Meetup is a community platform that has global value - what are some of the technology development and the user adoption challenges you face because of this? Were there any surprises or insights gained (post-rollout) that required rethinking?
CTO @ Meetup. She leads the engineering team with a focus on continuous learning, iterating, and using data to launch software that brings people together around the world to do what matters to them.
There are so, so many global considerations to take into account when rolling out internationally. We have an international team dedicated to this that we always wish we can invest more and more resources into because it's so important.
Whether it's translation and localization of content and layout (for languages that are up and down or right to left), making sure our mapping software works in other countries (a huge thing we run into), making sure we support local organizers in creating good local meetup content in their native languages, SEO, or supporting payment types in every country (there are so many!).
But even fundamental things to our platform we've had to re-think as we've grown internationally. For example, the fundamental unit of our platform, the RSVP, isn't even a word or concept in most countries outside the US. So, we have to re-think important things all the time and take them into account as we're designing new features.
Meetup is a community platform that has global value - what are some of the technology development and the user adoption challenges you face because of this? Were there any surprises or insights gained (post-rollout) that required rethinking?
There are so, so many global considerations to take into account when rolling out internationally. We have an international team dedicated to this that we always wish we can invest more and more resources into because it's so important.
Whether it's translation and localization of content and layout (for languages that are up and down or right to left), making sure our mapping software works in other countries (a huge thing we run into), making sure we support local organizers in creating good local meetup content in their native languages, SEO, or supporting payment types in every country (there are so many!).
But even fundamental things to our platform we've had to re-think as we've grown internationally. For example, the fundamental unit of our platform, the RSVP, isn't even a word or concept in most countries outside the US. So, we have to re-think important things all the time and take them into account as we're designing new features.
Great answer