In 2015 Melbourne there were 5 different groups meeting about Linux weekly and one group about every programming language in the top 20 of stack overflow.

The endless lockdowns destroyed pretty much all of civic society there and the place hasn't recovered, literally everyone I know from that period left after the lockdowns ended.

Well I suppose that you had something really exceptional in Melbourne, then. I've never heard of anything like that anywhere I've lived in the UK or Germany

This describes Manchester, UK pretty well as well - before the pandemic there would be some sort of tech meetup every day of the week. But now it is down to ~one a week. And many have been taken over by recruiters and marketers.

I'm pretty sure it was the same in every bigger European city. There used to be plenty of diverse tech meetups in Warsaw or Poznań, PL before the pandemic; today they're still slowly rebuilding and those that already did are usually still a shadow of their former self.

when i was visiting vienna there were 3 meetups every week. after covid! so i believe they recovered pretty well. it would be sad if they are the exception and i hope others will get back to their previous level of activity too.