[gundalow]

As part of the move from Meetup Pro to Ansible Forum + pretix (for RSVP), we need to define the locations tools/common/ansible_event_cities.py is the single source of truth for Forum + Pretix.

How this data is used:

• Create the city sub-categories under events, which users will subscribe to
  • Example: Barcelona, London,
• Creates private forum group meetup-host-${CITY} which has edit post in the corresponding city sub-category
  • Allows organisers to update event description/agenda/etc
  • Grants permission to pretix for this city and it's events
• Populate the list of cities someone can pick when signing up (or editing their profile)

Improvements for Ireland, India, and other country level groups

In Meetup Pro, we had to pay per group. As we move from Meetup Pro to Ansible Forum + Pretix (for RSVP), we don't have that limitation, so we can have as many locations as we want.
This is important for India as I (badly) consolidated 10+ groups into one ansible-india. This resulted in a huge Meetup Group, a lot of notifications about events happening at the other side of the country, and a loss of the decentralised empowerment that previously made Meetups successful.

The granular city/region based groups allow better notification

Also as @anweshadas right called out in the past it allows better recognition (and support) of our meetup organisers. Be that Meetup Organizer forum badges, ability to drive and prototype forum improvements

Documentation

Docs build from this PR

• Top level
• Adding a new city

Docs for main branch

• https://docs.ansible.com/projects/meetup/en/latest/

City list will need review
Unlike Meetup Pro, we can have as many cities as we want. This list is based on current Meetup Pro and the historical (pre Pro) Meetup groups

This list is used to generate the private city groups in meetup, also new Forum users will be shown this list when creating an account.

Signup form

When an Ansible community member creates a Forum account, they will see an optional screen multi-select where they can select any meetup locations they are interested in.

This is meant to be an easy way to set set notifications for the city-specific event sub-category.

This field (and the city forum groups) are only visible by the user and the Forum admins. Members of the group can not see who else is a member.

Viewable via http://forum.ansible.com/signup (via incognito mode)

Edit profile

For existing forum users, they can optionally set this via https://forum.ansible.com/my/preferences/profile

This field (and the city forum groups) are only visible by the user and the Forum admins. Members of the group can not see who else is a member.

Invite links for existing Meetup Pro

We have 20k+ members on meetup Pro, we can't export and move them, we don't have their consent for that.

What we can do, is generate per-city forum invite links, which work for new or existing users. This will automatically add the user into the right city based groups

[gundalow]

(removed)

[gundalow]

@anweshadas @chagrawa123 As part of the move away from Meetup Pro to the Ansible Forum + Pretix we can add unlimited locations. Which other Indian cities should I add back?

The list here is based on what was historically in Meetup before Meetup Pro

[gundalow]

@oraNod What other meetup locations should we define for Ireland?
In Meetup Pro we consolidated into a single country based group due to per-group costs.

Do we want a country-wide or city-specific?
We don't want to spam people about events they aren't interested in, though we also don't want people missing events that they might be happy travelling to.

[oraNod]

@gundalow I think city specific makes sense. I'd add Dublin to this list as there is a WeWork space and I've held meetups there before. Could we also add "remote" as a location for Ireland? Red Hat has a lot of remotees in Ireland.

[gundalow]

I'll add Dublin, good callout, thanks.

Country wide groups

There (currently) aren't any country wide groups in this list. The idea is for specific groups with the right signal-noise ratio.
All meetups will still go into Bullhorn, the main events catelog, and be shared on social media.

Red Hat has a lot of remotees in most countires

[gundalow]

For smaller countries, might we want to keep some country-level groups (rather than fragmented smaller groups?)

There's a trade off between awareness vs noise (spam)