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Welcome to Local Bitcoiners, a podcast about Bitcoin meetups.

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In our first episode, Reid and Rev talk about their meetups, the Western Mass Bitcoin meetup

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and the South Bend, Indiana Bitcoin meetup.

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Alright, we're live.

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I guess we're not live.

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We're recording now.

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How's it going, Rev?

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Hey, Reid.

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Yeah, it's the first one.

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Local Bitcoiners, episode one.

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Pilot episode, baby.

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Let's go.

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I'm Rev Motel.

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You can find me on Noster.

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That's where I hang out.

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And then all of the various group chats, which is, as you'll, if you listen to this podcast

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moving forward, you'll find out that the group chats are an essential component to Bitcoin

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meetups.

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But yeah, this is Local Bitcoiners.

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This is a Bitcoin podcast about Bitcoin meetups.

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Hell yeah.

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Yeah, and I'm Reid. I run the Western Mass Bitcoin Meetup.

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I'm pretty excited. I think that this is, you know, I think our concept here is to start a podcast where we are talking to, I think, pretty much exclusively Bitcoin meetup organizers.

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There's, you know, Bitcoin meetups are such a lively place that you can find the real grassroots Bitcoin adoption.

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And that's one of the things I love about meetups.

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So yeah, I'm pretty pumped for this podcast,

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pretty pumped for this first episode.

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And I'm so happy that you're here to join

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and that we can go on this little adventure together.

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Yeah, it's going to be great.

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You know, the world needs to hear about Bitcoin meetups

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on a regular basis, the Bitcoin culture and community.

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Bitcoin meetups have been one of the ways

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that I've been able to access a lot more value

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from my Bitcoin and my participation in the Bitcoin culture and community.

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And so, yeah, I run the South Bend, Indiana meetup.

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I suppose I'm hoping that as more people listen,

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if they've got a meetup, that they give us a little boost

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and do a little advertisement for their meetup

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so we can read it off here at the beginning.

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And hopefully we'll remember to do it at the end too,

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just so people know what's out there.

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And if they're listening and there's something nearby,

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they can go make the decision to show up and see what's going on.

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And so I run the South Bend, Indiana meetup with Bitcoin Account,

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and that's the first Thursday of every month at Lang Lab in South Bend.

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Our next meetup is Thursday, February 5th, so at 6 p.m.

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And that's 6 p.m. Eastern time.

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So if you're in the South Bend, Indiana area

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and you want to come hang out at Lang Lab with Bitcoin Account and I,

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we will be there talking about Bitcoin.

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Sweet. Yeah, actually, you know, I meant to ask you about the time zone thing

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because you guys are pretty close to the line there, right?

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Yeah, there can be some confusion on whether it's Central Time or Eastern Time.

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Yeah, I figured it was a good sign that we both showed up at the same time.

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So it was probably Eastern Time.

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um yeah so our our meetup we run our meetup once a month uh it's we don't have a first or last uh

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sunday of the month but we always do sundays um it fluctuates a little bit just based on on my

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schedule but um yep we always do sundays 6 p.m we've got a good location we meet at um one of our

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meetup members their brother owns a pizza shop nearby and they've got a nice little side room

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with the tv and stuff um and we sort of just get to fill up that area plus we get some kind of

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interesting drop-ins from uh from the normies just picking up their pizza uh which is actually

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we've had a couple of fun interactions there um with with people joining so that's at uh peppa's

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pizza in east long meadow in western massachusetts and um yeah we've been going our meme's been going

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strong we're doing good with this i think we were coming up on meetup number i should know the number

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up top of my head 42 uh and that's on sunday february 15th 6 p.m eastern time

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well there you go anyone listening if you're in the western massachusetts area or the south bend

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indiana area now you've got a couple places you can go and meet some local bitcoiners um

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and i think to like kick this whole podcast off i think it's appropriate to sort of

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talk a little bit about what a Bitcoin meetup is.

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I think that there's some assumptions that many people have

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that a Bitcoin meetup is just a place you go

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and meet with Bitcoiners. And that's true, but

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I think deeper than that,

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after Bitcoin meetups get rolling for a while, and you've done

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41 or 42 of them now,

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you know they become more of like a place where you build your own local bitcoin culture

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and it also leads into building a local bitcoin economy at least in my experience and so

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these meetups are a place where you go and make friends and get to talk about bitcoin

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but you actually find a culture and community in your local area that's not necessarily

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exclusively on the internet anymore. And this is very powerful.

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I'm actually really excited to start learning about all these different communities.

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You know what I mean? Like with all the different meetups that are happening all over the place,

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just like you said, each one's going to form, you know, we're all decentralized because we're all

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just kind of off on our own building our own meetups you know there's no rules there's no

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rules for a meetup you can do whatever you want and so i'm really excited to learn just like what

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what other people are doing for their meetups you know like mine mine has a lot of i'll say bitcoin

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beginners this is where they come to get their bitcoin education but i know for a fact that my

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you know that's not necessarily like common um throughout all meetups um what's what's the kind

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of the culture of yours you think i know you're going to talk for a minute probably hear about

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you know some of the um you know local peer-to-peer economy stuff but i'd love to hear

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just like about the culture of your meetup and this i think i'm going to speak more broadly on

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the culture of the meetups that i attend because i i run the south bend meetup and that's just kind

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of one of several meetups that are within, let's say, an hour and a half to two hours of where I

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live. And so I'll travel to those other meetups. I basically get to one Bitcoin meetup a week.

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I'm actually going to a Bitcoin meetup in Elmhurst, Illinois, the western suburbs of Chicago,

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tomorrow with Bitcoin account. We're going to go check that one out for the first time. That's at

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Bottle Theory at 6 p.m.

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I guess it's going to be irrelevant by the time this podcast gets released.

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It'll already have happened.

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But anyways, I go to a bunch of Bitcoin meetups, right?

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And the general culture has, you're right, it's a great place for people who are new to Bitcoin

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and want to learn more about Bitcoin in any aspect to go.

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Because typically what you'll find in my experience at these meetups is that if you're interested in

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Bitcoin mining, you go to the meetup and there's going to be someone who knows a lot about Bitcoin

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mining there. If you're interested in setting up your lightning node, there's somebody that's

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running a lightning node, somebody that probably is running a lightning routing node and trying to

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earn some sats on their Bitcoin. There's developers who are developing Bitcoin software.

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You can learn about wallets, hardware wallets, self-custody, privacy. And a lot of these

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subjects can be a little bit more touchy to ask questions out there broadly in the internet.

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Because they're, they're sometimes questions that you don't want everyone knowing that you're

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curious about this. And so it becomes an easy place to build some trust with the people after

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going for a while, and then finding a little bit higher signal and more guidance as you attend.

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Yeah, the other thing too, right, is, you know, if you're going there to learn,

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it's it can be hard to ask questions online and and get legitimate responses right like maybe you

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can get into somebody's dms and then maybe you can schedule a phone call and like maybe that can be

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productive but if you go to a bitcoin meetup and you're face to face and you find somebody who you

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know knows something about what you're talking about they can either a like answer your question

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outright um they can probably give you like tips and tricks that they've learned over the years or

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or whatever um but then they can also help you try to figure out where to get resources

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you know and how to how to figure this stuff out even if they don't know the answers

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um face face-to-face is just the way to go right if you really want to make sure that you're

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getting an answer your question face-to-face is going to be way better than online yeah and this

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kind of goes back to the the whole idea of culture like across the different meetups that i attend

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And there are certain, let's say, wallets that people prefer to use at one meetup.

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And then I go to another meetup and that wallet, well, let's take the Chicago BitDebs, for example.

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That's at the Strike office in Chicago.

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And so a lot of people like to use Strike at that meetup.

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And so if you're using Strike and you're having an issue with Strike and you go to that meetup,

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you're probably going to be able to talk to somebody who has had similar issues

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or be able to figure out how to get that worked out or the best ways to utilize Strike.

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the Indianapolis meetup in Indiana,

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a lot of people, it seems like to use the fold service there.

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And so strike and fold and, or even river too, right?

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So there's all these different services that people are using,

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but they're not necessarily consistent across all meetups.

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So when you go to one, you'll find one that you can get, you know,

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the best guidance and advice on utilizing it rather than just kind of,

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like you said shouting out into the internet and then yeah maybe doing bad advice uh another thing

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is like one way that i've learned that i can sort of trust the guidance of the people at the meetups

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is that their reputation is kind of riding on the line there if they're saying this stuff at the

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meetup and it's and then you go to the next meetup and they're there again and you're like dude

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you totally gave me bad advice um they're gonna have to own that something that yeah people don't

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want to really deal with the consequences of that um whereas if you're just some random random anon

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on the internet uh you don't really care if the advice is good or not uh you might just be trolling

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or whatever absolutely yeah it reminds me of uh there was something uh nbk used to say uh maybe

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he still says it uh and it had to do with like he was really talking about bitcoin custody models

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but you call it proof of punch you can always just go there and punch the guy in the face if

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you actually know him right can't do that on the internet right and and the meetups are so valuable

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that and we'll get to that but they're so valuable that i think a lot of people don't want to

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be exiled from the meetup for uh being a troll or just saying bad shit or doing just bad being a bad

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participant in general. There are some incentives around that keep people wanting to be cooperative

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and beneficial to the group. Hell yeah. So let's see. So how long has your meetup been going on?

