What happened to the meetups and other local activism?

[mconder]

What happened to using meetup.com like last time? There was an explosion of Ron Paul meetups all around the country by this time last election cycle. Where is all the local activity, sign making, etc? I started a meetup Here (http://www.meetup.com/Ron-Paul-for-President-2012-Salt-Lake-County-Utah/) and so far I am the only member. I think it's a shame. I think that's what made it so successful last time. It wasn't the money we gave to the campaign, it was the local effort. We need that again!

[afwjam]

I agree, time for us to rally for the meet ups! Might I suggest a Debate day party to start things off?

[Michigan11]

This was on my mind, so funny I finally see a thread on it.

I'm going to be in Florida soon, and if there is not a meetup, I will create it and take very good care to nurture and grow it. Let's spread the roots out people

[truthsaga]

We are still there, but Meetup.com in 2007 was the pool where Ron Paul people met other Ron Paul People. Now, we are greater in numbers but we have moved to other social media groups and websites or have already made more personal contacts through e-mail, text, and direct phone calls.

[muzzled dogg]

promote your group here:

http://www.facebook.com/RP2012UT
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_112741712146962
http://www.facebook.com/ucc4l

http://www.meetup.com/UtahC4L/
http://www.meetup.com/CFL-Provo/

[Koz]

My meetup is still active (the one in my area). There was very little talk about the campaign at the last meetup. I am going to help spearhead building a coalition, but I have zero political activism knowledge, any advice?

Koz

[Jim Casey]

I saw a Ron Paul 2012 bumper sticker a couple months or so ago.

[libertybrewcity]

facebook took over

[acptulsa]

Our meetup met last weekend. We're going to concentrate on voter registration/re-registration, and do our best to talk Democrats into jumping into the next Republican primary.

[malkusm]

Here they are: http://freedomatlas.org/

(Note: Please do not use Internet Explorer with this.)

[sailingaway]

They were told to go into C4L but now C4L can't coordinate with the campaign so it is fubar, since a bunch have now been inactive independently, for years.. A bunch in Florida were unilaterally changed to Gary Johnson meetups by the organizer who said Ron Paul didn't need them any more (the other attendees weren't pleased as I understand it.) We may need to start a bunch over.

[acptulsa]

I don't know why one couldn't maintain communication in their state subforum right here.

[BrendenR]

I don't know why one couldn't maintain communication in their state subforum right here.

The meetups give the organizer a way to email blast their entire group with new events and all that jazz. Most people on not on these forums every day.

[realtonygoodwin]

I'm going to a Meetup.com Ron Paul meeting in a little over an hour...we are active here!

[sailingaway]

I don't know why one couldn't maintain communication in their state subforum right here.

Believe it or not, a lot of Ron Paul supporters aren't here. They COULD do it here, but someone has to find them and tell them so. I wonder if we can post THAT at C4L?

[Karsten]

There needs to be a meetup.com link on ronpaul2012.com, like there was early on in the campaign 4 years ago.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Sent to Chris, Andrea, Katheryn and Andres @ Meetup.

Dear Meetup,

You are really killing us. I came to you with a long list off issues, and Chris came back basically blowing smoke up our asses. Is that really your company policy?

What do you want? - subscribers - right? We used to have over 2K Meetups, now we have ~650 With Dr Pauls growing popularity, I can easily see 6-8K Meetups - if your service where not so hostile...

What we want: This is not exclusive. You are free to offer this to any political campaign. There is no favoritism.

For starters, an ability to contact our supporters. Nationwide. We would like an opt out vs a opt in option for joining such a group as to sharing contact info. Contacting organizers is a min - we have spent Herculean efforts in the past to try to do this, due to your policies

We have done the "seeding" program in paces where we used to have 100-50 supporters... and gotten 0-3 joins. Clearly, your promise of ,messaging "people that are looking for a RP Meetup" is a lie! You are not mailing out to these ppl! Are we doing something wrong here as to tagging? Are you just not sending them out?

Chris said that if we could get 10-20 meetups to do an event that you would be willing to do "something" what that was is unclear.... We can certainty do that. Easily.

He had also suggested that if RP did a personal message encouraging former meetup organizers to re-activate their accounts and get active again - that you might be willing to send that to all current and orphaned supporters as a e-mail message from Meetup. He has not brought that option up again since...

There are other issues, but enough for now...


