Planning My Next Meetup [hopefully not MIS] Adventure (Part 3)

Following my e-mail posted last time, Meetup responded:

     > Hi there, sounds like a great potential group! Many groups
     > cover metro areas, and not just a single city. Meetups should
     > be offline and in real life. but online meetings are okay as
     > long as they’re not the majority of the group’s events.

I was really describing multiple metropolitan areas (Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing).

     > Perhaps you could have a Slack group for your online
     > correspondence and use Meetup to access our community
     > and gain new members, and plan in-person events?

I replied:

     > Thanks for your input.
     >
     > From what you describe, though, would this be acceptable for
     > Meetup? The purpose of this group is to learn and/or help each
     > other with their trading by working together on trades. Trading
     > really lends itself to screen sharing, screenshots, and other
     > things that can be posted on something like Slack, Yahoo! Groups,
     > etc. Most of our regular work would therefore be online. The
     > Meetups would perhaps be quarterly to allow us the chance to
     > visit in-person those people with whom we work every day. My
     > hope is that Meetup can bring us together in the first place.

Meetup replied:

     > While we’re not able to offer specific advice or coaching on
     > creating on your group, we recommend closely reviewing our
     > Meetup Group Policies to ensure when you create your group it
     > adheres to… [our] guidelines…
     >
     > Once you submit your new group, a member of the Community
     > Experience team will review the group for approval.

I felt like we were once again miscommunicating as described in the first paragraph of the excerpt here. Their initial response (second paragraph, above) clearly expressed a conflict, but they seemed to be encouraging me to go forward regardless.

I responded:

     > I’m not looking for advice or coaching. I’m trying to figure out
     > if my group meets your guidelines. You wrote, “perhaps…
     > [use]… a Slack group for your online correspondence and use
     > Meetup to access our community… gain new members, and plan
     > in-person events?” That is exactly what I would like to do.
     > However, the previous paragraph says “online meetings…
     > [cannot be] the majority of the group’s events.” That is
     > problematic since the group would mainly be a daily online
     > work group. Occasional in-person events would also give us
     > the opportunity to meet face-to-face people with whom we
     > have been doing daily work.
     >
     > I’ve been attending Meetups for over 10 years and I see
     > Meetup as the perfect tool for this. I looked at your
     > Standards document, though, and saw: “Be Local. Meetup
     > is intended for building local community. Meetup should
     > not be used primarily for scheduling online meetings,
     > conference calls, or WEBINARS ACROSS GEOGRAPHIES…
     > Meetup’s features should be used to build the group’s
     > capacity and create opportunities for meaningful connections
     > within a local community.” [emphasis mine]
     >
     > That also suggests this would not be a viable Meetup. As
     > mentioned in my initial inquiry, I feel the need to cast a
     > wider geographic net to find the few people who would really
     > be interested/benefit from a group like this.

Meetup replied:

     > The focus of a Meetup group would be in person interactions,
     > and at least 50% of the interactions should be local and
     > face to face.

Finally, a resolution! Meetup is not a direct solution for the kind of blended (online and face-to-face) group I wish to create.