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Over a year. It's funny. I'm not very good at like keeping track of the date when I started

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things and how long I've been doing it or, you know, I kind of need to go and always look that

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up. And I'm, I don't know exactly, but we, we definitely celebrated our one year anniversary

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of our meetup that has happened. So I've been doing it for more than one year. Awesome. And

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I've been attending meetups for many years at this point. That's why I started one was because I was

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attending so many and I thought you know I'm having to drive an hour or two hours to these

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meetups if I start one then I can have one that's closer to my house and then I'll meet different

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people there is some overlap between the meetups that I attend but it's not 100 by any means and so

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as I go to more meetups I meet a larger and larger portion of what's in my range for the local

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Bitcoin culture, the people who are Bitcoiners on, you know, trying to use Bitcoin and participate

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in the Bitcoin in a similar way that I am. Yeah. So that's funny. So that's how I started to,

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like, I had been to several meetups before I started mine. My meetup journey started with,

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like, so my fiat job, so I work in the nuclear power industry. And my role at my company requires

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that I travel quite a bit actually That part of the reason by the way that I don nail down a specific sunday is because i have to travel on sundays sometimes which is actually pretty annoying but um it does allow

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me to find local bitcoin meetups when i travel um and so i've actually been to i don't even know

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probably like maybe 15 different meetups just sprinkled all around the country um and after i

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been to like probably two or three of them i was like no you know what i have i have to do this

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myself i mean i just have to have this on a regular basis i can't just be doing like one meetup a year

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you know this is great um and part of me wondered when i got started

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if i'd find anybody you know in my local area like i don't know any if there's any other bitcoiners

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around me um i didn't have like a buddy to get started with i just kind of posted it on meetup.com

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to see what would happen and uh luckily for me uh one guy showed up uh on the first event

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and that was it that was enough for me to say hey you want to do this again next month and he was

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like of course and so we started from there and it's it's grown over time but yeah man i it's

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the meetup culture and and you're right they they are different but we always have that

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all those different common threads you know what i mean that you just don't get when you're talking

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to friends or family or anybody in your life that you try to talk about bitcoin to that they just

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don't understand it the way that we understand it the way that people go to bitcoin meetups understand

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it yeah even though like the conversations are you know the exact subject matter might be uh

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different at each one of course um and sometimes and this is i mean when it's when the conversation

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trends away from Bitcoin specifically into more geopolitics or private or whatever,

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or prepping, homesteading, these kinds of things.

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You realize that even though like at the Chicago BitDebs, which is a heavy technical developer

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focused kind of group, the things that they're concerned about and interested in talking about

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are similar to the you know southwest michigan homesteader group where everyone's kind of

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bringing food to to exchange um and so the this probably kind of also shows you that

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no matter what the format because if you've been to all these different meetups right and

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everyone has kind of a different format some being incredibly organized and uh very with an agenda and

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presentations and private space and food and whatever down to just like hey meet me at the

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coffee shop meet me at the bar meet me at the park and i got nothing planned but well at least we'll

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be together and it can be as simple as that or as complicated as you know really scheduling

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everything and coordinating a lot of stuff yeah i had uh actually i think it happened to me twice

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i was traveling uh to an area and the first thing that i do i book it as soon as i book my travel

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and i know my nights uh i'll go on to meetup and i'll find the local bitcoin meetup and it's like

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ah you know there's not one gonna be there while i'm there so usually i'll look up the bitcoin

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meetup organizer and send them a message and i've had two of them just say i mean you're gonna be in

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town we'll just schedule a meetup and they just put one on the calendar you know a few people

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showed up but but that's all it is we're just hey you want to come hang out talk about bitcoin of

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And of course I got time for that.

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We can schedule something.

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Yeah, that reminds me.

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Do you remember this guy, Sid?

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He was traveling on a motorcycle

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and he was going to as many Bitcoin meetups

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across the country as possible in like one straight trip.

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I heard about that.

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Yeah, he was reaching out to see if he could coordinate

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like when he was going to hit certain stops, right?

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I think I remember that.

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Yeah.

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And so Sid's big adventure kind of,

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I think this was right after when things, I don't know if it was during COVID or something was going on where the energy behind Bitcoin meetups had a lot of momentum.

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There was a lot of meetups popping up and there was a lot of buzz about meetups.

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You'd hear on the podcast, every podcast talk about it.

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You should go find your local Bitcoin meetup and if you don't have one, start one.

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And I think that energy has died down a little bit.

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But anyway, Sid was traveling across the country.

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And of course, you know, he's going to be like, hey, I know you've got a meetup in this town, but I'm traveling and I'm just going to be passing through on this date.

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Does anyone want to meet up?

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And sure enough, almost always he was able to gather a group around and do a Bitcoin meetup with because there had already been something established, right?

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There's already people there that knew.

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And so you put the message out and all of a sudden here come people showing up.

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and um the cool thing about this as well is that like you said at the beginning there's no rules

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this isn't like a form like my meetup is just me and another guy decided to do it and yeah um so

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if we have to like if for whatever reason some month both of us can't make it to the meetup

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on the date like we just tell you know you can still just go you know you can just go i don't

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need to be there. You can still all show up at the same time, same day. You know the deal.

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In Grand Rapids, this has happened many times where the organizers were unavailable and everyone

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still just went anyways. And somebody kind of volunteered from the group in one of the group

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chats to say, I'll make sure to greet everyone and make sure that everyone knows the deal and

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kind of start the meetup off. And then somebody else might show up with some content, some

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produce something to some presentation to give and it all just worked it's always works itself out

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you know 100 100 um yeah you know that so that actually makes me think of um one of the things

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that i was i've been thinking about is like what like what are the like what when you when you

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decide to start a bitcoin meetup i know there's no rules um but what do you i've tried to put it

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into words before and even now i'm struggling even just to frame the question but i feel like

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once you start a bitcoin meetup you do have somewhat of a responsibility right to the meetup

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and to be reflecting you know what we think are good bitcoin values um maybe that's not the right

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way to say it but i guess yeah like what what makes a successful meetup maybe you know maybe

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maybe that's maybe it's as simple as that there's some things while there's no rules there are some

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things that i've noticed that lead to consistent uh long-lasting successful meetups and um i mean

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the biggest i think the biggest hang up right away is uh the venue um where do i go and um

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And a lot of times the starting venue is just the place that kicks everything off.

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And once the group gets established, then a better venue reveals itself through, you know, the collective knowledge of the group.

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And then you end up traveling, you know, going somewhere else.

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That happened for us several times.

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We're on like our fourth location and each one's been better than the last.

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Yeah. And so it's easy to get hung up on like, oh, I don't have a great place or I don't know where I would go.

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or you could just pick your favorite spot to go.

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If you like to, you know, want to do a coffee meetup,

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just have it at your local coffee shop.

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Have it at the local Starbucks.

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The cool thing now too is that there's a beat

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with this Square integration with Cash App.

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There's now the BTC Maps is in Cash App

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and there's a lot more businesses being listed on BTC Maps

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because they're accepting Bitcoin through Square.

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And so now a good starting place would be to look at the BTC map

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and see if there's any businesses in your area that are accepting Bitcoin,

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like a restaurant or a bar, somewhere where people can hang out

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and go visit that place and check it out if you haven't been there.

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I'm saying this because this is my process for trying to move the location

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of the South Bend meetup.