-n

[tangent4ronpaul]

My original letter:

>> Dear Meetup Everywhere support,
>>
>> I'm a national level Ron Paul grassroots organizer. Last campaign cycle, I'm the one that surveyed supporters and got the official campaign to sign up with your service, ran the promotion of them, seed a meetup campaign and currently adopt a meetup to keep them from going away. I'm also the one that tracks what meetups are out there.
>>
>> A couple of days ago an announcement went out about your new service; "Meetup Everywhere", that initially looked encouraging but on further examination appears quite limited. My impression at this point is that it is useful for promoting national level events and that it is very top down, in that only the creator of the event/domain can push events out. Is this accurate? Your documentation is extremely poor as far as this is concerned.
>>
>> The announcement stated:
>>
>> "Many of the obstacles that made it hard for the meetup groups to communicate with one another, have been removed."
>>
>> This does not appear to be true, unless I'm missing something. The ability for a single person to announce/start national events seems to be the only advantage. The ability or these "free" groups to continue locally and autonomously through Meetup Everywhere seems to be non-existent. Is this correct?
>>
>> It also stated:
>>
>> "Additionally this new platform is free and there is no need to create a new meetup account to use it. You can even sign in with your facebook account if you like."
>>
>> The impression left is that you don't need your meetup groups anymore. I do not think that was your intent, and could have disastrous repercussions for us. Again, poor documentation as to the limitations of the platform.
>>
>> There is also a complete disconnect between this platform and the existing Ron Paul hierarchy. So far, 313 "groups" have signed on to the http://www.meetup.com/ronpaul hierarchy. Most with a single member. There are 420 members total. While I'm sure there is some overlap, this is not representative of the 80,919 members in the remaining 611 meetups in the http://ronpaul.meetup.com hierarchy. This is not particularly helpful.
>>
>> At our peak, we had ~2,000 groups and ~120,000 members. We want those groups and members back! Your companies policies have been an impediment to making this happen as well as organization wide communication, though your new platform may help this latter problem. The new problem created is a single point of failure - the person that created the hierarchy.
>>
>> We have had and still have a number of issues with your service, specifically:
>>
>> You would not let us create the ronpaul.meetup.com hierarchy, demanding that the official campaign set it up, which we got them to do. They were then the only entity that could send out domain wide messages, something they were forbidden t do, due to FEC regulations against coordination between official political campaigns and grassroots supporters. Your new platform may, in time, fix the communication problems, but the disconnect between the existing hierarchy and this new platform is a new problem, as mentioned above. When the official campaign went away, this hierarchy was effectively orphaned and any chance of reaching out to all members went away. Justine Lamm was the person in charge of it, at the time. The bulletin board attached to that hierarchy also seems to have gone away. We would like the ability to communicate with all groups/members back again along with the forum, if that is possible.
>>
>> The current strategy for kick starting the Meetups back to life involves posting lists of what meetups exist on a state by state basis in state groups on Facebook, RPF's and other places and encouraging people to join them / get them active again as well as have rally points at the same locations for forming new meetups. I've been putting together a list organized by state, to this end, but Meetup is oriented toward city/zip code and distance. There does not appear to be a way to get a dump by state. This process is incredibly laborious and boring making me want to do something more interesting, like watch paint dry. Is there a way to get a data dump by state? We tried scraping the information and doing a software sort, but it didn't work due to variations in the data.
>>
>> Related to the above, we have lost ~40,000 members and ~1,400 meetups since the last campaign. We obviously want them back! The game plan was to create 3-6 traveling meetups that would be manually moved between the "People looking for a meetup in..." list and then individually contacted. This fell apart, when we found out you only list the first 100 or so cities. Is there some way to get a message out to these people telling them where existing meetups in their state exist and rally points to organize new meetups? Perhaps you would be willing to offer a "welcome back" special and give people a free month, to people on that list to reform those meetups after which a paying organizer would be expected to step up. The last time we did a very successful program seeding meetups due to your buy one, get 3 program, where organizers would start a new meetup somewhere else, and expect an organizer to step up once they reached a critical mass. We expect to do that again, but would really like to be able to re-constitute our meetup structure to where it was at our peak, right out of the gate. Can you help with this?
>>
>> Both for the official campaign and the grassroots your refusal to provide e-mail addresses has been a major thorn in our side, and a change in this policy would make most of the above moot. Trust me, we like your service and we like your tools. We would not stop using you if you gave us this information. Please do!
>>
>> You have a policy that negatively effects a number of us that have more than 3 meetups. I personally have 6. This policy is that no more than 3 meetups (a single account) can be attached to a single e-mail address. This makes my meetups a total pain to manage with all the logouts and logins. Worse, with the gluing of SNS's together, this, for example, logs me out of my political Facebook account and puts me into my personal one, so the policy has ripply like effects and can get things "shared" in the wrong places. Please fix this.
>>
>> On meetups that go away - we have a program called "adopt a meetup", that has as it's backbone a program that sends a spider to crawl the ronpaul.meetup.com domain once a week. We then post what groups are at risk and sometimes someone adopts some of the larger groups. We generally like to have this happen after locals have had a week to step up, but for larger groups we do like to save them. It's more of an issue when campaigns are dormant, but might be a nice site enhancement for you.
>>
>> We have 3 organizer groups for Ron Paul meetup organizers. 2 are on Meetup and one on Yahoo. We have been able to network these via software, so a message posted to one goes to all. Being able to glue groups together like this is a nice feature. Just a suggestion. Related to this, we would like to send an invite to join one of these 3 groups to every new organizer (as well as many existing ones) when a group is created in our hierarchy. Can you help with this?
>>
>> What makes a group a ronpaul.meetup.com group is a bit of a mystery, as some show up in completely different hierarchies. We also have issues with groups that change their names as they may "vanish". can you shed any light as to how this works?
>>
>> Thank you for your attention on these matters,
>>
>> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> National Level Ron Paul 2012 Grassroots Organizer
>> Operation Cat Herder
>>
>> cc: Michael Nystrom
>>

