General Meetup Discussions

[paganpenguin]

I am interested in coming to this, but I can’t confirm yet if I will be able to go as it takes place on my fiancée’s birthday. I hope you all have fun either way.

[Norway_girl]

Hi @paganpenguin and welcome to the forum! You’ve posted in the general meetup disussion thread, but I assume you meant to post in the thead for a specific meetup, maybe one in the USA section? The person who’s hosting the meetup isn’t likely to see it here in this thread, so I recommend finding the correct meetup thread and post there.

[anon72566616]

Question for meetup hosts. Did you hire a designer to make your meet postcards? I want the meet to be doable for me financially. I am not sure if someone needs to be paid 200+ for designing a card. Or another suggestion is that I pay for a venue. Could former/future hosts help with suggestions. Would appreciate greatly.

[eta55]

My posts in this thread on the following dates should help you out:

May 2021
July 2021
May 2022

I have hosted numerous face-to-face meet ups and have not yet had to pay for a venue. If the group is relatively small most restaurants seem to be ok with it as long as folks purchase some food/drinks. The last one I co-hosted in Philadelphia had ~ 22 attendees and we all had lunch as a part of the meet-up.

I’ve designed and printed all of my own cards for all of the meet-us I’ve hosted, both face-to-face and virtual. Clunky but workable is to import all your elements into PowerPoint and then screen cap the result once you have it all laid out. Photo editing programs like Pixelmator on the Mac work well also, and give better control with a somewhat steeper learning curve. Printing services like Vistaprint (as one example) also allow you to do some design/editing online. It never occurred to me to hire a graphic artist, I just went after it. I suppose it depends on how comfortable you are with executing whatever concept you’ve got i mind.

[helent]

I would not. This recent thread might give you some inspiration. Once you start, it is surprisingly easy!

How does one design & make postcards for a meetup?

My son and I started Postcrossing back in October. He loves it! However I would love to have a meetup near where I live and am looking into things such as designing and creating a postcard. Of course I want to use the Postcrossing logo and have the kit and follow guidelines. How do you design and make your postcards? How do you use images? Get images? Unless it is a picture you take? Thanks in advance. -Adam

[helent]

@anon72566616

Or another suggestion is that I pay for a venue. Could former/future hosts help with suggestions. Would appreciate greatly.

I didn’t answer this question.

We’ve had meet ups in community rooms at libraries/town halls. There is usually a small fee (eg $10 an hour), which everyone kicked in a couple of dollars to cover.

But we now mostly meet in a food hall in an office building. We probably got very lucky finding this spot - it is open on the weekend, but very quiet, so no one minds us using a few tables.

[momola]

If there are pictures in the meeting post that are not approved by the administrator, how to deal with them?

[Bille]

If a card has not been approved, then it may not be used as designed - either at the Meetup or later. It must be changed so that it complies with the Logo Guidelines.

[momola]

But the meeting had already taken place, and I was there to see the wrong cards being printed and distributed.

[Bille]

Thank you for the information.

[suerae]

I’m planning a meetup that will be taking place at a stamp show. They would like to put our meetup on their program. And they would like to use the Postcrossing logo. I have downloaded the logo guidelines to use as I’m designing our meetup postcard but wasn’t sure how to handle approval for the stamp show program. Thanks in advance for help with this.

[Cassiopheia]

Go to the bottom of the page you linked and follow that link there:

Explain everything to the Postcrossing team and you will hear back from them.

[mar127]

Question: is it possible to have a meeting of say 12, where on forehand you have made plans with fellow postcrossers to meet. Or do you always have to have an open participants list?

[mikebond]

The Meetup Guidelines state that

@meiadeleite

Meetups should be open to everyone in Postcrossing, without discrimination. If there is a limit on the number of participants, spots should be assigned on a “first come, first served” basis.

[Bille]

@mar127
Of course you can have a meeting with 12 friends, but this is a private meeting and not a Postcrossing MeetUp.
It makes no sense to post it here because it will not be added to the calendar.
And as far as I know, you are not allowed to print a card with the Postcrossing logo or the words “Postcrossing Meeting”.

@Mundoo, please correct me if I’m wrong.

[mar127]

I also found this in the rules,

It’s a good idea to first check if there’s at least some people who would join. You might already know other local postcrossers, so ask them if they would like to meet over some postcards and coffee!

[meiadeleite]

This is to prevent that you’re the only person on a meeting… which would be a bit sad. We want meetings to be successful, and a one-person meeting is not really a “meeting”, right?

Like Bille mentioned, if you’re just getting together with a group of friends, that’s great — but it’s not a Postcrossing meetup. Postcrossing meetups should be open and give other members of the community the chance to join (even if seats are limited).

[mar127]

Thanks for clearing up, their was a contradiction for me in it.

[suerae]

I submitted my proposed meetup card several days ago. I know we need to give administrators 2 weeks to approve. I’m worried that it didn’t even post. Should it show up in list of meetups even before it’s approved so people know the date?