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We're feeling like this location served its purpose

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and we've spent our time there we're going to look for a place that accepts bitcoin now we want

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to be able to buy our drinks and buy our food and do it with bitcoin um but yeah that that's getting

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into the weeds basically you just got to pick somewhere and start the the location can be an

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intimidating starting place like what do i do you just pick somewhere yeah especially when you're

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first getting started i think you know there's you have zero obligation to make this like a a big

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educational thing you have zero obligation to like get a speaker or to have a focused topic

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if you just want to if you're looking to start a bitcoin meetup just like you said just go grab

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your look like you don't need a reservation like just go to like have pick your local bar pick your

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local coffee shop if you want to do something a little bit more uh private or secluded go to your

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local library you know we we had one meetup in a library it was more like a workshop but you know

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it worked out you know pretty well and uh it layer libraries all over the place so finding a venue

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for when you're first getting started there's there's all you know you got all kinds of options

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yeah and so then it's it's like once you pick the spot and you pick the for the date for the first

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one how soon should you do the next one and like what's the frequency and i think it's easy to burn

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yourself out especially if you're trying to build this it's sometimes to get the meet up the ball

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rolling you got to do a lot of talking about it to somebody to let them know that the meetup exists

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relying on the marketing of meetup.com or wherever you might use to to promote it on its own

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might be hard to get people to show up right away and so if you're trying to do a meetup every week

286
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and get people to show up and make it worth your effort that's going to burn you out i i would

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certainly burn out it seems like a one month frequency is a good starting place um i know a

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guy that is just doing it once a quarter um and he he puts a lot more effort he he's like i don't

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want to just meet up with two or three people or whoever just kind of rent you know wanders through

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the door i want to kind of have it put some effort into getting people to come and so he spends three

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months talking about it and building it up and then uh having it once a quarter

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um where where is that i haven't heard of that that's a good that's kind of a good idea

293
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it's five star pizza in colin michigan um okay harl is his name who who organizes that

294
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gotcha and he he's a a meetup junkie like me he drives hours and hours to go to meetups and he

295
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loves meetups um yeah that's really cool we we you know we tried to do something so we have um

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i guess evolved i don't know like we started certainly with socials like the first i don't

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know year and a half you know we were just we found we started at one bar but then we didn't

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really like the the room that we were in and stuff so we found another place um and but eventually um

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I wanted to cycle into doing some more like educational type content where we'd have slides and TV and stuff like that.

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But there were definitely some people that still want, you know, they like just hanging out and talking Bitcoin.

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And so it's like, okay, well, we'll do like every other month.

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And eventually it got to the point where our socials were actually start like getting fewer and fewer attendance.

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And our educational ones were getting more and more attendance.

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so i kind of said how about like once a year we'll have like a bigger social event that we like

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actually go out and get like a real venue and we like advertise and we try to get a bunch of the

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other meetups in our area to like come on over like hey we're gonna throw a party this time

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so we did that this past fall and it was pretty big success i mean it was probably three times

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the size of a normal meetup for us so we had you know pretty good turnout like there was probably

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30 people there um we rented us like just a small venue again it was like i it was just like like

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any of these like it wasn't a vfw but it was like that you know what i mean just like a little kind

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of like men's club they had a bar and stuff like that and it was only like 200 bucks like we rented

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the place out for a night and we made that like i just asked people at the door hey this is free but

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you know it's 200 bucks to rent the place you want to toss in a little bit of money you know we made

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you know at least half of that back and people just willing to donate so i i like that idea of

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doing like putting more effort in like less frequently um to try to get bigger attendance

316
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that's that's a cool thing and so the reason why this works for uh carl as i mentioned he travels

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around to all these meetups and so he's kind of you know for that three months he's going to these

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different meetups. Maybe he'll go two and a half, three hours from his place to a meetup.

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And I think he probably hits one at least once every other week, if not every week. And

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so he like while he going to these meetups he like hey you know I got pizza shop It accepts Bitcoin I doing a meetup at this time You know put it on your calendar or whatever

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And then obviously he gets in the group chats and puts his reminders up there.

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And so this is kind of another point is that if you want to start a Bitcoin meetup and you're not attending meetups,

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it's really good to go to if you can find a meetup within one or two hours of your place and go check

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that out meet the people there and it sounds far but you know it's just kind of the way things are

325
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these days it's hard to have a bunch of meetups within a half hour of your place but um this is

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the idea is that you go there you meet the people and this is kind of what part of what how i started

327
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my meetup and how I got it rolling was that I said, Hey, as I was attending all these other

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meetups, like, Hey, I'm gonna start one in South Bend. This is going to be the first one. And I

329
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kind of made it a kickoff, you know, like, all right, everybody from the meetup culture around,

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if you can make it, this is our first one, come celebrate with us. And so that first meetup was

331
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like 20 something people, you know, it was, uh, compared to our, our average five or eight or

332
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whatever. Sure. And so that's a good way to get momentum going around your first meetup. Um, if

333
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you have access to these other communities around you yeah yeah that's awesome yeah you guys have

334
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like i've you know i've heard from you a little bit but i've heard from other people too

335
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the michigan area has a really strong bitcoin or culture like a lot of big really solid bitcoin

336
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meetups are going on over in your neck of the woods um for me so i'm in massachusetts we've got

337
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um i think there's three three in massachusetts and then like another three that are kind of like

338
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just outside of our borders like one in new hampshire one in rhode island one in connecticut

339
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um but every meetup they're all over an hour away from me you know one to two hours away

340
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those like six meetups so for me it was huge to start my own um but yeah i've been fortunate

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enough i think i've attended all of their meetups except for one i think i still haven't made it out

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to new hampshire one but coincidentally i am talking with him about about coming over in

343
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february or march yeah interesting man so it's like it's not necessarily a prerequisite to start

344
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a bitcoin meetup obviously there's no rules but a good rule of thumb is like before you start one

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try and find the other ones yeah within an hour or two of your place and go check those go check

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them out hell yeah um and so another so consistency once you get the ball rolling is like super

347
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important um there's been some meetups that i've started and they kind of tripped uh

348
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and you once you lose the momentum then the people that do want to regularly show up don't

349
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know like they're like oh is the if am i going to show up and no one's going to be there this month

350
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or what without kind of looking and seeing the group chat and everything and so if you can stay

351
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consistent, this is going to allow you to build that core group of regulars, which in my experience

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in the smaller meetups is like four to eight people, you know, that kind of consistently show

353
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up every month. And these are your, these are the guys that help guide the new people, right?

354
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They're the ones who have been there, got all the tricks and tips, have their strategies and

355
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whatever. But so to maintain consistency, one thing that I noticed in the Michigan meetups was

356
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that the meetup organizers, the meetups that had more than one organizer were able to maintain

357
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the consistency because one guy could go on vacation or whatever, be traveling for work.

358
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And then there would still be somebody to keep the meetup going while it was young.

359
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And so having a partner is, once again, not a prerequisite, but really helpful to maintain

360
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the consistency of the meetup.

361
00:31:40,936 --> 00:31:49,556
yeah we i uh i'm not sure i have like a i haven't had anybody else run the meetups other than me

362
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um but i do have a group of four it's like we call it kind of like the core four like there's

363
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there's a group of four of us that are you know maybe not every single meetup but like damn near

364
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every single meetup you know what i mean we're kind of like you said that's the kind of core

365
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group we're the ones all going around we find you know the new people and chat them up and

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figure out where they're at in their journey. And a lot of times we'll talk about it afterwards

367
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and see if there's anything that we can do to reach out or, Hey, do you hear any topics

368
00:32:18,796 --> 00:32:22,776
that you think we should cover at the next meetup? Um, what kinds of stuff are people

369
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talking about? So, you know, one of the coolest things for me about starting the meetup is, um,

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I, it, I have like a whole new friend group now, you know what I mean? Like I had,

371
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you know, lack of a better term, like my normie friends, you know what I mean?

372
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my co-workers and stuff like that um but it's different it hits different when you have a group

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of local friends like we hang out plenty of times outside of the meetups um you know we go on hikes

374
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together you know get together and go to people are each other's houses we have campfires um and

375
00:32:59,016 --> 00:33:04,696
a lot of times we'll just open those up again we're not posting necessarily that stuff on meetup.com

376
00:33:04,696 --> 00:33:09,496
but yeah we'll reach out to the other you know regulars or or people who attend the meet hey

377
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just so you know next tuesday night you know we're having a little get together

378
00:33:13,576 --> 00:33:20,296
and um it's been really cool to to get a whole new friend group that you can relate to in a

379
00:33:20,296 --> 00:33:27,496
whole different way you know compared to like i said like your kind of older longer term friend

380
00:33:27,496 --> 00:33:34,536
group or co-workers and stuff like that it kind of hits different yeah dude i i can echo that

381
00:33:34,536 --> 00:33:41,436
exactly. The Michigan meetups have been going for several years now, these new ones that have

382
00:33:41,436 --> 00:33:49,696
just popped up. And the relationships and the trust that has been built amongst the people that

383
00:33:49,696 --> 00:33:58,056
cross-pollinate all these meetups leads to a lot of other side get-togethers and true friendships.

384
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I've went and done work and helped other people from the meetups build stuff.

385
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They've helped me out here at the homestead.

386
00:34:07,616 --> 00:34:16,256
And so a lot of this is what I'm getting at is that these meetups are a lot more than just getting together and kind of talking about Bitcoin in person than on the Internet.

387
00:34:16,256 --> 00:34:26,836
It leads after a few years of participating into this whole network and economy of Bitcoiners in your local area.

388
00:34:28,056 --> 00:34:49,836
Yeah, you know, so I think, so you referenced it before. And I remember this time quite vividly, when all the podcasts were all saying, you know, go check out your local meetups. Meetups were popping up all over the place. I'm pretty sure mine was right in that mix. Like I started mine September of 22. And that was right in that period of time, where meetups are going crazy.