[tangent4ronpaul]

A number of these have been clarified.

Most have not been.

[AndrewD]

I'll attend any meetups as long as American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Hannity and Colmes, or the O'Reilly Factor are not on T.V. at the time.

[tangent4ronpaul]

BTW Meetup - Yahoo groups offers allmost everything you do for free. Facebook and Google groups I have on speed dial. The main things you have over them is the distance mapping and the calender.... I also know a number of nations level reporters.... But ppl know where to find us on Meetup... I could change that...

Just saying...

-n

[tangent4ronpaul]

i'll attend any meetups as long as american idol, dancing with the stars, hannity and colmes, or the o'reilly factor are not on t.v. At the time.

rotglmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[realtonygoodwin]

Tangent - you seem to have the expectation that Meetup.com exists to cater to your every whim, and I don't understand why. Your messages to them are very antagonistic in their tone, and reflect negatively on Ron Paul and his supporters. I do appreciate your passion and work ethic and that you are actively involved in trying to improve things, I just think you are coming across the wrong way. No offense, just what I see.

[tangent4ronpaul]

Tangent - you seem to have the expectation that Meetup.com exists to cater to your every whim, and I don't understand why. Your messages to them are very antagonistic in their tone, and reflect negatively on Ron Paul and his supporters. I do appreciate your passion and work ethic and that you are actively involved in trying to improve things, I just think you are coming across the wrong way. No offense, just what I see.

How so?

We made then a TON of money last time...

They need to work with their customers - it's a 2 way street.....

[realtonygoodwin]

Fair enough. I just think you will get better results with a different tone, if that makes sense?

[mconder]

Well, the whole point of this post is that it was easier in 2007 to get out with a group in my local area and do Ron Paul stuff at least once a week. That local activity is where I think the real fire of the 2008 campaign came from. Hardly anyone thought the money we gave the central campaign had as big of an impact as what was being DONE at in nearly every city in the country. I really think we need to get away from the centralized approach. These individual groups were out marching in parades, out at county fairs, and putting up home made Ron Paul signs just about everywhere you can imagine. I am just not seeing it this time around. Sad.

[UtahApocalypse]

Meetup = cost
Facebook = Free

have not found anything on meetup that facebook can't do

[sailingaway]

Well, the whole point of this post is that it was easier in 2007 to get out with a group in my local area and do Ron Paul stuff at least once a week. That local activity is where I think the real fire of the 2008 campaign came from. Hardly anyone thought the money we gave the central campaign had as big of an impact as what was being DONE at in nearly every city in the country. I really think we need to get away from the centralized approach. These individual groups were out marching in parades, out at county fairs, and putting up home made Ron Paul signs just about everywhere you can imagine. I am just not seeing it this time around. Sad.

I think people were waiting to see what the campaign was doing. Maybe, it is time to start again.

[Bern]

...
have not found anything on meetup that facebook can't do

I, for one, refuse to register an account on Facebook.

[mconder]

I think it is time to start again. I have had my meetup out there for since yesterday and not 1 person has joined. Salt Lake had probably 160+ members this time last cycle. They have a Ron Paul 2012 meetup in the neighboring county with about 160 members, but it looks like joining the meetup has been disabled. I hope the official campaign is not responsible for this...that is telling people not to create local grassroots organizations. All the money we gave to the campaign could not equate to even 1/10 of the benefit given to Ron Paul by the local blood, sweet and tears put in last year. There is heart in the local efforts. Sending your donation check off is fine, but there are many people who have more time than money, and they certainly have the passion. I just don't get what gives. Yes, we need to contact the campaign and let them know we'd like them to promote local groups again. I don't care if it's through meetup or facebook. Whatever. That's not the point here.

