We run meetups for systems programmers [0] and have mostly addressed these challenges.

> 1. Finding space to have events

Talk to a coffee shop owner. Promise them your group will (reliably) order drinks or snacks. In exchange, every month we get an area "cordoned off" just for us.

> 2. Ensuring that people who said “I’m going” actually end up going.

Aside from sending a general newsletter, I personally ping and catch up with individuals. This is a lot of work. It pays off when they evangelize your event on your behalf.

> 3. Bootstrapping groups such that when I stumble upon The Offline Club, I can signup for something relevant to me, happening a short time from now.

See #2

> 4. Keeping organizers willing to continue hosting events

That's tougher. However, if the event is specialized/niche/unique enough, the organizers will be conferred high social status by the community.

> 5. Keeping away organizers who see it as lead gen for their sales job

Mmm, could we define sales job? On the business front, the meetups are used to promote our (indie) conferences. The meetup groups don't mind when I ask them to buy a ticket. They can just say no and we're not pushy about it.

[0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups

There's a meetup dynamic which has previously been explained to me, it goes something like this: someone starts a meetup where a mix of cool people and weirdos show up, the events continue until the ratio gets really bad which causes the cool people to splinter off into their own private group. I wonder if this product is able to escape that pattern.

Is there any reasonable non-commercial replacement for Meetup on the horizon?

I used to go to some hiking and bike riding meetups years ago, and those types obviously don't end up as sales events, but they still had issues with the weird Meetup system where people "had to" take charge of groups and pay somehow etc.

I remember that every time I had taken part in one of those groups, the next time it was somehow some slightly different variation of the same group under a different name that I had to find using their search. All just for the internal workings and politics of the Meetup system.

One thing I’ve noticed with Meetup is that a lot of events went virtual during Covid, then never went back. When I go there it seems like so many things near me are simply Zoom meetings, which I have no interest in.

I understand needing that during that period, but it seems like if they want to get back to the real purpose of the site, they need to do away with that option.

> 2. Ensuring that people who said “I’m going” actually end up going.

Super interested in how people solved/compensated for this problem. The approach I've found works best is to make the event, basically, "open-doors" (i.e., the RSVP is not actually required, chance attendees always welcome), and hope for the best. Someone mentioned personally messaging people but, well, that's a lot of work for something not my dayjob.

Been hosting a weekly meet-up for over a year now and there are some factors which I think contribute to this problem:

A. We set-up an auto-recurring meet-up event. People sign-up for the events happening within the next month; hence they fill-up quickly. However, as more people discover the event, they find them already fully-booked. These people end up booking for the waitlist and/or the next events that are not yet full (i.e., event slots more than one month ahead). This creates a negative feedback loop. (This January, I had sign-ups for up to May!)

B. With a long waitlist from [A] people who signed-up would tend to cancel last-minute. At that point the people in the waitlist have made other plans already and end up a no-show or just canceling too, sometimes after they already got a slot. This, again, creates a negative feedback loop.

This year, aside from open-doors policy, I've started overbooking the event on purpose to combat [B]. It's sort of effective though every week I'm playing the airline overbooking problem. This calendar year, I've only been "overbooked" once. I'm also, naturally, wary of first-timers who might be a nuisance (e.g. but not only: parent's [5] but s/organizers/attendees/) but so far I wouldn't really say that has been a problem. Maybe the type of our meet-up organically filters for it (we're an art hobby group and if you can't sit still just trying to draw for 2h, or are not interested at all in learning about art and drawing, you will have a very awkward 2h).

It definitely has things in common with meetup.com. But it looks meaningfully distinct to me because the appear to specifically have some kind of strong preference against connected devices. Honestly, I've been wishing for things in this vein recently because of the feeling that our world is growing too superficial with our faces buried in phones and being fed by addictive algorithms.

That being said, I think you're right about some of the challenges that an effort like this will encounter.