389
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bitcoin magazine like reached out and said hey can we list your meetup in in the next print

390
00:34:55,196 --> 00:35:04,956
edition of the magazine and that kind of stuff doesn't happen so much anymore um but you know

391
00:35:07,516 --> 00:35:15,196
i don't know i mean i i guess so that period of time was just it was just a magical time and and

392
00:35:15,196 --> 00:35:19,436
i'm kind of wondering you know where you think we're going like what do you think's going on

393
00:35:19,436 --> 00:35:27,276
these days with meetup culture and you know why do you think it is that people stop talking about

394
00:35:27,276 --> 00:35:31,916
meetups quite as much you know we've noticed our i think in a lot of meetups have noticed

395
00:35:32,556 --> 00:35:36,876
attendance kind of plateau i don't think it's been dropping off ours hasn't dropped off

396
00:35:37,916 --> 00:35:42,396
but i would say we've pretty much plateaued a lot of meetups i hear have numbers about the

397
00:35:42,396 --> 00:35:47,756
same size that we're talking about you know somewhere between 5 and 15 is super common

398
00:35:47,756 --> 00:35:50,436
And so I don't know.

399
00:35:50,536 --> 00:35:52,656
I mean, it's not something you and I have talked about before.

400
00:35:52,936 --> 00:35:55,276
Like, where do you think Bitcoin meetup culture is going?

401
00:35:55,276 --> 00:36:02,236
Like, what do you think that we can do to help encourage other people to start a meetup or to go check out their local meetups?

402
00:36:03,896 --> 00:36:17,036
Well, you know, now that just listening to you talk about it now, thinking about the meetups in Michigan, I think what's happened a little bit here specifically is that there was a lot of work on finding us.

403
00:36:17,036 --> 00:36:21,816
we all had to find each other yeah right there was marketing that needed to happen putting the word

404
00:36:21,816 --> 00:36:29,016
out there kind of um getting excited about starting new meetups and stuff and it got to the point

405
00:36:29,016 --> 00:36:35,216
where we had a pretty good thing going on and still do but the focus went from marketing and

406
00:36:35,216 --> 00:36:41,376
trying to get more people to show up and new meetups to start into how do we work together

407
00:36:41,376 --> 00:36:46,856
and how do we build together and how do it turned into just we've got enough to work with here for a

408
00:36:46,856 --> 00:36:53,196
while this is great. And the energy just went away. It's like, we don't need to really get

409
00:36:53,196 --> 00:36:58,956
too many more people. While it's nice, it wasn't the main focus anymore. And I think it's kind of

410
00:36:58,956 --> 00:37:04,836
starting to circle around. Maybe this is the case in a lot of places. I don't necessarily know.

411
00:37:05,756 --> 00:37:12,876
But I feel like now we've reached another plateau. We've built up these relationships. We kind of

412
00:37:12,876 --> 00:37:17,196
know what's going on with each other we're like all right it's time it would be get some more

413
00:37:17,196 --> 00:37:22,036
people into this mix this is great we have something to offer now um we we are there's

414
00:37:22,036 --> 00:37:26,896
things that we're looking for um and when i'm talking about this i'm talking about economically

415
00:37:26,896 --> 00:37:33,236
like i want a mechanic at the meetups oh yeah that too yeah you know i want to be able to

416
00:37:33,236 --> 00:37:39,736
do my get my like i can go get my teeth done like dentist work done um like there's all these people

417
00:37:39,736 --> 00:37:43,916
that I know that now are willing to take my Bitcoin, I want to do that for all of these

418
00:37:43,916 --> 00:37:50,356
goods and services that I want to buy. For a while, it was just like utilizing the community

419
00:37:50,356 --> 00:37:55,016
that was available. Now I'm like, all right, I got my relationships built up, my deals worked out,

420
00:37:55,016 --> 00:38:00,016
and other people are feeling the same. Let's find more resources.

421
00:38:01,576 --> 00:38:08,976
Yeah. And hearing you say that, it's funny that my mind started with

422
00:38:08,976 --> 00:38:13,416
like the external when really it probably should have started with the internal.

423
00:38:13,676 --> 00:38:14,616
Because you're absolutely right.

424
00:38:14,976 --> 00:38:20,536
There was a pivot point for me specifically where I went from, we need to grow the meetup.

425
00:38:20,636 --> 00:38:21,596
We need to grow the meetup.

426
00:38:21,596 --> 00:38:22,816
We need to find more people.

427
00:38:23,096 --> 00:38:24,276
We need to get boost attendance.

428
00:38:25,156 --> 00:38:26,676
And then I switched probably around that time.

429
00:38:26,796 --> 00:38:28,496
I switched to doing the educational content.

430
00:38:29,216 --> 00:38:32,636
Most of my focus and effort went into, I need to produce good content.

431
00:38:33,176 --> 00:38:36,936
And now that I have people to talk to, I need to make sure we're having good discussions.

432
00:38:36,936 --> 00:38:41,936
I need to make sure we're, I don't know, expanding our horizons and making sure people are up

433
00:38:41,936 --> 00:38:47,496
to date on like what I, you know, what I think is, is, you know, the topics of this month

434
00:38:47,496 --> 00:38:50,016
that we should really be talking about that are highly relevant.

435
00:38:50,476 --> 00:38:51,216
And you're right.

436
00:38:51,256 --> 00:38:52,676
A lot of my effort went into that.

437
00:38:54,336 --> 00:39:02,056
So I wonder if maybe it really just is as simple as returning to that initial drive to

438
00:39:02,056 --> 00:39:04,016
expand the meetup.

439
00:39:04,016 --> 00:39:09,616
maybe just switching at if everybody started switching to that model maybe we'd start finding

440
00:39:09,616 --> 00:39:14,656
more people to you know across the country to start attending meetups and that's what this

441
00:39:14,656 --> 00:39:19,596
podcast is for yeah that's what we're why we're talking about this so everyone gets out there

442
00:39:19,596 --> 00:39:24,956
gets inspired 100 if you got a meetup you know you're hearing about some cool stuff from across

443
00:39:24,956 --> 00:39:31,656
meetup culture all over and um you know if you're looking to start one you're kind of hearing the

444
00:39:31,656 --> 00:39:35,236
the path that it takes over a few years, you know?

445
00:39:36,416 --> 00:39:41,716
And I guess, so the final thing we didn't really talk about as far as like the best practices

446
00:39:41,716 --> 00:39:45,576
or the whatever, the things that make a successful meetup is the marketing of it.

447
00:39:45,636 --> 00:39:47,016
Like how do you get it going?

448
00:39:47,096 --> 00:39:51,176
I mean, I mentioned that you could go to a meetup and talk to other people that are within

449
00:39:51,176 --> 00:39:55,456
an hour or two of you, but online, it sounds like you used meetup.com.

450
00:39:55,456 --> 00:39:58,296
I found a bunch of meetups initially on meetup.com.

451
00:39:58,296 --> 00:40:03,276
It doesn't seem to be ubiquitous like it once was because I think it's so expensive.

452
00:40:04,976 --> 00:40:08,436
And so the marketing stuff is something that I don't necessarily have.

453
00:40:08,956 --> 00:40:15,596
I honestly could hear good ideas around that because I'm struggling with the marketing personally.

454
00:40:16,836 --> 00:40:17,096
Same.

455
00:40:18,156 --> 00:40:20,116
Yeah, in the beginning, we tried all kinds of stuff.

456
00:40:20,256 --> 00:40:22,196
I tried hanging up flyers.

457
00:40:22,656 --> 00:40:26,736
I tried posting stuff to, of course, we had the meetup.com.

458
00:40:26,736 --> 00:40:33,116
but um you know posting stuff to social media but of course that's not local so you can get

459
00:40:33,116 --> 00:40:37,096
engagement but that doesn't mean that there are people who are actually local to you

460
00:40:37,096 --> 00:40:47,676
um and uh we found by by far it's not even close our our biggest uh form of uh of getting new

461
00:40:47,676 --> 00:40:55,296
members is word of mouth wasn't even close it's like all but like three people like heard about us

462
00:40:55,296 --> 00:40:59,856
just from somebody else like somebody who can't oh hey i heard that there's a meetup going on

463
00:40:59,856 --> 00:41:07,216
oh there is oh let me come you know um so even i i should probably start preaching that again

464
00:41:07,216 --> 00:41:13,316
just hey tell your friends tell your family we're open to all even if they know nothing

465
00:41:13,316 --> 00:41:18,896
at all about bitcoin they're more than welcome to come hang out word of mouth is definitely

466
00:41:18,896 --> 00:41:25,276
where you find the regulars um that's true that's because you know they already know somebody

467
00:41:25,276 --> 00:41:27,316
who's either been to the meetup or goes regularly

468
00:41:27,316 --> 00:41:28,696
or heard about it from someone they trust.

