Meatup

In the two years I have done this blog, I have yet to do a posting on the Meatpacking District per se (I will in the future). I brushed the area with my posting on the Old Homestead Steakhouse - click here. Today's photo is taken from the new Apple Store on 14th Street and 9th Avenue in the heart of the meatpacking district - a surprising choice for a retail store of this type. Click here for more photos. The area has been gentrified but is primarily restaurants and clothing boutiques.
Intrigued after hearing that this new store is their 2nd largest (after one in Chicago), a friend and I decided to make the pilgrimage in the frigid cold. The 4-story store was a buzz of activity as are all the NYC Apple stores. If you want to witness the cult that is Apple, visit one of their stores. One of their keys to success has been the evangelism on the part of the users - a phenomenon described in the Macintosh Way by Guy Kawasaki - one of the original Apple employees responsible for marketing of the Macintosh in 1984.
Today's title is more than an obvious play on the phrase "meet up." It seems that everything nowadays needs to be branded or organized to have legitimacy - whether it's story telling, beekeeping or walking. So why not organize groups under one umbrella? In 2002, Meetup.com (Meetup) was formed by Scott Heiferman, Matt Meeker and Peter Kamali.
The primary inspiration was the book Bowling Alone, by Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam about the decline of community in America. The founders knew that people were spending more and more time in front of their computers, DVD players and TVs and losing personal connections. So the organization was formed to get people to reconnect in their own communities. There are millions of members worldwide, thousands of topics and hundreds of thousands of local groups. Although there is an online site - meetup.com - the primary function is to facilitate the offline meetings.
In high school, I used to belong to numerous clubs - the same fundamental elements were operative - people meeting in the flesh to share a common interest or activity ...