[malkusm]

I, for one, refuse to register an account on Facebook.

If you're worried about privacy:

Step 1: Sign up for email address on Yahoo!, using fake name/identification info
Step 2: Sign up for Facebook using your new Yahoo! email address, again using fake name/identification info.
Step 3: Don't post pictures or personal info.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!

[sailingaway]

I, for one, refuse to register an account on Facebook.

a ton of us feel that way. I did only because I have sons to monitor to make sure they don't put stuff out there to cause themselves problems, but other than them and Ron Paul/Rand Paul's sites , I am virtually friendless and intend to stay that way.

[sailingaway]

If you're worried about privacy:

Step 1: Sign up for email address on Yahoo!, using fake name/identification info
Step 2: Sign up for Facebook using your new Yahoo! email address, again using fake name/identification info.
Step 3: Don't post pictures or personal info.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!

I've thought of that, I just hate subterfuge.

but I have started leaving random initials as my 'name' and gobbledygook as an email on those sites that let that work, figuring they'd use a different system if they really cared, so my moral standards are clearly starting to erode.

[mconder]

That's totally cool. No skin of my back to create a Facebook group for my area too. The problem is that Facebook doesn't support search for groups by zip code, so if we had 2000 local Ron Paul meetup groups, it might get hard for people to find them in the Facebook search. Not sure what the results would look like. Whereas on meetup.com anything Ron Paul for 84101 will come up and be easy to find instead of searching though 2000 Ron Paul Facebook search results.

[tremendoustie]

I've thought of that, I just hate subterfuge.

but I have started leaving random initials as my 'name' and gobbledygook as an email on those sites that let that work, figuring they'd use a different system if they really cared, so my moral standards are clearly starting to erode.

To me, making a fake name is dishonest -- but just typing "anonymous", "gobbledygook", or some such is not. You're clearly not trying to convince anyone that that's your real name or contact info.

[malkusm]

That's totally cool. No skin of my back to create a Facebook group for my area too. The problem is that Facebook doesn't support search for groups by zip code, so if we had 2000 local Ron Paul meetup groups, it might get hard for people to find them in the Facebook search. Not sure what the results would look like. Whereas on meetup.com anything Ron Paul for 84101 will come up and be easy to find instead of searching though 2000 Ron Paul Facebook search results.

Which is exactly where this comes in:


Here they are: http://freedomatlas.org/

(Note: Please do not use Internet Explorer with this.)

[Maltheus]

We still have around 260 in our group, but nobody other than the core members show up anymore. I guess it doesn't help that our group changed it's name to be more generic in the hopes of attracting both Johnson and Paul supporters. I tried to get them to change it back, but nobody wanted to. Maybe I'll eventually just have to start up a competing group that focuses exclusively on Paul. Or maybe I just need to wait until later in the cycle (still a bit early).

Actually, I think a lot of it has to do with meetup.com removing the 'Maybe' option from RSVPs. Libertarians are non-committal types who don't like saying yes outright. And people aren't going to show up to meetings if they don't see anyone else RSVPing. Most of our RSVPs used to be maybes, with about twice as many people actually showing up.

I do plan to use facebook to complement meetup this time around, but too many people in this movement will not feel comfortable syncing their personal account to a political movement. So I don't see it as a replacement.

[Deborah K]

Here's our local meet-up group:

http://www.meetup.com/ronpaul-93/

[tangent4ronpaul]

Meetup = cost
Facebook = Free

have not found anything on meetup that facebook can't do

Meetup = $2 a month, if done right.
Facebook = free

What can Meetup do that Facebook can't?

Find me a group located within 25/50/100 miles interested in this topic
Groups near me I may be interested in
Anyone can add an event to the calender
Schedule recurring events without having to create a new event page for each
Rate group and events
Sell tickets
etc.

That's just off the top of my mind.

Facebook is orientated toward online communications on specific issues and one off events.
Meetup is oriented toward F2F get together and recurring events.

