I never really thought of MeetUps as a trend indicator. It suddenly dawned on me that it can be the leading indicator of activities in different areas. Here is an example.
I got a notification email from meetup.com on a meet up called RIAK. I checked it out and signed up. I got an email confirmation back.
Notice that it is about next generation NoSQL and distributed systems. In the same email, there was another, even more interesting set of recommendations:
Look at the Big Data and MySQL meetups. But what intrigued me even more was SVNewTech with close to 10000 members.
I mulled over this for a while. 531 members of HPC and GPU is an early signal. What kind of things do these meetups discuss? What do they do? I thought it is worth exploring a bit more.
Have you explored meetups or other similar events? Do you think they are a kind of leading indicator of activity in a specific area?