Ian Lewis' Blog

Update! You can see pictures of me eating canned Oden on Chris and Lisa's blog. It was pretty gross but it was an experience. No one wanted to try it so I had to

Last Saturday Reiko and I went on a tour of Akihabara with the Tokyo Japanese-English Language and Culture Meetup. The assistant organizer for the meetup, Asako, planned out a pretty interesting trip for everyone. I guess she wanted us to see all the fantastic, and strange places in Akihabara, so we went to two maid cafes, a cosplay costume shop, and and finally an adult department shop. They were some pretty strange destinations but all in all it was pretty fun.

Well this Sunday is my birthday and my friend Emily is coming from the 'States so I imagine I'll be pretty busy this weekend. Though, I don't know if someone is coming to meet Emily or not...

Just spent the 4th with my friends from the Japanese Meetup Group. We went to Lake Fairfax to see the fireworks and picnic outside. I went early at 10am to grab a table but by that time they were already all taken.

The weather was good in the morning and I got a bit of sun which I don't necessarily concider a bad thing though I wouldn't want to do it too often. But after noon it turned sour and poured down rain for probably a good hour. I didn't really pay attention to how long it was. I was busy trying to salvage stuff.

Though we had to suffer through the rain, everything turned out all right in the end. After the rain it wasn't so crowded and we managed to get a table with a good view for the fireworks to round out the day.

For a while now I've been going to local Japanese meetups (set up on meetup.com) to practice Japanese and I recently started going to a local Linux meetup. I enjoy meetups and it's given me a chance to meet some folks that I wouldn't otherwise meet.

Unfortunately meetup.com is going to start charging group organizers a fee per group that they organize ($9 for existing groups for 2005; after that $19). Both the Washington DC Japanese meetup and Northern Virginia Japanese meetup are mature groups with many regular members so splitting costs might be relatively easy or not an issue at all. But the Linux meetup is only 3 or so people right now so it's not really worth paying money to continue to go. It's also hard to attract new members or organizers if you tell them that they have to pay dues or something. I'm thinking established meetups may survive this but fledgeling meetups and new meetups will suffer greatly. No one is going to take the risk of paying $19 a month to start a meetup that may not succeed.

My personal opinion is that this is a money making scheme for sure. The changes page at meetup.com says "How was this decision made? We polled thousands of Organizers, met them in many cities, and listened to you online. We chose the path that keeps Meetup.com most focused on you". I think that's bullplop. I'm sure noone said "Charge us $20 a month for this great service!" No. I worked it out and if half the meetup groups pay the 2005 fee ($9) and half drop then meetup.com would make about a million dollars a month. I wonder if that's reasonable. Their yearly income would be like a 10th of what my software company of 500+ employees makes in a year. I wonder if it really requires that much money to run a database web application, mail some materials, and pay the salaries of 20 or so people.

I think Meetup.com just spelled it's doom and the doom of the meetup groups that I go to. Thanks a lot. I hope they revise their thinking.

I just got back from the meetup. It was pretty awesome because four new people showed up this time. It's still pretty obvious how bad I am compared to everyone else that comes. I tend to not be able to follow along very well and even when I can I'm not really able to say what I want to. I get discouraged easily and that too is a little too obvious. On top of that I'm not a real social kind of guy. All I can say is that I'll try better next time. がんばります！