Observing the tech, using meetup data to observe the evolution of the discourse around IoT

This paper proposes to use MeetUp data to study the emergence and the evolution of the technological trend commonly known as Internet of Things (IoT). Starting from a manually selected sample of 220 European MeetUp groups we used MeetUp's APIs, to retrieve additional information about the events and participating users. The final dataset consists of 220 groups, 32967 members and 2386 events from 2011 until now (Jan 2019). The results suggest the presence of clearly identifiable European hubs for IoT development but a worldwide crowd of users. From a temporal perspective the MeetUp data shows how IoT exploded in 2015 and how it might have peaked in 2017. Within this period of time IoT has not been a “stable technology” but as evolved incorporating, within its area of “related topics” new and emerging technologies such as Cryptocurrency or cloud computing.