The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Vacation

"I was thinking it might be fun to pick the city with the most people on this list for my next vacation."

I'm going to get everyone I know in Winnipeg to sign up.

Monday, January 19, 2004

Well, it's better than Churchill.
Although I would like to see polar bears...

Joel Spolsky
Monday, January 19, 2004

No it's not! <g>

Monday, January 19, 2004

I kinda like winnipeg. There's a couple good chinese places there.

Monday, January 19, 2004

I'll admit that I'd rather have an MTA card in my pockets rather than a set of car keys... but does everyone has to be so *cruel*?

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v10n2/htdocs/dos.php [possibly NSFW, it IS viceland).

SL

Shawn Leslie
Monday, January 19, 2004

I can't honestly see Mountain View as a vacation destination, regardless of the number of Jolt cans per mile.

Simon Lucy
Monday, January 19, 2004

Anybody know why the list of countries is so limited?

If you want to sign up you have to choose from a very imperfect list. Neither of the countries I live in is there.

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 19, 2004

My country is listed. But I can't select my City! :(

JD

JD
Monday, January 19, 2004

Stephen

Assuming you weren't trying to be funny... Sign up and it will appear.

Monday, January 19, 2004

but you need to select the country to sign up! And it takes ages to load.

I'll try again now anyway!

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 19, 2004

You do need to chose a city to sign up. However this time the bottom of the page loaded as well, so I was pleased to find that if you read or scroll down to faq niumber eight you will read "what do i do if my city or country isn't listed".

Unfortunately the answer to the FAQ hasn't come up yet (only two minutes to look at a blank page!"

Shoudn't the meetups be called "Victims of the Webmaster from Hell meetups"?

Stephen Jones
Monday, January 19, 2004

If your city/country is not on the list, you are invited to send an email. The canned response is:

"Hello <yourname>

We had limited time and resources to add cities at our launch, but we do want to expand to as many places as possible. While <yourcity> may not have the population necessary for Meetup to launch our 2,700+ topics, before
opening in any given city, we need to have some good MEETUP places.

We generally like to have 12-15 venues in a given city before opening it up. If you could provide us with 12-15 good cafes/restaurants/bars in your city (i.e. name, address, phone number, & type of venue), we can get it in
there even faster.

Thank you for your suggestions! I look forward to hearing from you again.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns!

Regards,

James
User Relations Coordinator
www.meetup.com"

Or how-to-start-a-tourism-database-at-zero-cost.
Sigh.
Maybe I'll get around one day to cut & paste from the local restaurant database's Top 10.

Yves
Wednesday, January 21, 2004