Hey DevOps community! 👋
I need to share something that's been brewing for a while, and it's time to get real with you all.
The Meetup.com Journey
We've been using Meetup.com for the Collabnix community for almost a decade now. And honestly? Meetup has been fantastic for what it does - creating events, getting those RSVPs, building that initial community momentum. But here's where the story gets interesting (and frustrating).
The Pain Points Nobody Talks About
Let me walk you through what organizing a community event actually looks like:
Finding Venues: Every. Single. Time. It's the same struggle. Where do we host this meetup? Who do we reach out to? Is there space available? What are the facilities? You're basically starting from scratch each time, maintaining your own spreadsheet of contacts.
The Sponsor Hunt: I'm not even talking about big-money sponsors here. Just someone who can help with food and beverages for our community members who show up after work, hungry and ready to learn. Where do you find food sponsors? Seriously, where? There's no directory, no systematic approach.
Speaker Management: We open a CFP (Call for Papers), publish it somewhere, cross our fingers, and wait. Hoping speakers will somehow stumble upon it and fill out their details. There's no proper speaker hub like speakershub.com. No centralized system to manage proposals, communicate with speakers, or track their requirements.
The Email Hell: Most of our coordination happens through email threads. Try finding that one caterer's email from three months ago. Or that venue contact who helped us last time. Good luck digging through hundreds of emails.
The Hard Truth: There's honestly no platform that helps you find event catering easily. No single effective platform for venue discovery. No integrated system for sponsor management.
Platforms vs. Operating Systems
Here's what hit me: Event platforms help you PUBLISH events. They don't help you RUN events.
Platforms like Luma? Beautiful for publishing and getting the word out. But they stop right there. They don't solve the CORE problems we face as organizers:
- How do I find a venue?
- How do I manage my speaker pipeline?
- How do I coordinate with sponsors?
- How do I handle catering logistics?
- How do I keep all communication in one place?
Everything remains fragmented. Scattered. Chaotic.
Introducing Convene: An Event Operating System
So here's the news I'm excited to share: The Collabnix community spent the last 8 months working closely with the Intelliconvene team. Together, we've built something fundamentally different.
Convene isn't just another event publishing platform.
Think of it as an Event Operating System - a complete infrastructure layer for running community events. Everything you need:
- 🏢 Venue discovery and management
- 🎤 Speaker hub and CFP management
- 🤝 Sponsor coordination
- 🍕 Catering logistics
- 💬 Centralized communication
- 📊 Analytics and insights
All in one place. No more juggling between Meetup, Google Sheets, Gmail, Slack, and a dozen other tools.
The Transition
We'll be gradually moving the Collabnix community to Convene. This isn't a rushed migration - we're doing this thoughtfully because we respect the community we've built over the years.
We've already announced our first event on Convene: https://intelliconvene.com/events/694f82a94d41b3d423f4f0c6
Built By Organizers, For Organizers
Here's what makes this different: This was built by people who've lived the pain. We've organized hundreds of Docker and Kubernetes meetups globally across our 17,000+ member community on Slack and Discord. We know what keeps organizers up at night because we ARE those organizers.
This isn't a product team guessing at what event organizers need. This is organizers building the tool they wish they'd had all along.
What's Next?
I'll be sharing more details about:
- How the transition will work
- Feature deep-dives
- Tips for other community organizers
- Lessons learned from 8 months of building this
For now, I'm just excited to finally have a solution to problems we've been wrestling with for years.
If you're a community organizer dealing with the same fragmented workflow, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What's your biggest pain point in organizing events?
Let's build better tools for our communities, together.
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