Meetup

When I moved to Rochester, I knew about four people in the entire city. I figured this would be a great start to making friends, but soon realized that my boyfriend and I worked very opposite schedules and my college friends had busy lives and their own significant others to spend time with.

So, I started looking into other options. I considered taking classes (which required money I didn't really want to spend) and volunteering (still attempting to get more involved in this). I eventually decided to check out a website I'd read about in a few magazines: meetup.com

The only problem? Every Rochester meetup group seemed to cater towards 40 and 50 year old singles who loved to cook together and go bowling. Needless to say, these groups didn't exact fit what I was looking for. After thoroughly searching all the groups in the Rochester area, I finally just decided to create my own group for Rochester 20 somethings. Putting myself out there as an organizer made me responsible for planning fun events for a group of people I had never met. I was very nervous before attending my first meetup, but thrilled when I saw the number of members triple over the first few weeks of creating the group.

It turns out, I had nothing at all to be worried about. In my past year in Rochester I've met tons of nice new people through the group, and I plan to join meetup groups in every city I move to from here on out. Meetup.com has improved their site since I began the group and now any group member can create an event on the site. This takes a ton of pressure off of the meetup organizer and has helped to make our now 100+ member group much more collaborative. As a group we've held picnics, bar hops, hiking excursions, brewery tours, concerts, visited art galleries, and so much more.

I've since stepped down from my "organizer" meetup position, but I still attend events regularly and have met some some great friends through the site. I would definitely recommend this site to anyone moving to a new city. If there's not a group out there that fits your age group or interests, don't hesitate to make your own!

Have any of you attending a meetup event in your area? What were your thoughts?