469
00:41:28,696 --> 00:41:32,596
And so they're coming into it with a pretty good vibe

470
00:41:32,596 --> 00:41:34,276
generally in the first place.

471
00:41:34,276 --> 00:41:45,864
And then like I used podcast boosting Oh yeah I done that too To promote the meetup Yeah Like Bitcoin and is a good podcast because that every day pretty much you know it like five podcasts a week

472
00:41:45,864 --> 00:41:47,284
and you can just boost it every day

473
00:41:47,284 --> 00:41:49,244
leading up to the meetup the week before.

474
00:41:49,704 --> 00:41:51,644
And so people that listen to that podcast hear it.

475
00:41:51,944 --> 00:41:52,864
The trick is like,

476
00:41:53,484 --> 00:41:55,944
you can't just put out the signal once and say,

477
00:41:56,064 --> 00:41:57,444
here's the meetup, this is when it's happening.

478
00:41:57,984 --> 00:42:01,244
You have to kind of increase the frequency

479
00:42:01,244 --> 00:42:04,044
of letting people know that the meetup's happening

480
00:42:04,044 --> 00:42:06,824
as it gets closer to the meetup.

481
00:42:06,904 --> 00:42:09,804
Like a week before is when you should really be reminding everyone.

482
00:42:11,244 --> 00:42:13,944
And for people that I'm in direct connection with,

483
00:42:14,804 --> 00:42:17,904
the group chat is easiest number one place.

484
00:42:18,224 --> 00:42:19,904
I guess we didn't talk about group chats yet either.

485
00:42:20,244 --> 00:42:21,324
We'll get to that, I suppose.

486
00:42:22,124 --> 00:42:26,224
But then I actually will text, like direct message people too,

487
00:42:26,324 --> 00:42:28,624
especially if it's someone that hasn't been for a while or whatever.

488
00:42:29,164 --> 00:42:31,484
I'll just like message them directly and remind them.

489
00:42:31,684 --> 00:42:33,824
And this is all, this takes time and work.

490
00:42:34,044 --> 00:42:34,724
Yes, it does.

491
00:42:35,624 --> 00:42:38,404
And this, once again, this isn't for starting a meetup.

492
00:42:38,544 --> 00:42:40,764
This is kind of more once the meetup's established and rolling.

493
00:42:42,164 --> 00:42:45,084
But boosting podcasts, I definitely have had people,

494
00:42:45,304 --> 00:42:47,364
new people show up from boosting podcasts.

495
00:42:49,224 --> 00:42:54,344
I've had people show up from Noster, just like posting on Noster.

496
00:42:54,904 --> 00:42:58,204
And when I say people, I'm talking like one or two people

497
00:42:58,204 --> 00:43:00,544
across the year that I've done it, right?

498
00:43:00,544 --> 00:43:06,864
Like maybe one person from all of that podcast boosting has heard it and actually come.

499
00:43:07,524 --> 00:43:10,204
And maybe one person from Noster has come.

500
00:43:10,964 --> 00:43:11,064
Yep.

501
00:43:11,404 --> 00:43:22,204
But this is, if they, those people are also most likely to become regulars because they're already, you know, in the Bitcoin culture on the internet, right?

502
00:43:22,444 --> 00:43:22,724
Correct.

503
00:43:22,724 --> 00:43:28,204
And so they're like, man, a lot of times it's a piece of their Bitcoin life that they didn't know was missing.

504
00:43:28,204 --> 00:43:32,164
having people to actually come and physically interact with on a regular

505
00:43:32,164 --> 00:43:36,764
basis, see the same people continue the stories as things go on,

506
00:43:36,784 --> 00:43:37,884
as the relationships build.

507
00:43:40,844 --> 00:43:43,744
But yeah, the, the static,

508
00:43:44,004 --> 00:43:47,724
zero and zero interaction for me from any static thing,

509
00:43:47,724 --> 00:43:52,144
like a website that has just the meetup listed on it somewhere.

510
00:43:52,864 --> 00:43:54,704
No one's ever said, I saw it on this website.

511
00:43:55,204 --> 00:43:56,564
I found your website randomly.

512
00:43:57,064 --> 00:43:57,204
Yeah.

513
00:43:57,204 --> 00:43:58,284
Yeah, never.

514
00:43:59,364 --> 00:44:01,944
Yeah, I think I have, so we have a website too.

515
00:44:02,784 --> 00:44:05,224
And I mostly, I do post our meetups there,

516
00:44:05,544 --> 00:44:08,844
but I mostly use it so that I can give people an easy place to go.

517
00:44:09,764 --> 00:44:13,004
So I don't have to say, oh, go to meetup.com and search for us.

518
00:44:13,684 --> 00:44:16,884
I can say, go to westernmassbitcoin.com.

519
00:44:17,744 --> 00:44:21,244
And one of the good ideas that I heard from another meetup organizer,

520
00:44:21,584 --> 00:44:25,404
I can't remember when or who, so apologies for not being able to attribute this,

521
00:44:25,404 --> 00:44:33,484
but if you don't have the bandwidth or you don't have the skills or the money to make

522
00:44:33,484 --> 00:44:40,364
a Meetup website, just get a domain. They cost between $10 and $20 a year,

523
00:44:40,924 --> 00:44:46,884
and just set the domain, point it at your meetup.com page. Then you get the best of both worlds.

524
00:44:47,364 --> 00:44:53,344
Meetup.com can do all your SEO. They can do all your advertising and stuff like that. It makes it

525
00:44:53,344 --> 00:44:59,904
easy to find. And then you can just tell people a website to go to. I thought that was a cool hack.

526
00:45:01,644 --> 00:45:06,184
But yeah, I like having the website. The website's a good thing too for, I've done the podcasting

527
00:45:06,184 --> 00:45:14,344
boosts, like for advertisements. I think I've done Bitcoin and, and I've also done RHR.

528
00:45:15,244 --> 00:45:19,644
And in both cases, it's nice to be able to say, go to westernmassbitcoin.com

529
00:45:19,644 --> 00:45:27,024
to find out when our next event is you know um so that's honestly i mean i do keep some stuff

530
00:45:27,024 --> 00:45:32,304
there i do like content repositories and i post all our slides but i'm pretty sure no one uses

531
00:45:32,304 --> 00:45:39,864
any of that except for me so well it's there it says it's a it's a record in a document that

532
00:45:39,864 --> 00:45:43,784
people can reference if they ever do decide they want to check something out they're like oh there's

533
00:45:43,784 --> 00:45:49,244
all this other shit here too which is makes it look more legitimate more reputable so yeah for

534
00:45:49,244 --> 00:45:55,644
sure yeah it's so i guess this has got me thinking too like meetup.com costs money boosting these

535
00:45:55,644 --> 00:46:02,684
podcasts costs money um orange pill app was is another um one that we've used with some oh yeah

536
00:46:02,684 --> 00:46:08,604
moderate success now called it's like the aggregate of all these different techniques is it called

537
00:46:08,604 --> 00:46:14,364
something else now i think it's club orange now club orange okay so i because i don't use it uh

538
00:46:14,364 --> 00:46:21,564
bitcoin account uses it but so the aggregate of of the podcast boost the noster when i used to do

539
00:46:21,564 --> 00:46:27,324
twitter you know yeah whatever it brings in one or two people and before you know it you've got

540
00:46:27,324 --> 00:46:32,524
four or five regular people yep but they cost money right the orange pill app we do we did the

541
00:46:32,524 --> 00:46:41,164
geo boosts um so it's like you can send 500 sats to everyone on the app in this range of your meetup

542
00:46:41,164 --> 00:46:43,364
and say, hey, the meetup's happening here.

543
00:46:43,464 --> 00:46:45,244
And we've had a couple people show up that way.

544
00:46:47,104 --> 00:46:49,604
So you can decide to spend as much money

545
00:46:49,604 --> 00:46:52,244
or as little as you want on the marketing.

546
00:46:53,704 --> 00:46:57,664
It's just, if you are willing to spend some sats,

547
00:46:58,324 --> 00:47:00,304
then you have these resources,

548
00:47:00,544 --> 00:47:02,264
these extra resources at your fingertips

549
00:47:02,264 --> 00:47:04,604
that do work a little bit.

550
00:47:06,624 --> 00:47:07,484
Yeah, you're right.

551
00:47:07,484 --> 00:47:10,364
Yeah, and even the website thing

552
00:47:10,364 --> 00:47:20,104
costs money too. Yeah, that is one thing. I mean, you can do a Bitcoin meetup spending almost no

553
00:47:20,104 --> 00:47:24,284
money, especially if you already have like one or two people who you know are going to show up.

554
00:47:25,484 --> 00:47:30,984
And once you have a Bitcoin meetup, you know, you can, like once you have a bunch of regulars,

555
00:47:31,144 --> 00:47:35,964
you can probably get your costs down to, you know, near zero if you really wanted to.

