Meetup organizers: Attendance Numbers don’t matter

or how to evaluate if your meetup is successful

See how many people I had on my meetup — I am successful for sure.

Being in the tech community for a while now, I’ve seen a lot of events and meetups being organized on different topics. Hell, I’ve done many myself, and I was too thinking in numbers. I wanted big crowds because why not, I’ve put so much effort in this, people should be interested. Sure, those events which had AI or ML or Data Science… or deep learning, blockchain, RL etc, rouse in popularity and people were registering like crazy. You would get a lot of interest. The outcome can be that 40% won’t show up, or you won’t have seats for that many of them.

But, let’s wake up, big attendance does NOT make your meetup or event successful. Let’s dive in why you shouldn’t evaluate your event by the numbers of your attendees.

1. Content and Interaction > Number of people at your event

What organizers sometimes miss to carry is the responsibility of creating valuable content and interaction at their events. I’ve been doing that in the past too. Guilty! 🤐 We should be more careful about how we improve the interaction with our attendees rather than worrying how many of them will show up. If only 2 people joined your meetup, you should know how to make that experience to be worth for them.

Idea: Organize icebreakers or networking sessions before you start with the presentations. People will get to know each other and will feel more confident to ask questions.

2. Here is what we accomplished > We had 2500000000 attendees

Share what you did or who you motivated, because who actually cares how many people showed up? I understand that sometimes big numbers will work in your marketing outreach, but let’s get real. Nobody wants to hear that. More importantly, if you made a hell of an experience for everyone, then many more people will show on the next ones. I know big numbers work like clickbait sometimes but don’t be that guy/girl.

3. Good experiences for 4 people > A lot of people without a seat

Just think of it. Would you prefer all of your attendees to get the same experience? Do you want that experience to be valuable for them? If you have 150 registered, and you know that you don’t have a place for some of them, just notify them. Share your seating plan or just inform them about the possibility of losing a seat if they show up late. You can also ask people to open seats for others if they are not coming. But, one is for sure, it is always better to have a successful event with 4 people, or to fail to deliver it for a lot of people. Numbers don’t matter!

Let’s repeat, Numbers don’t matter when you promote your event or when you evaluate the level of success. Here is why they matter:

1. Food and presents and other costs
2. Seat allocation
3. Speaker planning
4. Venue

Until the next meetup.