Thousands of technology professionals attend in-person meetups each month in cities around the world. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing requirements have forced meetups in many locations to operate exclusively virtual events for the first time. We surveyed participants (n=251) who attend technology meetup communities in the UK to find out how the pivot from in-person to virtual meetings has affected meetup communities. We gathered data about participants' experiences of virtual meetups and compared with in-person experiences. While in-person meetups are important venues for practitioners to network, learn, socialise, meet people and participate in discussions (enabling transfer of tacit knowledge), participants attend virtual meetings primarily for learning. Virtual meetups offer poor support for socialising, networking, discussion and transfer of tacit knowledge, However, they do offer learning opportunities via structured talks and content, and can rival in-person meetups when it comes to learning new skills like programming, keeping up to date with general technology developments and improving one's general practice. The low barrier to entry for virtual events improves accessibility for both speakers and participants. Our findings suggest that some meetups may benefit from considering how to incorporate virtual meeting formats into their schedules for the long-term.

Informal technology 'meetups' have become an important aspect of the software development community, engaging many thousands of practitioners on a regular basis. However, although local technology meetups are well-attended by developers, little is known about their motivations for participating, the type or usefulness of information that they acquire, and how local meetups might differ from and complement other available communication channels for software engineering information. We interviewed the leaders of technology-oriented Meetup groups, and collected quantitative information via a survey distributed to participants in technology-oriented groups. Our findings suggest that participants in these groups are primarily experienced software practitioners, who use Meetup for staying abreast of new developments, building local networks and achieving transfer of rich tacit knowledge with peers to improve their practice. We also suggest that face to face meetings are useful forums for exchanging tacit knowledge and contextual information needed for software engineering practice.

This paper describes the experience of managing a requirements process between distributed parties with diverse interests in a research project context. We present some key 'lessons learned' from a new case study, the DESTECS project, and summarise lessons learned from previous experience reports. Key risks include obstacles imposed by the geographic distance, the different domain knowledge and working contexts of partners, and a risk that autonomous partners' goals do not always coincide. Our observations on a new case study broadly support a previous study, but we also propose some new lessons to learn, including the creation of a small, representative 'requirements authority' (RA), investing time in studying common concepts early in the project, and ensuring that expectations for requirements and for deliveries are made explicit.