoming events.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:40 PM on April 13, 2005

good idea
posted by amberglow at 3:51 PM on April 13, 2005

I think this will work much better on the sidebar than the current generic (but still useful) link to meetup-related MetaTalk threads.
posted by DaShiv at 4:17 PM on April 13, 2005

A keen idea!
posted by Dr. Wu at 4:36 PM on April 13, 2005

Excellent plan. I've added my own meetup to it already.
posted by ChrisR at 4:46 PM on April 13, 2005

I don't know if I trust that upcoming.org. Seems kinda shady.
posted by eyeballkid at 5:18 PM on April 13, 2005

Oh this is so great.
posted by rhapsodie at 6:02 PM on April 13, 2005

I love it!
posted by ChrisTN at 6:33 PM on April 13, 2005

It's interesting. Upcoming isn't really coded -- right now -- to serve as a meetup alternative, but the market may well demand one (and waxy's competition, the frighteningly corporate EVDB, probably won't be clueful enough).

I've been working on a couple of projects, some parts of which may involve using the new API. I think there's a lot of potential, and hopefully waxy can keep up with things if they start to snowball. There's a lot of people been quitting their jobs lately.

Anyway, clearly upcoming needs a handful more features to make this really work going forward -- invites, groups (so you don't have to rely on tags to bring in the MeFi-related meetups), and probably even event-tied discussions. I've already given him advice how to make the site more viral -- which he thought was great -- so we'll see.
posted by dhartung at 7:57 PM on April 13, 2005

Does this mean I can retire the iCal calendar? Because this is much better.

I believe Upcoming allows output to iCal format, as well as RSS -- people subscribing to the calendar via iCal would have a replacement, right?
posted by mcwetboy at 8:16 PM on April 13, 2005

Andy told me groups are right around the corner for upcoming, so I guess moving to a mefi group name will make it even easier.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:37 PM on April 13, 2005

First mathowie gets all the props for inventing memory maps, and I get little for naming them. Now, he gets all the props for using upcoming.org for all meetups, when I suggested it just last week! I demand compensation! Laud me!
posted by Plutor at 6:01 AM on April 14, 2005

On second thought, I withdraw my demand for lauds. I prefer living the private life. I'll leave the public hero work to the professionals. Hooray, Matt!
posted by Plutor at 6:05 AM on April 14, 2005

Psst. Matt's going to Chicago. Pass it on.
posted by grateful at 6:47 AM on April 14, 2005

In case you people didn't know, I made Upcoming.org. Anyway, I think putting Mefi events on the site is a great idea.

You can invite people to events right now, but it's still missing group support. It's high on the to-do list.
posted by waxpancake at 3:06 PM on April 14, 2005