Hey. Chad here coming to you over the digital Airwaves on the 1% Better podcast.  I've just come back from a Meetup. Yes, that kind of Meetup. It's not just for singles looking to find a date or sleazy [00:00:30] networkers trying to push their business on you. I have been a Meetup organizer and a Meetup attendee i think as long as I have been in New York City, so probably close to eight years now. And it didn't take long for me after having gone to my first couple of Meetups to want to organize my own. 

[00:00:53] The meet up I went to tonight was the first Meetup organized by a woman named Jill [00:01:00] for visual thinking or visual thinkers. These are the people that you might have seen that different conferences or meetings or workshops who are visually capturing all of the ideas maybe on some easels or whiteboards and by the end they have this amazing visual representation of what's happened. 

[00:01:25]This Meetup was fantastic because I've really wanted to work [00:01:30] on my own visualization of ideas. I'm very good at writing lists and and things like that, but when it comes to representing ideas visually in a in a fast handwritten manner, that's not something I'm actually really very comfortable doing it all. 

[00:01:49] So where did I go to try and get better? I went to Meetup. Sure enough, I did some searching and found this Meetup group that had started and they had a [00:02:00] meet up this week. I show up there's five or six of us and we get right to practicing together different, you know, visual thinking practices. 

[00:02:14] And so with just the time it takes to commute and then meet and then come back. [00:02:19] I've already begun a New Journey towards developing my my visual thinking. 

[00:02:28]If you live in a big city like New York, [00:02:30] there's probably far too many meetups than you could ever go to but if you're in a smaller City, I'd encourage you to search as well. There's new meetups that are starting every single week, the best part is if you aren't finding one you can start one yourself.   So I shared with you a meet-up that I discovered and went to this week but a meet-up that I've decided to organize is a New York City design thinking Meetup Where I'm [00:03:00] trying to build a community of like-minded design thinkers to come together share best practices learn together and then practice.  It's far easier than you think and even free to start organizing your own events meet up does a fantastic job of promoting new meetups and once you've chosen the title of your Meetup and given it. A unique description meet up blasts it out to everyone that is interested in [00:03:30] everything that you've put in as your tags and keywords.

[00:03:33] And before you know, it sometimes even that same day you'll have people starting to sign up for the Meetup group and asking you. Hey, when's the first event?

[00:03:43]I love meet ups for two reasons one there in person. You really can't beat getting together and learning and practicing together. In the second thing is everyone is already [00:04:00] self-selecting into the topic or knowledge area that you're also interested in so you could get as specific as. 17th century French literature enthusiasts and you can have a book club around that or it could be a node js developers or it could be a tabletop Gamers and that's precisely one meet up that that I started [00:04:30] just two years ago and it has over a thousand members today.

[00:04:34]With meet up I feel like you have no excuse to not start building your own Community around whatever it is. You want to learn and get better at you don't even have to be an expert practitioner in whatever it is. If you start the group, it will attract those people to the group and you can have them be the ones that teach you and everyone else in the [00:05:00] Meetup.  I cannot recommend meetups highly enough. The the digital platform is very easy to use when it comes to posting events connecting to calendars messaging your fellow members. And it's also really fantastic Discovery platform where if you've got a free night coming up next week and you want to try something new search on meetup.com, and I'm sure you'll find something that you can really dive [00:05:30] into.

[00:05:31] So I'm curious if anyone else is a meet-up organizer, I would love to connect with you or you know, what an interesting recent meet up that you've been to was. You can text me or leave a message at 917.971.3737 thanks for sharing.