556
00:47:35,964 --> 00:47:43,004
um but i i have found at least for me and and i have found also in talking to a bunch of other

557
00:47:43,004 --> 00:47:49,064
bitcoin mutable organizers like over the years i think most of us are are totally willing to throw

558
00:47:49,064 --> 00:47:54,384
in a little bit of money you know i mean if nothing like people spend money on hobbies all

559
00:47:54,384 --> 00:48:00,804
the time right and for me this is one of the things that brings me a lot of fulfillment and

560
00:48:00,804 --> 00:48:08,004
a lot of really joy for being able to organize all this stuff. So I'm totally fine spending,

561
00:48:08,784 --> 00:48:12,244
you know, I think meetup.com, even meetup.com alone is like 30 bucks a month.

562
00:48:14,144 --> 00:48:17,904
You know, but yeah, a little bit of money here and there. I think it's well worth it.

563
00:48:19,184 --> 00:48:25,324
Well, so this kind of leads into, all right, why, what are some reasons, like, how does the money

564
00:48:25,324 --> 00:48:28,644
you spend on promoting the meetup and getting the meetup going, make it worth it for you

565
00:48:28,644 --> 00:48:34,564
as the organizer. Personally, I do homesteading. I produce a lot of stuff that I'd like to sell for

566
00:48:34,564 --> 00:48:40,164
Bitcoin and it's stuff that is not necessarily, it's food. So I don't, it doesn't make sense to

567
00:48:40,164 --> 00:48:44,424
ship it everywhere. I got to find people locally that want to buy my stuff. And so if I'm going to

568
00:48:44,424 --> 00:48:47,964
spend a little bit of money marketing a Bitcoin meetup, that also means that I'm spending a little

569
00:48:47,964 --> 00:48:56,544
bit of money getting access to a Bitcoin market for selling my stuff. And this is usually what

570
00:48:56,544 --> 00:48:58,644
the people that show up to the meetup have been looking for.

571
00:48:58,744 --> 00:48:59,304
They're like, oh man,

572
00:48:59,324 --> 00:49:03,584
it's so great that I can now get my maple syrup from you and pay in Bitcoin.

573
00:49:05,924 --> 00:49:11,524
And so there's so much, you get your sats back in other ways.

574
00:49:11,764 --> 00:49:16,364
The other thing that I've gained is liquidity for cash for my Bitcoin, right?

575
00:49:16,424 --> 00:49:17,364
So the Bitcoin that I earned,

576
00:49:17,764 --> 00:49:21,724
now I don't have to liquidate that on the exchange and KYC it.

577
00:49:21,724 --> 00:49:24,824
I can stay no KYC all the way.

578
00:49:25,164 --> 00:49:25,904
I earn the Bitcoin.

579
00:49:25,904 --> 00:49:29,864
I sell it back to the Bitcoin community for cash.

580
00:49:30,424 --> 00:49:37,624
And this is a great service to them because it's very hard to find people to buy Bitcoin from for cash.

581
00:49:37,964 --> 00:49:39,064
And so this is a win-win.

582
00:49:40,624 --> 00:49:44,904
And it makes it much easier for me to live on a Bitcoin standard and live on Bitcoin.

583
00:49:46,364 --> 00:49:46,904
Yeah, 100%.

584
00:49:47,564 --> 00:49:49,624
I mean, those are definitely great.

585
00:49:49,624 --> 00:49:57,404
and and i think you guys especially have the um you know that local uh i guess what what do you

586
00:49:57,404 --> 00:50:02,124
call your you call it a local bitcoin economy is that do you feel like that's what you're fostering

587
00:50:02,124 --> 00:50:07,444
i don't want to give like the impression that's like what do you call it we like to call it a

588
00:50:07,444 --> 00:50:11,584
circular economy because that's the mean that's better oh we can just create the bitcoin circular

589
00:50:11,584 --> 00:50:16,924
economy and we're like we have one because you could go to a meetup in michigan and you can buy

590
00:50:16,924 --> 00:50:23,564
something from somebody uh and then you can turn around and sell something to somebody else and the

591
00:50:23,564 --> 00:50:28,284
bitcoin just changed hands from that person to the other person through you it's literally

592
00:50:28,284 --> 00:50:35,644
circulated through the room it's like what money was always meant to be right it it's it it's it's

593
00:50:35,644 --> 00:50:42,924
silly because it's it's not a ton of stuff it's just getting started but um it is economic activity

594
00:50:42,924 --> 00:50:47,884
and the bitcoin is circulating amongst the community and like i said when i earn bitcoin

595
00:50:47,884 --> 00:50:54,044
from people i sell the bitcoin back into the community so the bitcoin that i'm getting from

596
00:50:54,044 --> 00:51:02,604
the people locally is being distributed back locally again yeah i mean that's 100 i mean

597
00:51:02,604 --> 00:51:11,324
that's a great point um one one of the things and i guess this is less uh maybe maybe it's less of a

598
00:51:11,324 --> 00:51:14,884
a personally, like, I'm trying to think of the right word.

599
00:51:16,124 --> 00:51:18,144
It's less personally selfish, I guess,

600
00:51:18,924 --> 00:51:21,724
but it's more, it's still a selfish act

601
00:51:21,724 --> 00:51:24,604
because we're all in Bitcoin.

602
00:51:25,644 --> 00:51:27,224
One of the things I like to say,

603
00:51:27,684 --> 00:51:30,384
sometimes I try to be controversial at the meetup

604
00:51:30,384 --> 00:51:31,824
just to like get people's attention,

605
00:51:32,144 --> 00:51:33,104
have their ears perk up.

606
00:51:34,464 --> 00:51:36,664
One of the things I like to say is, you know,

607
00:51:36,664 --> 00:51:39,764
everybody says, you know, it's like death taxes

608
00:51:39,764 --> 00:51:41,124
and 21 million.

609
00:51:41,324 --> 00:51:47,824
Right. 21 million Bitcoin. That'll never be changed. But the reality is it absolutely can be changed.

610
00:51:48,764 --> 00:52:06,024
The reason why people think it's never going to change is because of the social ethos that's evolved around Bitcoin and that all Bitcoiners, when you when you buy Bitcoin, when you hold Bitcoin, when you become a Bitcoiner, you know that they'll only ever be 21 million.

611
00:52:06,024 --> 00:52:10,604
And if anybody ever tried to change that, you could put your foot down and say, absolutely not.

612
00:52:10,904 --> 00:52:13,424
My node will be 21 million, period.

613
00:52:14,804 --> 00:52:18,764
But we don't know what that's going to be like.

614
00:52:19,144 --> 00:52:25,844
What if in 50 years, nobody cares anymore or nobody even knows or nobody even thinks about it?

615
00:52:26,924 --> 00:52:32,764
And so I like to try to get people's attention saying that, you know, 21 million is actually not a guarantee.

616
00:52:32,764 --> 00:52:39,624
it actually requires that you know about it it requires that you understand that this can be

617
00:52:39,624 --> 00:52:46,224
changed and it requires that you know that you personally can put your foot down and say absolutely

618
00:52:46,224 --> 00:52:53,224
not not on my node but you got to be able to run a node and you got to know that that's that it is

619
00:52:53,224 --> 00:53:00,324
technically up to you to define those rules and so that's one of the things again i've i i try to

620
00:53:00,324 --> 00:53:06,324
this at as many meetups as i can but that's one of the reasons why i run it is because i want my

621
00:53:06,324 --> 00:53:12,884
local community to know that this thing is as only as strong 21 million for example along with other

622
00:53:12,884 --> 00:53:21,044
rules they're only as strong as we make them yeah you know you pay for a hardware wallet you pay for

623
00:53:21,044 --> 00:53:26,004
uh the bitcoin miners and the nodes off the node computer and all this stuff right

624
00:53:26,004 --> 00:53:31,524
Right. And these are ways of taking full control and sovereignty over your stack and your interaction with Bitcoin.

625
00:53:32,084 --> 00:53:35,464
And when you run a Bitcoin meetup, you might spend a little bit of your sats.

626
00:53:35,464 --> 00:53:43,264
But this is a similar tool that you're using in order to make sure that the Bitcoin that you're wanting to participate in is enforced.

627
00:53:43,564 --> 00:53:49,284
And you're doing your part to make sure that the cultural capital is consistent enough for it to maintain that. Right.

628
00:53:51,044 --> 00:53:52,344
Yeah, 100 percent.

629
00:53:52,344 --> 00:54:00,564
so i think we covered uh pretty much all the essential stuff except for the group chat

630
00:54:00,564 --> 00:54:05,964
oh yeah let's cover group chat good idea so once you get the meetup going

631
00:54:05,964 --> 00:54:12,324
there it's really good to have some way to keep people connected um and community and in

632
00:54:12,324 --> 00:54:17,304
communication um so the conversation can continue a lot of times people will be like oh yeah i know

633
00:54:17,304 --> 00:54:21,324
about this node stuff and it's like here's what you do and the guy and the person's eyes are

634
00:54:21,324 --> 00:54:25,884
rolling back in their head because it's like this long, complicated technical explanation.

