I spent about an hour the other night manually deleting members from my Meetup group. I started the group in 2007, over the time it had accumulated about 200 members. I have since found another way to organize the group, so I decided it would be best to let the members know and delete it.

The group was for BarCamp Nashville and PodCamp Nashville. For some strange reason Meetup kept sending out invites to reoccurring events that were no longer reoccurring.

After a frustrating half an hour searching the site for a delete option I turned to the user forums for answers. As it turns out, this has been a problem since June, 2005. Meetup refuses to delete groups until all members have been manually deleted. It’s a three click and page scroll process to delete one member. I had to repeat that 200 times.

To make matters worse my account was about to expire. I received the following message:

This warning means that should I decide not to pay to host my Meetup, they will allow anyone to take it over. This puts all 200 of my member’s personal information at risk.

I explained my concern about privacy in a couple of emails to Meetup, but their only suggestion was to go ahead and manually delete each member, then they could delete the group.  He added, “I’m afraid that’s the only option currently available, but a bulk removal tool is a great suggestion. Thanks! I’ll pass your thoughts on this along to our design and development folks.”

I replied that I find it very difficult to believe that this has been an unsolved issue since 2005. That in fact if someone were to start a Meetup hate group, surely they would shut them down (and delete the group!). A quick search for “KKK” and “jihad” both turned up with no results (thank god).

I am really annoyed with Meetup, I’ve spent well over $300 using their service. For a group owner not to be able to delete his group in a simple way is very wrong, especially considering it’s been a problem since 2005.

I encourage you not to waste your money on Meetup, especially since free services like Facebook are perfect for putting together groups. For special events try Pingg.com, Anyvite.com or Eventbrite, all are awesome RSVP services.

Photo by: Hoggardb

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I’m bummed that the RSVP system on Eventbrite closed 24 hours before the last Nashville Geek Breakfast. Many people were contacting me about how to RSVP just hours before. Of course, we should live and learn not to procrastinate

My big issue with Eventbrite is that I can’t create a repeating event which allows attendees to view who else is coming. This means that I need to re-schedule the breakfast each month manually, which is why I moved the RSVP from Facebook in the first place.

Some of you have expressed interest in using Facebook again for the RSVP, and some of you prefer Eventbrite. Either way, I will need to manually create the event each month which is a drag.

I’m going to keep this vote up until end of day Wednesday. Please go ahead and let me know which way you prefer to RSVP. I’ll go with the majority of you. Please send this to your fellow Nashville Geek buds.

Want to start your own local Geek Breakfast? Here’s how: www.geekbreakfast.org.

[poll id="8"]

Yours in bagels and Bytes,

Dave

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We recently had another successful Nashville Geek Breakfast. It’s incredible to see how the geek breakfast has grown since I started it back in December. I think the first one had about 8 or 10 people max. There has been a steady increase since then, last time we had approximately 37 people!

The best part is that each month there’s a mix of new and old faces, so it’s refreshing to meet new people, but also fantastic catching up with friends too. I was speaking with Jim Rising, a software engineer from Userplane. He suggested that I post a message explaining what a geek breakfast is and how to create one. It’s a great idea which I hadn’t considered.

I was listening to Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation a couple of weeks ago and he had Bryan Pearson (the podcaster formally known as Bryper) on the show. Bryan was talking about the Social Media Breakfasts that he created in Boston. His breakfasts are much more structured with keynotes and presentations, which is fine too, but not what I had in mind for the geek breakfasts.

I commented on the show about our geek breakfast in Nashville, and Mitch mentioned that it was probably a spin off from the geek dinners which Mitch often attends. Jim made a really good point, I never realized the Nashville Geek Breakfast is a first of it’s kind. We’re breaking ground right here in Music City USA!

Thanks to Jim for pushing me to do this. I just purchased www.geekbreakfast.org which will link to a wiki page for anyone who wants to host their own. The Wiki will be similar to the ones for barcamp and podcamp.

I’ve also switched the RSVP system for the Nashville Geek Breakfast from Facebook to Eventbrite. Eventbrite is an easier was to keep everything organized, plus you don’t need to be a member. In Facebook I was creating a new event each month which was tedious.

Finally, a BIG special thanks to Chris Ennis for helping put this blog and wiki together. We’ve been working hard at getting it all in place. Thanks Chris!

See you all in August at Noshville. If you’re visiting Nashville please try to join us, we’d love to have you.

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