There's a high chance that if you have attended an event in a city in recent years, it was arranged through meetup.com. The site now has over 32 million members, over a quarter of a million meetup groups and over half a million meetups happening in 182 countries every month.

Aside from being a keen and regular user, meetup has always fascinated me, as it's a tech company with a core mission that is about getting people away from their technology and to in-person meetings with like-minded people. It's a service that creates so many positive outcomes, yet so many users focus on the negatives of the platform. And as one attendee of a meetup organizers meetup in Berlin put it, "you're a service where those who do all the work have to pay".

After his talk about "the future in 2027" at Berlin's Tech Open Air event, I sat down with the founder, Scott Heiferman to dig into the past, present and future of meeting people.

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Scott Heiferman - The past, present and future of meeting people with meetup founder