In our inaugural VR Industry Report: July 2015, we studied the top cities in North America with VR company headquarters and found that multiple cities had thriving ecosystems. Just how thriving? We decided to investigate by looking at the growth rates of top VR Meetups around the continent.

Here’s what we found:

Looking at the top North American Meetups involved in VR (as determined by meetup.com), we compiled each of their respective percent growths since the beginning of 2015. While we focused only on Meetups with at least a few hundred members, it is worth noting that one particular Meetup, Portland Virtual Reality, was left out, due to the fact that it was only a week old on January 1st.

As expected, the state with the largest amount of VR Meetups is California; however, what is interesting is that the top 5 fastest growing Meetups after Long Beach Virtual Reality are located away from the West Coast, mostly on the East Coast. What this means is that regardless of most VR companies’ decisions to set their headquarters in California, there are VR enthusiasts throughout North America. Moreover, one could say that people are even more excited to join Meetups in regions like the East Coast because there are fewer VR companies there. In regions with a smaller VR scene, every bit of information or sneak peek at new technology is that much more valuable to consumers. These Meetups are their best chance to learn more about what VR companies are working on.

In this quick study, percent growth was taken as opposed to total number of members; however, if you are interested in the actual sizes of these Meetups (and others around the world), you can find them in rank order here.

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