Meetups Are NOT For Education!

If you're attending meetups to learn the depths of a technology, you're probably wasting your time.

Having spent over five years participating in and contributing to tech communities, one thing I have learned about myself is that I absolutely love meetups! I thoroughly enjoy meeting new people, striking up new conversations, discussing new ideas, and everything meetups enable. Part of this journey has been understanding what meetups can and can’t do. For the most part, (tech) meetups allow you to gain awareness of many new concepts, ideas, solutions, and more.

Lately, however, I have observed lots of people attending meetups for the purpose of education. Unfortunately, among all the things meetups enable, “education” is not always the outcome. This is an opinionated statement, of course. However, it is the one I shall discuss in our issue today.

What meetups can and cannot enable

Before I can explain my perspective, I must demonstrate what the standard tech community meetup looks like. In my experience so far, the following structure encompasses the majority of tech meetups today:

• Upto 4 sessions (talks, presentations, panels, etc.), each ranging from 25 to 45 minutes in duration

• A shared meal

• Meet-and-greet networking time

Most tech meetups follow a similar structure as the one mentioned above.

In this sort of structure, a meetup can enable the following:

• Interaction and networking between attendees

• Conversations and discussions on the theme

• Demonstration of projects and solutions

• Awareness of new technical concepts

There is no doubt that these are all wonderful outcomes. However, meetups are not without their drawbacks. Here is what a meetup cannot enable:

• Deeper investigation into the tech (constrained by time and context)

• Practical experience in implementing the tech (constrained by pedagogy)

Both the points mentioned are necessary when we talk about technical education. You see unless a meetup is structured in the style of a workshop, focusing on one specific concept from start to end, featuring theory and implementation alike. However, when most people think they have learned something from a meetup, they often confuse awareness with education.

Education vs awareness, what’s the difference?

In the context of meetups, awareness and education are similar concepts but serve different purposes and involve different depths of engagement and understanding.

The main goal of awareness is to make people conscious or informed about an issue, concept, or fact. It’s about bringing attention to something and generally involves a basic level of understanding. It’s more about exposure to information rather than deep comprehension. An example is my talk on building AI-enabled apps with .NET MAUI and Azure AI Vision, which touches on the fundamentals of both these technologies and opens up new possibilities. Meetups will almost always enable awareness by this definition.

Education aims to provide detailed knowledge and skills through structured teaching. It’s focused not just on knowledge but also on understanding, application, and analysis. Education involves a deeper level of engagement with content, often including theories, principles, practices, and hands-on learning. An example is my talk on building a calculator app with Xamarin.Forms, featuring an end-to-end live-coding experience to showcase more of the nitty-gritty of the technology. Meetups will almost never enable education by this definition.

Please note that these differences do not indiciate whether one is more important than the other. They both have their own significance and necessity.

Are meetups worth your time?

With this, the question that now arises is whether meetups are worth attending or not. Unfortunately, most meetups will not make the cut if your primary need is education. You’re better off reading a book, reviewing documentation, and working on a side project.

If that primary need changes to networking, awareness, or engagement, meetups are still very valuable. At the end of the day, it comes down to your purpose at a meetup. However, please ensure that your reasons are right, lest you waste your time seeking the wrong outcome, even with the correct set of people.