Hackathons, although fun and a great way to work with cool people you wouldn't do normally, is not cheap.
A weekend hackathon I attended costed them 50k AUD... Absolutely NUTS.
Finding space and the people are the two hardest elements.
Space is extremely expensive, thus without sponsors, it'd be quite difficult starting out. So cafes, restaurants or public spaces are the only option. However, much time is spent simply scoping out the places to see what capacity they'd hold.
People is the next difficulty. If your city isn't large, you'd probably not find people at all. Advertising is a massive chore, and finding which communities contain your interest groups AND have people in the area is time consuming.
Personally, I do not thinking hosting is worth it, unless there's absolutely nothing else nearby. If there's already a book club, just join that and chill. Leave the hosting stress to someone else if possible
That's why many hackathons are hosted in universities, schools or other facilities like that. It's quite easy to get hold of someone like minded there and get a set of rooms over the weekend.
Meetups are extremely variable in attendance. There's always a minimum flake rate. Spaces like restaurants or cafes do not like it if you'd book for 20 and Max 10 showed up. That's a good way to not be welcome again.
So places that can accommodate variable people is better. However, that does mean more time scoping out the capacity at the general time of the meeting. Going there 8am is irrelevant when the meetups at 7pm.
The atmosphere and ambience is important as well. A venue with insane echo is atrocious, or one a bit too busy. Too noisy in terms of the crowd or the music speakers are directly above the tables. For conversational meetups, these are make or break things.
So all this time and effort is just to maximise the probability of success. Despite all this, a fucking monsoon hits an hour before your event. Nobody is coming and you'd be there, at the venue, all alone with several tables connected... The most miserable position.
And I'm not even started with actually hosting the event, with different personalities, mix between people who know each other and those who don't. You know how 3's a crowd? Well, a crowd becomes a separated tribe in meetups and tend only to really interact between each other...
Bruh, the entire point of the Meetup is to meet OTHER people. They could just go out for lunch if they only wanted to chill by themselves. So part of the hosting game is integrating everyone together, whether it's the solo, couple or group. And make sure there's no flame wars as people believe in different shit and have wildly different reactions to what's said.
You know the book, how to make friends and influence people. Need another edition for how to meet up and host an event without everything burning up!
Just hanging out with three people is normal behaviour; sometimes the three of you are just having the craic and that's fine. That's being social. No one is being hurt.
Hosts that have a notion of how people "should" behave and then try to force everyone into this are just the worst.
A weekend hackathon I attended costed them 50k AUD... Absolutely NUTS.
Finding space and the people are the two hardest elements.
Space is extremely expensive, thus without sponsors, it'd be quite difficult starting out. So cafes, restaurants or public spaces are the only option. However, much time is spent simply scoping out the places to see what capacity they'd hold.
People is the next difficulty. If your city isn't large, you'd probably not find people at all. Advertising is a massive chore, and finding which communities contain your interest groups AND have people in the area is time consuming.
Personally, I do not thinking hosting is worth it, unless there's absolutely nothing else nearby. If there's already a book club, just join that and chill. Leave the hosting stress to someone else if possible