Introduction

            I am very interested in the idea of on-line community, but I am skeptical that it is possible to build real community without physical meeting, not just on-line communication. Because of this interest I would like to explore the community that is being built through a website called Meetup.com. I recently signed up on this website and joined a group called NW Creatives Social Group. This is a group of people, most of whom work in creative fields, who all have an interest in creative pursuits, art and music. The other thing they have in common, besides living in the Portland area, is a desire to meet other people who share interests.

            The main motivation for building community, as William Morris says, is fellowship, “Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship that ye do them. (Smith 2001)” Based on this idea the Meetup.com groups are communities because their purpose is to bring people with similar interests together for social activities and relationship building. Although Meetup.com is not the usual way that communities are formed, I think that for this very reason it is worth studying.

            It is easy to define membership in this group, because it is self selected. Anyone who chooses to be in this group and signs up for it on the website can join as long as they can meet the creative criteria enforced by the group’s leaders. I am especially interested in the possibility of building community without meeting. I don’t know if this will work, since the goal of this group is to get people together for social “meetups” but that is my interest. We will see how it goes.

Network Map

 

 

            My network map shows the Meetup website in the middle with the members of the group in a circle around it. Each member has a strong link [solid line with arrows pointing both directions] to the website, like spokes on a wheel. In addition each member has a potential link [dotted line with arrows pointing both directions] representing the possible connections that can be made by members outside of the website.

Community Description and Demographics

            In looking at the demographic makeup of the Northwest Creatives Meetup group it was easy to decide on which factors to choose, because the website profiles provide some specific and interesting information. In terms of Gender the makeup of the group is 53% female and 48% male. The location of the members is an important factor, since the group is designed for people to meet in person. More than 93% of members live in the Portland metro area, including Vancouver. About 4% live in other parts of Oregon or Washington; while less than 3% of the members live outside the region, including a member in London and one in Maryland. The members of the group who live outside the local region seem to either be visiting Portland at some point or they travel to Portland for other reasons.

1. Gender of members

2. Location of members

            One of the requirements for membership in this group is being active in a creative pursuit, so it seems logical to look at the occupations of the members. It is a diverse group, in this area at least: 21% of the members, the largest single demographic group, I have classified as Other. The occupations that fall into this category range from lawyer to painter. I have included all occupations that had three or fewer members in the group: teachers, fashion designers, animators and many other occupations, including an admissions representative from the Portland Art Institute are included in this group. The next two largest groups are graphic designers (20%) and Photographers (12%).

3. Creative occupations of members

            In addition I was able to track the length of time that members active in the last six months had been members of the group and the number of other Meetup groups they belong to. Both of these factors prove interesting. Nearly 58% of the members joined the group within the last year. Nearly 20% joined the group in 2011 and the percentage drops off quickly after that. The group has only been around since 2007 with only two members from that time still active. I was amazed at the number of other Meetup groups that members belong to, about one in four (25%) belong to more than ten other Meetups with the highest number being 43, with the number of emails and postings that I have to keep up with in just one group I don’t see how they do it.

4. Length of time as Meetup member

 

5. Number of other Meetup groups