History

Expats in Oslo originally started as Meetup community around beginning of November 2010. First activity had been hosted as long as 14 years ago by Emma on 10 November 2010 which was a small social gathering and I think that shows up the nature of such a decentralised groups that live long enough and semi-self organise. The group changed focus several times and during different years a lot of people attended the events.

To this day, Expats in Oslo meetup community hosted almost 1100 events! Throughout the years that has been pretty different events (over 30 types of activities) and currently there are 14 organisers. Out of them, about 4 organisers including me are active to this day on Meetup and you probably can meet them from time to time.

The list of activities by the group includes regular board games (every Thursday and Friday), smaller gatherings to play a particular board game, occasional or summer hikes and photo shoots, networking, ice skating, cycling, comedy and impro nights, karaoke, sports, marathons, museums, tours, concerts, yoga, open mics, picnics, movie screenings, opera, music, night outs, outdoor activities, language caffees, startups events and pitches, dinners, sledding, medieval and normal festivals, and other things. Main and regular activities lately have been the board gaming gatherings.

I've (Den, sxiii) joined the community 24 December 2018 - right about after arriving for my first job in Norway. I haven't been hosting any events until ~ after the corona in the middle of 2021. Originally inspired from the "House of Nerds" in Loren and later by Winston's famous Wednesday Board Games who's been hosting many board games, at some point I've decided to try to start my own event and that marks the start of the journey of my "Thursday Board Games" event - first happened on 8 July 2021.

Since then I've been able to host many Board Game Events - current statistic (1 Feb 2024) says it's been 135 events in the group - that stands for about 2.5 years of activity, if we only count "Thursday Board Games".

Some years were more active than others, but overall I think every year had a lot of fun events and almost every year had more events then the previous one.

Nowadays, Expats in Oslo Meetup community consists of almost 7,000 members and it continues to grow and to become an awesome and diversified platform or all kind of social events.

I'd like to thank all organisers and participants for an awesome journey and I also hope that this story inspires you on one day to make own event!

See you around,

yours truly
Den Ivanov