635
00:54:26,544 --> 00:54:30,344
And so then in the group chat, the people can say like, hey, you know, you were talking about

636
00:54:30,344 --> 00:54:34,684
how to set up this lightning node. I finally got start nine. You know, what's my next step?

637
00:54:34,764 --> 00:54:38,104
And if they do it publicly in the group chat, it's not appropriate for everything, but

638
00:54:38,104 --> 00:54:43,064
these things that are appropriate, now everybody can learn together and stay in communication.

639
00:54:43,064 --> 00:54:49,604
It's also a great place to make it known if you want to sell some Bitcoin, if you want to buy some

640
00:54:49,604 --> 00:54:54,324
Bitcoin, if you have something to sell, if there's something you're looking to buy.

641
00:54:55,284 --> 00:55:00,404
And you can you can try and find it, find liquidity for whatever that is in the group

642
00:55:00,404 --> 00:55:03,764
chat and then also to share memes, of course.

643
00:55:04,524 --> 00:55:06,524
I was going to say that's mostly what we do in ours.

644
00:55:07,484 --> 00:55:09,164
So what do you guys use for group chat?

645
00:55:09,444 --> 00:55:11,564
I know there's lots of different options out there.

646
00:55:12,564 --> 00:55:17,004
So it's kind of a mess, a lot like the marketing is a mess and all these different

647
00:55:17,004 --> 00:55:19,524
channels and all this different stuff.

648
00:55:19,604 --> 00:55:24,584
Each meetup will have usually a different, like a main platform, right?

649
00:55:24,884 --> 00:55:28,944
And it's trending towards Signal in the Michigan culture.

650
00:55:29,744 --> 00:55:32,944
But it's still on Telegram and it's also on Discord.

651
00:55:33,312 --> 00:55:43,872
and even some on simplex. And so, and it's kind of like, there will be different pockets of people

652
00:55:43,872 --> 00:55:49,312
that really, like the super hardcore privacy people are on simplex. You got to know to find

653
00:55:49,312 --> 00:55:54,072
them there, right? But they're not gone from the community. They're just chatting over here.

654
00:55:55,592 --> 00:56:01,432
But as an organizer, I've just chosen Signal, because a lot of people that come to the meetups

655
00:56:01,432 --> 00:56:03,252
will probably already have signal.

656
00:56:03,452 --> 00:56:05,772
It's the highest probability of something they'll already have

657
00:56:05,772 --> 00:56:07,952
versus for whatever reason,

658
00:56:08,012 --> 00:56:10,112
a lot of people don't have Telegram or don't like Telegram.

659
00:56:11,932 --> 00:56:13,912
And Signal is just more private

660
00:56:13,912 --> 00:56:17,172
and it's more in line with what I would want to recommend

661
00:56:17,172 --> 00:56:18,932
and communicate on anyways.

662
00:56:20,712 --> 00:56:22,332
So Signal is the number one.

663
00:56:22,332 --> 00:56:25,092
And then I'd say Telegram used to be the king, right?

664
00:56:25,152 --> 00:56:27,132
All of this stuff used to be happening on Telegram.

665
00:56:27,252 --> 00:56:28,712
It seems to be moving away from that,

666
00:56:28,792 --> 00:56:30,572
but Telegram is also a great place.

667
00:56:31,432 --> 00:56:37,432
just a lot of scammers and i guess yeah 100 that's so true we we we had to deal with i mean

668
00:56:37,432 --> 00:56:42,712
we're just like a small like we so we started on telegram for our group chat and uh you know we

669
00:56:42,712 --> 00:56:47,912
only have like 10 people or something i i guess we had more than that like just we we probably had 10

670
00:56:47,912 --> 00:56:53,912
people who are active in it right and we still had scammers we had people pretending to be me

671
00:56:53,912 --> 00:56:59,352
like reaching out to people asking for bitcoin and like luckily you know none of that nobody ever

672
00:56:59,352 --> 00:57:05,032
fell for it or whatever um so one of the things we did that actually stopped all the all the spam

673
00:57:05,032 --> 00:57:12,472
uh we used to post i used to post uh our telegram link like an invite link on our meetup.com page

674
00:57:13,112 --> 00:57:18,872
took that off and all that went away and so now it's like hey if you want into the telegram group

675
00:57:18,872 --> 00:57:24,472
at the meetup i will tell hey you're new if you want to join our telegram here's how you get into

676
00:57:24,472 --> 00:57:31,192
the telegram um right but yeah i'll be honest go to the meetup and get on the chat or it's word of

677
00:57:31,192 --> 00:57:35,792
mouth typically now for word of mouth yeah you're like hey i met a guy hasn't been doing meetup yet

678
00:57:35,792 --> 00:57:41,992
but you know i want to get him in the chat say hi and everything yeah 100 the uh i'll be honest

679
00:57:41,992 --> 00:57:48,252
though you know we had in the early days of our telegram group we had people pretty active um it

680
00:57:48,252 --> 00:57:54,512
fell off a cliff at some point i i don't know if it was telegram specifically but um we actually

681
00:57:54,512 --> 00:57:59,932
don't really even use a group chat too much anymore i switched about a year ago i decided

682
00:57:59,932 --> 00:58:04,252
i was just going to make a push because we had we had members who who they just didn't want another

683
00:58:04,252 --> 00:58:12,772
app like i already got too many apps you know i got you know twitter and nostr and telegram and

684
00:58:12,772 --> 00:58:16,472
signal and i'm in all these groups and i got all these freaking notifications on my phone all the

685
00:58:16,472 --> 00:58:33,408
time so about a year ago I started asking people if they want to start an email like we just start an email list and look I got like 40 email addresses on our email list And so that where I do like I send out reminders

686
00:58:33,408 --> 00:58:36,368
for the upcoming meetups and stuff like that.

687
00:58:36,928 --> 00:58:39,068
I actually talked about at our last meetup,

688
00:58:39,448 --> 00:58:44,628
starting to actually use that a little bit more to like do,

689
00:58:44,628 --> 00:58:47,488
hey, does anybody have any requests for topics

690
00:58:47,488 --> 00:58:50,748
or other ideas that we should be working on or doing

691
00:58:50,748 --> 00:58:54,848
or things that they find interesting and just try to get a little bit more of a conversation going.

692
00:58:55,848 --> 00:59:00,948
Because everything, even on the Telegram group, it seemed like I'd go back into the Telegram group

693
00:59:00,948 --> 00:59:01,968
to list the next meetup.

694
00:59:02,028 --> 00:59:04,608
And the last post was me listing the previous meetup.

695
00:59:04,888 --> 00:59:08,468
And it's like, you know, I can do this over email.

696
00:59:09,148 --> 00:59:10,388
And people will probably have a look.

697
00:59:10,668 --> 00:59:15,468
As soon as you mute the group notifications, forget it.

698
00:59:15,468 --> 00:59:17,828
Like no one's ever going to see those messages ever again.

699
00:59:18,688 --> 00:59:19,968
It gets buried for sure.

700
00:59:20,068 --> 00:59:20,228
It gets buried.

701
00:59:20,228 --> 00:59:29,588
like so quick and yeah it's it's it's that's just a great example of um how you know over time the

702
00:59:29,588 --> 00:59:35,708
meetup will tell you start off using certain tools and techniques just to get going right but as the

703
00:59:35,708 --> 00:59:41,168
meetup evolves you realize who the the people who are coming are who the regulars are and yeah what

704
00:59:41,168 --> 00:59:46,928
works best you like you said you stop trying to push out the meetup just naturally because you

705
00:59:46,928 --> 00:59:53,248
wanted to focus on fostering the education and building up these these core group that you have

706
00:59:53,248 --> 01:00:00,488
and so that that builds over time but a group chat uh is definitely i think an essential

707
01:00:00,488 --> 01:00:07,728
um part of the the formula you know when having a meetup plan to if you're going to start one

708
01:00:07,728 --> 01:00:12,948
start considering how you're going to do a group group chat too if you want to do it on signal or

709
01:00:12,948 --> 01:00:20,788
telegram or whatever so i guess so there are a couple things um that i wanted to i guess plug

710
01:00:20,788 --> 01:00:28,788
maybe some things that um i have got going on but also that you know us bitcoin meetup organizers

711
01:00:28,788 --> 01:00:37,508
have the first is grassroots bitcoin at bitcoin park um i believe this so this year it's going to

712
01:00:37,508 --> 01:00:45,248
be first week of April. I think it might actually be April 1st at Bitcoin Park in Nashville. It's

713
01:00:45,248 --> 01:00:52,688
invite only for Bitcoin meetup organizers. If you are a Bitcoin meetup organizer and you don't know

714
01:00:52,688 --> 01:01:00,468
about this event, I will put our contact information in the show notes and feel free to reach out. I

715
01:01:00,468 --> 01:01:06,948
can try to make sure you get added to whatever signal or telegram groups that we all happen to

716
01:01:06,948 --> 01:01:10,948
live in that have the invite link to that event.