-t

[malkusm]

Here's our local meet-up group:

http://www.meetup.com/ronpaul-93/

Thanks Deborah - your group is already listed on my atlas :)

As for Facebook being able to facilitate groups, which has been addressed in several posts here - I think you have to step away from looking at it as "what is the best way to organize all the groups?" Ultimately, groups are going to do whatever their organizers decide is best. In some cases that will be Meetup, and in other cases that will be Facebook. The goal of my map, I think, is to bridge the gap that will inevitably exist between the two, and allow interested activists to find groups easily across multiple platforms. It also solves the "zipcode" problem of Facebook - it's very easy to find a group within a certain distance via a Google Map suited for the task!

[tangent4ronpaul]

I think it is time to start again. I have had my meetup out there for since yesterday and not 1 person has joined. Salt Lake had probably 160+ members this time last cycle. They have a Ron Paul 2012 meetup in the neighboring county with about 160 members, but it looks like joining the meetup has been disabled. I hope the official campaign is not responsible for this...that is telling people not to create local grassroots organizations. All the money we gave to the campaign could not equate to even 1/10 of the benefit given to Ron Paul by the local blood, sweet and tears put in last year. There is heart in the local efforts. Sending your donation check off is fine, but there are many people who have more time than money, and they certainly have the passion. I just don't get what gives. Yes, we need to contact the campaign and let them know we'd like them to promote local groups again. I don't care if it's through meetup or facebook. Whatever. That's not the point here.

Michael,

Meetup is supposed to contact people "looking for a ron paul meetup" and it looks like this doesn't appear to be happening. Similar problems popped up with a couple of the recreated Iowa Meetups, though one in S. Cali seems to be growing quite well. Part of the problem may be tagging. The old ones were tagged "ron paul", though a new hierarchy of "ron paul 2012" popped up that doesn't find tons of "ron paul" ones. Also, some moved to "C4L" and may no longer match "ron paul", I haven't tried a search for "ron paul 2008".

If we have a tagging issue, we really need to figure it out, as it will effect every new Meetup.

Also, as you were an organizer for the old http://ronpaul.meetup.com/365/ Meetup, I would think that you, Spencer or Ronald would have a sign in list from your Meetup with supporters names, e-mails and phone numbers. If so, start contacting them! At a minimum, at least one of you should have contact info for your old assistant organizers: Ben, Chris, Jeremy, Kim, Rogee, Sarah, Simon and Tyvel. That's a good enough sized core group to start doing something, like tabling or banner making and invite a reporter from a local community paper to do a story on your group. That's free publicity and you can start growing again. You can also print up something and put them on bulletin boards in local grocery stores, laundromats, coffee shops (Oh, Wait! - this is UT - n/m!), etc. advertizing your group.

Post something about it in the UT state Facebook group and maybe craigslist, etc. Tabling gun shows generally gets a lot of support too.

What is the Meetup in the neighboring county? Maybe we can contact the organizer and find out what's up.

btw: you had 256 members at your peak.

Good luck with it!

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

That's totally cool. No skin of my back to create a Facebook group for my area too. The problem is that Facebook doesn't support search for groups by zip code, so if we had 2000 local Ron Paul meetup groups, it might get hard for people to find them in the Facebook search. Not sure what the results would look like. Whereas on meetup.com anything Ron Paul for 84101 will come up and be easy to find instead of searching though 2000 Ron Paul Facebook search results.

Yes, findability is a huge issue!

One thing that becomes apparent very quickly with tools like the NPA-Nxx lookup or wikipedia's disambiguate is that county and city names are not unique. Some are, but when you start looking at names with words like valley, spring. lake, and so on, in them sometimes you come up with a bunch of places named the same thing in different states.

As to freedomatlas, how is that going to be updated? Facebook does not tell you when a new Ron Paul group is created. Meetup does. How are you going to find them?

Naming conventions are also not standard. Even on Meetup, with out zip lookup, you'd think mycity RP meetup, but sometimes it's mycounty rp meetup, or central state RP meetup, or northern coastal rp meetup, or even for liberty northern meetup. How are you going to find those on Facebook, especially if there are 2, 4 or even 6,000 local groups with Ron Paul in their names?

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

puuuuurect example of messed up group names...:

The Ron Paul I-10 & Marina; "1 mi off exit 61" Meetup Group

At least is has RP in the name, but say you are on Facebook looking for a local group and THAT is it!

ICK!

-t

[tangent4ronpaul]

bump in repy to another facebook is free post

[Laura Cole]

...though one in S. Cali seems to be growing quite well.

Thank you for noticing.

If you live in the Orange County, CA area please consider one or both of the following Meetup.com pages:

http://www.meetup.com/Ron-Paul-2012-South-Orange-County/
http://www.meetup.com/ronpaul-59/

We're now holding weekly events and will continue to do so throughout the year.

[mconder]

OK...That's better. 5 new members joined our meetup yesterday.