Virtual Meetups: Platforms, Hybrid Meetups, Virtual Conferences

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🔍 Problem

Time and geography can prevent interesting people from meeting.

💡 Solution

Virtual meetups remove geographical boundaries and reduce time costs in meeting regularly. Now you can find your tribe in a world of billions.

🏁 Players

Virtual Meetups

• Userlist Happy Hours
• Nocode Rumble
• Indie Worldwide
• NoCode Camp
• Maker Streams
• Pioneer Office Hours
• 100 Days Of No-Code AMAs
• Acquired Meetup

Platforms

• Cuppa
• Vito
• Hopin.to
• Airmeet
• Run The World
• Tame
• Houseparty

Tools

• Around
• Whereby
• Zoom
• Google Hangouts

🔮 Predictions

• Zoom (or SendBird) will become a popular backend for niche virtual meetup apps. (Predicted by Villi Iltchev)
• Hybrid meetups will become common. My mastermind (pictured above) works this way. Some of us meet in Atlanta. Then we jump on a video call with others around the world.
• Physical meetups will not disappear. They serve a specific purpose. Like dine-in restaurants and physical gyms versus cloud kitchens and remote fitness platforms.

☁️ Opportunities

• Teach a course on how to organize and grow a virtual meetup.
• Start a virtual happy hour around your brand. The liquor brand Haus recently made a smart play.
• Build a productized service to edit recorded video from virtual meetups. These assets can be used for promotion and/or education.
• Build a tool to collect votes during virtual meetups and drive the agenda based on feedback.
• Find virtual meetups based on your interests. Trends subscriber, James Eldersveld, joins no-code meetups around the world from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• Build meetup.com for virtual meetups. I built it. Check out VirtualMeetups.co.

😠 Haters

“It’s not the same as meeting in person.”
You’re right. In some ways it’s better. In some ways it’s worse.

🔗 Links

1. VirtualMeetups.co — A list of virtual meetups by Dru Riley
2. Taking Your Event Online: Live Streaming and Virtual Conferences — A podcast episode by Ben Myers and Rahul Goel
3. Will Curran On The New Virtual Events Industry — A podcast interview of Will Curran with Mat Sherman
4. Virtual Event — A Wikipedia article on virtual events
5. Hybrid Event — A Wikipedia article on hybrid events
6. Virtual Events: The Ultimate Guide — a blog post by Madison Layman