Meetup: Make New Friends While Doing Something You Enjoy

9/11/01: We all remember where we were, who we were with, and what happened to those we loved.  Do you remember what happened in the following days and weeks and months?  I remember meeting up with my friends at the playground and knowing childhoods will never be the same.  I remember my then-boyfriend panicking because his father was supposed to be flying to DC and one of the planes that crashed was the usual flight he took to CA.  (His father was safe; he never even got on the plane.)  The City of Boston was being evacuated, people were panicking, parents were dismissing their kids from school, and the phone lines were jammed. My aunt, uncle and 2 young cousins were stranded in Washington, D.C., all ok, thankfully.  We will never forget.  But what rose from the ashes was a new sense of community.

Scott Heiferman was living in NYC at the time and was overwhelmed by this very new sense of community.  Neighbors he never knew in his own building, in the building next door, down the street and 3 city blocks away got to know each other.  From this new sense of community Meetup.com was founded.  Their motto has evolved throughout the years from “Whatever your interest; wherever you are” to “Do Something; Learn Something; Share Something; Change Something.”  Essentially, Meetup helps foster a sense of community locally based on common interests.  I discovered Meetup.com in early 2002, perhaps around the time Scott founded it.  I then forget all about it.

That is, until June 2006, when I was perusing the internet and deciding what I was going to do to celebrate my birthday.  I happened upon the site and noticed there were no Meetup groups south of Boston to speak of; they were almost all in the City of Boston.  Let me back-up.  You might be wondering what exactly a Meetup group is.  It’s a group of people coming together around a common interest, mostly those in the same geographic area.  So, with no groups to speak of on the south Shore I went about changing that.  (What else would I do?)  After weeks of deliberation and careful consideration I founded the South Shore Fitness Meetup Group on July 9th, 2006.  7 weeks later I founded the South Shore Dining Out Meetup Group.  Both groups kept me busy organizing fun events around activities I enjoyed, meeting new people with common interests and making some amazing new friends.  I later founded the South Shore Walkabouts and South of Boston Fit Clubs Meetup Groups in 2011.  While I am still the Group Organizer for the latter 3 groups, I am no longer affiliated with the first group I founded.  I have been a member of dozens of Meetup groups throughout the area and am an Assistant Organizer with a few Meetup groups, including the Boston Volunteers Meetup Group.  I do enjoy being a member of other Meetup Groups rather than being a leader.  It does make me a more well-balanced member of the Meetup community.

Through all of these groups I have accomplished and learned a lot.  One of the most important lessons I learned is that I cannot control the world, only myself.  Hence, I formed Organizer Teams, and through the camaraderie of the Organizer Teams, I remain friends with many of the members of my past and present Organizer Teams.  I also learned I can learn from others.  Having an Organizer Team helped greatly as my horizons were broadened dramatically.  I never would have eaten Thai food or walked in a 5k, never mind a 10k.  I have met many people from all walks of life and they have all made a difference in my life.  I’ve been to restaurants I had never heard of and have found new favorites as a result, bought a pedometer that rarely leaves my side, co-designed and implemented a program of tennis lessons, walked and hiked places I had never heard of and made some of the best friends a girl could have.  Mike, Biagio, Phaedra, Chandra, Josh, Susan, Alison, Jeanne, Jen, Debbi, Donna, Estella, Laura, Paul and Ann are just a few of the friends I have made over the past 5+ years.  

If you want to enjoy some of what life has to offer with new friends you should consider checking out the Meetup.com community.

Here are direct links to some of the Meetup groups I mentioned.

Boston Volunteers: www.bostonvolunteers.org

South of Boston (South Shore) Fit Clubs: www.meetup.com/southshorefitclubs

South Shore Dining Out Meetup Group: www.meetup.com/ssdomg

South Shore Walkabouts: www.meetup.com/walkabouts