There’s a new Philly tech meetup … kinda

You may have noticed efforts to rejuvenate meetups and networking events post-pandemic as a way to reconnect the tech community in Philadelphia. The recently launched Philly Tech Calendar, for example, rounds up tech events in the city for people who want to plug in.

Another newcomer: Technology Happy Hour Philadelphia. Kinda. Allow us to explain.

A few weeks ago, a member of Technical.ly’s public Slack wrote this:

“Absolute power move to bogart an abandoned Technically Philly Meetup account for its 12.3k member list, switch out the name and logo and host an event for the first time in 2.5 years.”

Indeed, the Meetup.com group in question hadn’t posted new activity since May 2021, when we were promoting the virtual edition Philly Tech Week 2021 presented by Comcast. (Remember virtual events?)

Marketing pro Brett Silver told Technical.ly this week that he’d been thinking about hosting a networking meetup for tech when he happened to notice Meetup sent a message to members of Technical.ly’s group looking for a new organizer.

Meetup has an option for current organizers to nominate a new organizer, but if the organizer chooses not to do that, a group is inactive, or the organizer stops paying for the subscription, Meetup.com will send a notice to all the members of a group and give 30 days for a new organizer to step up and take over before the group is closed.

Silver figured, why not take over the group that already had over 12,000 members?

For Technical.ly’s part, CEO Chris Wink said we didn’t intentionally drop the Meetup group, and he did not receive any notification that the group had changed organizers.

In any case, Silver is hosting a happy hour for technologists at Drinker’s Pub from 5 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 6. You can register on the now-Technology Happy Hour Philadelphia Meetup page here.

Silver said he’s run many different meetups and networking events over the years for different industries, including tech. He’s not expecting many people who attend this event will have heard about it from Meetup; other websites and social media are more popular for sharing events these days, he said.

However, if tonight’s event goes well and people show up, Silver said he plans to continue posting events using the group.

And all you meetup organizers out there, be sure to keep tabs on your group.

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.