Proposal: Replace Meetups Pro with Ansible Forum & Pretix

[gundalow]

@rfc2549

As a meetup organizer, I want to say that this was predictable with the enshittification trajectory of meetup.com (2024: https://www.meetup.com/blog/recent-changes-and-a-look-toward-the-future/)

Yes, there’s been steady (and sometimes rapid) decline of the meetup platform. I talk with other Meetup and Meetup Pro organisers (many outside of tech) and they see the same. The reason we moved to Meetup Pro a few years ago, was due to the previous investment, and (perceived) network effect, that no longer holds true.

@rfc2549

My main concern about this is the network effect: just getting people to sign up is a huge barrier.
A bit like how the community was splintered post-freenode or how everything is on GitHub because everyone is on GitHub, unfortunately, but I digress.

While you talk about different types of platforms (chat and version control), I think these are exactly the right ways to think about that. The community made the very deliberate decision to have the Forum as the central place, the continues from Proposal: Consolidating Ansible discussion platforms

@rfc2549

I don’t have a good solution to this and I am not familiar with pretix, but I would at least seek out a way to unify the login SSO-like with the Forum or something like that. Otherwise an option I don’t see here is the same platform that FOSDEM and cfgmgmtcamp use: pretalx.

pretix and pretalx are two distinct, open-source software projects built by the same creators to handle different stages of running an event. This proposal is to use pretix for RSVP process. Ansible Meetups don’t require Call for Paper (CFP) systems, the forum works well.

Pretix is what CfgMgmtCamp, various Python and lots of other European events use for ticket management.

@rfc2549 I’d be interested in hearing more about your ideas and concerns here. Specifically, why do you feel someone should be able to register for an Ansible event without an Ansible Forum account?