717
01:01:10,948 --> 01:01:12,708
So that's something to check out.

718
01:01:12,708 --> 01:01:32,304
But the other thing I wanted to plug was actually after Grassroots 2025 I started a quarterly phone call like video call which is actually how you and i connected uh for this podcast and um so once a quarter i and i can put um that all

719
01:01:32,304 --> 01:01:37,904
shared in similar signal telegram groups um but if you're a bitcoin meetup organizer and you just

720
01:01:37,904 --> 01:01:41,824
want to come introduce yourself find out what other meetups around the country actually around

721
01:01:41,824 --> 01:01:49,264
the world. We had some folks from Spain, Guatemala call into the last call, which is pretty cool.

722
01:01:50,064 --> 01:01:56,224
Just find out what people have going on. That's a good resource. And then as an outcome of those

723
01:01:56,224 --> 01:02:04,064
calls, I started a GitHub page with a bunch of best practices, lessons learned, and actually a

724
01:02:04,064 --> 01:02:09,904
bunch of stuff, Rev, that you said on this first recording here. I'm going to be going back and

725
01:02:09,904 --> 01:02:14,224
updating on the github page because that's what i'm another thing i'm trying to hope to get out

726
01:02:14,224 --> 01:02:19,524
of this is pick up some more best practices lessons learned and find a way to to post all

727
01:02:19,524 --> 01:02:26,064
those somewhere so i'll post links to all that stuff uh in the show notes but uh but yeah those

728
01:02:26,064 --> 01:02:30,784
are some other cool things that that i've got going on that hopefully will help other people

729
01:02:30,784 --> 01:02:36,704
start meetups help help other people expand their meetups and uh keep this thing rolling

730
01:02:36,704 --> 01:03:00,644
Yeah, I mean, dude, the grassroots event at Bitcoin Park, if you're already running a meetup is a huge, it's awesome. I can't recommend trying to get there enough. It's a great time. You just learn so much hearing people just talking about their meetups all the time and all the different stuff that they're doing. You get so many ideas.

731
01:03:00,644 --> 01:03:06,804
you get excited to really hit the ground running for your meetup after going to that thing.

732
01:03:07,484 --> 01:03:15,324
And those quarterly calls are also the same. It's just like the online version of that for

733
01:03:15,324 --> 01:03:21,624
an hour or whatever. And you learn so much. You meet a bunch of people, you get a bunch of

734
01:03:21,624 --> 01:03:25,164
resources. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff from the last call that I still haven't even gotten a

735
01:03:25,164 --> 01:03:32,184
chance to look into yet places to list the meetup and just get get more eyeballs on the fact that it

736
01:03:32,184 --> 01:03:42,224
exists but i guess i i can sort of wrap up go over some of the the general like basically

737
01:03:42,224 --> 01:03:50,544
recap what we discussed and that's like not necessarily the best way like how to do a meetup

738
01:03:50,544 --> 01:03:54,544
but like some good things to think about if you're wanting to start one.

739
01:03:55,384 --> 01:03:58,884
And so like, don't let the location stress you out too much.

740
01:03:59,124 --> 01:04:00,844
Just kind of pick a place.

741
01:04:00,844 --> 01:04:04,564
You can use BTC maps to help find a place that accepts Bitcoin now.

742
01:04:07,104 --> 01:04:19,100
You should you don have to spend money on marketing or anything but if you do it going to help find you more regulars

743
01:04:19,100 --> 01:04:24,300
If you can find somebody to do it with,

744
01:04:24,300 --> 01:04:25,900
it'll help you maintain the consistency.

745
01:04:25,900 --> 01:04:28,340
And the consistency is super important

746
01:04:28,340 --> 01:04:31,060
to keep the regulars coming.

747
01:04:31,060 --> 01:04:33,260
And then a good way to find that person

748
01:04:33,260 --> 01:04:36,460
is to go to one of the meetups within an hour

749
01:04:36,460 --> 01:04:38,380
to two hours of your area.

750
01:04:39,160 --> 01:04:42,260
And this is a good place to promote your meetup

751
01:04:42,260 --> 01:04:43,260
when you finally do start it.

752
01:04:43,620 --> 01:04:46,020
You can get some people orbiting around generally

753
01:04:46,020 --> 01:04:48,840
to come and celebrate the kickoff of your meetup

754
01:04:48,840 --> 01:04:50,420
and get some momentum going for it.

755
01:04:51,700 --> 01:04:55,000
You should probably, like marketing, meetup.com

756
01:04:55,000 --> 01:04:56,380
obviously is a good place,

757
01:04:56,500 --> 01:04:59,460
but just if there's no link for people to click

758
01:04:59,460 --> 01:05:01,400
when you're promoting it online, it doesn't exist.

759
01:05:02,260 --> 01:05:06,380
Like you should have something that has the date

760
01:05:06,380 --> 01:05:11,560
the time, you know, the location in a place where they can click and see it looks like,

761
01:05:11,760 --> 01:05:13,220
oh, yeah, this is a real thing that exists.

762
01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:21,440
And then finally, having some sort of, once you get people there in the meetup going,

763
01:05:21,700 --> 01:05:25,820
having some sort of place to stay connected with them and let the people continue to talk

764
01:05:25,820 --> 01:05:28,380
some group chat type situation signals what I use.

765
01:05:29,040 --> 01:05:30,940
Did I hit everything?

766
01:05:32,400 --> 01:05:34,840
I think, yeah, I think that was a good summary.

767
01:05:34,840 --> 01:05:36,900
maybe in closing

768
01:05:36,900 --> 01:05:38,220
so we're going to be

769
01:05:38,220 --> 01:05:39,520
this is our pilot

770
01:05:39,520 --> 01:05:43,680
so if there are issues with audio

771
01:05:43,680 --> 01:05:44,840
or other things

772
01:05:44,840 --> 01:05:45,940
apologies ahead of time

773
01:05:45,940 --> 01:05:47,980
we will get it ironed out for episode 2

774
01:05:47,980 --> 01:05:51,100
but this is going to be coming out

775
01:05:51,100 --> 01:05:53,540
on podcasting 2.0 apps

776
01:05:53,540 --> 01:05:54,600
specifically Fountain

777
01:05:54,600 --> 01:05:55,660
at least to start

778
01:05:55,660 --> 01:05:58,760
but yeah we're going to hope to get this out

779
01:05:58,760 --> 01:05:59,760
in the next week or so

780
01:05:59,760 --> 01:06:02,720
and I guess just to

781
01:06:02,720 --> 01:06:08,900
to close out the way we opened up western mass bitcoin meetup meetup number 42 sunday february

782
01:06:08,900 --> 01:06:15,700
15th peppa's pizza and east long meadow how about you rev oh god i have to look at the date again

783
01:06:15,700 --> 01:06:23,360
because i don't want to say that i caught you cold yeah let's see so because we always do the

784
01:06:23,360 --> 01:06:30,880
meetup uh in south bend on the first thursday of every month at lang lab um and so in february

785
01:06:30,880 --> 01:06:33,320
the first Thursday is February 5th.

786
01:06:33,320 --> 01:06:35,220
So February 5th, 6 p.m.

787
01:06:35,300 --> 01:06:36,180
South Bend, Indiana.

788
01:06:36,740 --> 01:06:37,700
Lang Lab is the venue.

789
01:06:38,740 --> 01:06:39,560
Come hang out.

790
01:06:40,320 --> 01:06:41,240
We'll talk about Bitcoin.

791
01:06:41,880 --> 01:06:42,440
Have a drink.

792
01:06:42,760 --> 01:06:43,000
Whatever.

793
01:06:44,440 --> 01:06:44,780
All right.

794
01:06:45,560 --> 01:06:46,080
Cheers, man.

795
01:06:47,280 --> 01:06:47,820
I'll see you later.

796
01:06:50,820 --> 01:06:51,720
Episode complete.

797
01:06:52,140 --> 01:06:53,320
If you run a Bitcoin meetup

798
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:54,340
and want to talk about it here,

799
01:06:54,680 --> 01:06:55,080
reach out.

800
01:06:55,640 --> 01:06:56,860
Contact info is in the show notes.

801
01:06:57,400 --> 01:06:58,020
And as always,

802
01:06:58,300 --> 01:06:59,200
attend your local meetup

803
01:06:59,200 --> 01:06:59,900
or start your own.

804
01:06:59,900 --> 01:07:03,080
Local Bitcoiners are always just one meetup away.