Throwing awesome meetups with a small team
The Sourcegraph Open Source meetups began as a place to connect the authors and users of awesome open source projects. Armed with a small team, a great office in downtown SoMa, and a list of awesome speakers, we’ve created a dedicated group of engineers and open source evangelists eager to share their amazing projects with the world.
In the last six months, we’ve hosted over 300 people, grown the meetup group to over 100 members and counting, and published talks that have been watched over 4,200 times on YouTube collectively. Many of our users first heard about Sourcegraph by attending these early meetups and have become routine attendees and great friends. With a small budget and minimal production assets, we’ve worked to offer high quality meetups for engineers and developers. In the spirit of open source, we thought it might be fun to share some of the things we’ve learned that have helped us create the meetups that you see today.
Defining a theme
As a DJ here in San Francisco, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what makes a great party. The mood, vibe, and memories that come from an awesome night out are the result of experienced promoters, venue owners, musicians, and a willing crowd to embrace the magic that can happen on the dancefloor and to provide a connection between music and people. And all of this comes together by defining a theme for the party. Remember that awesome 90s house party you went to? Or the all night technofest at Public Works? Every great party is built around the intention of creating a prescribed and authentic experience.
Similarly, we’ve learned that defining a core theme is the most important aspect of our meetups. It’s the driving force behind all decisions: who should present, who to invite, how many people to invite, and even what kind of food to serve. Set this in stone before you start planning.
We try to pick our speakers a month in advance to help start building anticipation of the event and so people can start RSVPing well in advance. We’ve found that personal invitations increase attendance and is worth the investment in time.
In anticipation of Emily Stark’s talk, we’ve looking forward to inviting people who have built projects with Meteor.js and to include members of that community who may not get the chance to share their work.
Finding the right speaker
Finding great speakers is tough. Popular names are largely unattainable if you don’t have a huge following and well known speakers often charge a consulting fee. Alternatively, you’re taking a big risk on someone if they’ve never given a longer talk before because no one wants to sit through a boring, hour-long talk.
We find the majority of our best speakers on GitHub or through our network. Some of them have been working on projects for months while others ready to share brand new content. It’s important to always stay in touch with your speakers and keep planning ahead.
One of the ways we improve the quality of our productions is by asking our speakers to submit a recording of their talk in advance. This was a tactic we took when Google asked us to record a video for Quinn’s talk at Google I/O this year. This addresses two concerns: 1) it gives the speaker an opportunity and reason to focus on their talk and 2) it gives us a clearer idea how to message the event.
Increasing your production value
We’re able to handle most of the event planning ourselves but hire a few key freelancers. We use a service called Bannerman to help greet guests at the door, check IDs to satisfy our friends at the ATF.
Secondly, we have a great working relationship with Sean, our freelance film editor in LA who helps turn around the footage for our blog posts. He’s usually able to get us a full 45–60 minute video with title cards, slides, and color adjustment within a day.
To record these awesome talks, we rely on a number of self operating cameras that run during the entire meetup. Often minutes before people arrive, we’re running around making sure food is setup, the guard has the RSVP list, and at the last moment, hit the record button on all 3 cameras. We have two GoPro Hero3+s, a Zoom X4 with lav mic, and a Canon DSLR for close up shots, and we take lots of photos with our phones that we post to Twitter and Instagram.
Food and drinks
If you can afford to spend a little extra on things like food and beer, they certainly help increase your attendance numbers, don’t get me wrong. But even the food choice should be considered an important choice as part of your strategy.
I was introduced at a party the other day by @kevinverse This is Charles. He works at Sourcegraph. They throw awesome meetups with great food.” While that kind of epithet doesn’t normally follow my name, I was glad to hear it. In the meetup scene, you need to stand out, so here’s one rule: NO BEER AND PIZZA. There are many developers who are gluten intolerant, vegan, or just bored of the same food all the time. I recommend dim sum.
Swag/give aways
The swag at SF meetups is getting good! Just this week I attended a meetup and was given more gifts than I received for my birthday this year.
But let’s be clear: this is totally going overboard. As a small startup, you’re better of building your community instead of trying to earn customers. Cool swag is great, but only when you’ve reached maturity and are looking for ways to appreciate your customers.
With that said, we hand out t-shirts at our meetups but they are in a corner and simply available for anyone who wants one. We award each of our speakers a special Milton shirt as a thank you.
Limitations
There’s only so much you can do with a small group. We can only fit 45 people into our space, tiny compared to the 150–200 person meetups at other venues. Similarly, with such a tight focus on open source engineering, we need to pass on a LOT of cool presentations, (like this guy who built an amazing Daft Punk helmet from scratch — nice work, Charles!) that are outside our focus. Lastly, these meetups often take a total of 5–15 hours worth of setup, preparation, and video editing, a sizable chunk of anyone’s time. But in general, we feel that hosting these meetups is a great way for us to give back to the open source community and stay current on exciting projects.
A special thanks to our amazing group of attendees who have been a key component of our community. We couldn’t have done any of this without you.
Next month, we’re hosting Emily Stark of Meteor who will give us a deep look into the release of Meteor 1.0. RSVP here and we’ll see you in December! Want to give a talk? Reach out to charles at sourcegraph dot com and we’ll take it from there!
