Local HubPages Meetups

In January 2011 HubPages announced Local Meetups, allowing anyone to volunteer organizing their own local meetings where Hubbers can meet and socialize.

Since then we have had local monthly meetings for the past year where a few Hubbers from the local area get together to share useful ideas and experiences. It's a great way to socialize, learn new tricks, and meet other Hubbers on a personal level.

Known as HubMeets, it uses a new platform called "Meetup Everywhere" offered by Meetup.com to allow anyone to create free local communities. Meetup provides the resources for member to sign up and RSVP for events, as well as post news on upcoming events.

Normally meetup organizers pay a fee for organizing and running their groups. But Meetup Everywhere is free, so Hubbers don't need to pay for running their own local group.

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I was interested in meeting other local Hubbers to have the opportunity to chat with them about anything related to our experience writing on HubPages. After all, that's why HP decided to make local meetups available to Hubbers.

So I stepped up to the plate and decided to get one going in my area. I clicked on the link Robin posted in her Forum post and proceeded to create a HubMeet group for Long Island, NY.

My first discovery was that "Meetup Everywhere" had some bugs in this new platform. My group defaulted to New York, NY. That’s a difference of 60 miles. I see in the Forum and in the HubMeet comments that some other Hubbers had the same problem. One who did very well with attracting members had the worst problem with the wrong default location. Greg Boudonck (Froggy213) made a HubMeet group for St Louis, Missouri, which defaulted to a city in Illinois. A totally different State! One Hubber didn’t know where she should go for their first HubMeet!

A week before my HubMeet I contacted Meetup Headquarters about the error with wrong locations. They told me that "The Meetup Everywhere platform selects your location by default. In some cases it selects a location different than where you intend."

That's not acceptable. But they worked with me on it. Several emails later with tech support to clarify the issue, they made a quick fix. They added an edit button so we can change the group name and specify the correct location.

So if you start you own group, make sure you verify where your group is listed and change it if you need to. That's really the only major problem I encountered.

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I chose a place that sold food and had free WiFi so we could have lunch and use our laptops or iPods to check out our HubPages accounts.

Our first HubMeet was very successful and most importantly, it was fun. We had six people sign up for the group. Four men who said they were coming and two women who left comments expressing their interest. Why did only the men attend? We want women writers to get involved too.

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The attendees as shown left to right in the picture were Bob, Rich, Jeff and myself (Glenn). The focus of our discussion was based on brainstorming ideas to write hubs about. Everyone participated.

I discovered something interesting. Writers definitely have loads of things to talk about. And we don’t hesitate to share our feelings. I think that’s great!

Bob spoke about his first hub and explained how difficult he is finding it to complete other hubs. That's something most writers deal with.

Rich told us about his interest in research and writing about his ideas. I found that he likes to ask questions that make people think. He hit us with interesting thoughts to contemplate.

We quickly discovered that Jeff had a lot to offer in our HubMeet discussion. He also expressed interest in putting his thoughts into writing.

Then there was me. Well, speaking for myself, I like to make my endeavors become successful, although I'm not always successful at it.

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After several monthly HubMeets, we had a few more members join. Although we have 12 members, only four or five attend any single event.

But we always have so much to discuss that this is just about the right number. Otherwise the discussions get out of hand.

Pictured here from left to right...

Rita Nolan joined by our third meeting. I found Rita’s philosophical discussions of language very enlightening. Her ideas can enhance anyone’s writing.

Rich has been coming to most events and is notorious for feeding us ideas. Any writer stuck with ideas can take any of Rich’s cues and run with it.

Jim Bowden in the back who has been writing on HubPages for seven months. Jim writes informative and well-researched articles on health and personal finance.

Jeff always has a lot to say. He just needs to get down to actually putting it into writing.

That's me again on the right. I always bring a list of idea to use for discussion. I like to keep an ongoing list of latest HubPages announcements to discuss at the HubMeet.

We all have so much energy to share ideas with one another. I think that's great.

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Each one of us always has something to share that the others who attend can put to good use.

The latest of Panda requirements are always a major part of our discussions. There is so much on the Internet, in Google Blogs and other articles, that everyone misses something important. Our HubMeets provide a way to add all our knowledge together so we all benefit from it.

I had shared a number of my own ideas with everyone at the HubMeet, such as the requirement to remove dead links from our Hubs.

Ever since everyone is now being moved into our own subdirectories, many Hubbers are deleting poor performing Hubs because we are all responsible now for our own success. So if we link to other Hubs, we may need to remove those links if those Hubs are deleted. I noticed that we don't always get the "dead link" icon on our hub listing. So we need to look for them.

At one HubMeet, Jim was showing me his list of Hubs in his account on his laptop, when I noticed that he had a lot of unpublished Hubs. He explained to me that by letting them sit there for a while, their score goes up. So I learned from him the trick of starting a new Hub at a higher score than 50, which is where they usually start.

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We welcomed two new members at our 8th HubMeet on February 25th, 2012...

Sue B, who writes mostly about dream interpretation, has a flare for writing interesting and educational Hubs.

And acorn777 (Stuart), who writes photography related articles that are extremely useful for photographers.

In addition, Leesleez (Lee), who had been signed up as a member for some time, was able to join us for the first time. His Saturdays are usually booked, but I hope he continues to join us, as he writes fascinating Hubs with captivating humor.

We now have 16 members. It took a year to get to this level, which goes to show that it takes patience. Slowly but surly, people start noticing in the Forum and by word of mouth.

Our recent meetup was as invigorating as all the prior get-togethers. We discussed some new features HubPages has added in the past month, such as the ability to moderate comments and reply to them all from one page, instead of going into each Hub.

We also discussed the new monetizing link feature that lets one link individual words in a text capsule to a related Amazon item. We talked about the upcoming contest where Hubbers can get cash prizes for asking and answering questions under the Answers tab. We reviewed important search-engine-optimization tips. And we shared some hub-writing success methods.

Everyone was focused on learning from one another and sharing. Most of all, we had fun with the interaction between all of us, and we look forward to the next HubMeet.

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There are a number of Hubbers starting their own local meetups all over the world. Check the Local Meetup Forum for one near you.

I see how beneficial it is to get Hubbers together in the real world and share what is going on. There is so much happening that affects writers on all platforms, new tools for writing, new SEO standards, the new Google Authorship Markup, and so much more.

People do better when joining together and collaborating with their respective acquired knowledge.

Copyright © 2011 Glenn Stok

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See Glenn's interview on his HubMeets in the HubPages blog

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