Consider moving from Eventbrite to Meetup.com

[jwflory]

Summary

Create a Meetup.com community for FOSS@RIT / FOSS@MAGIC for promoting our events

Background

Historically, FOSS@MAGIC uses Eventbrite for handling registration of our events. This works, but all of our past events on Eventbrite end up scattered and isolated from each other. They are also on my personal Eventbrite account. Eventbrite gets the job done, but it is not the best tool for us to work with. I always battle with it because it does 1,000 things we don't need it to do. We just use it as a tool for getting RSVPs.

Recently, I am interested in starting a FOSS@RIT community on Meetup.com. This is for a few reasons:

• Provides us more visibility in the greater Rochester community
• Supports recurring events, e.g. FOSS Hours
• [needs research] Support for team accounts / multiple admins?
• Integration with Cauldron.io for community metrics dashboard

The fourth point is what really is motivating me to start this discussion. Cauldron is a hosted GrimoireLab instance provided by Bitergia, the company that primarily develops GrimoireLab. Cauldron is in an early alpha and supports only a few services from the full GrimoireLab:

• GitHub
• GitLab
• Individual git repos
• Meetup.com

So, I am a little interested in exploring Meetup.com for this reason, in addition to the extra things it brings us from a community organizing point-of-view.

Details

• [ ] Create Meetup.com organization for FOSS@RIT
• [ ] Set up billing information (if applicable)
• [ ] Document in Runbook
• [ ] Add FOSS Hours as a recurring event
• [ ] Explore integration with Cauldron.io

Outcome

• Better set of tools for community organizing for FOSS@RIT
• Opportunity to better understand our in-person community by using Cauldron.io

[jwflory]

Asked for feedback from the wider FOSS@RIT community on a Discourse thread.

[jwflory]

Oops, accidentally closed by clicking the wrong button on the project board. Reopening…

[jwflory]

Given there hasn't been much traction on this issue and I don't want to set up a new service that nobody has used before I leave, I'm going to close this. We can stick with Eventbrite for now and maybe look for something more organized later on.

Closing as wontfix. :clapper: