Community Building

So You Want To Start a Meetup

My experience fostering a local tech community

9 min readAug 17, 2023

This post captures my journey to becoming a Meetup Organizer for the St. Louis Go Meetup group, where I share my thoughts and learnings.
If you are an existing Meetup Organizer, your story may resonate, so please feel free to read on and share your thoughts.
If you are new to being a Meetup Organizer or curious about what getting started looks like, you might want to jump to Getting Started to read a few tips I think are important for creating a safe and successful Meetup.

Right before the start of the pandemic, I took on responsibility as an Organizer for the St. Louis Go Meetup group, part of the Go Developer Network (GDN) on Meetup. This group had existed for nearly two years and had grown to roughly 300 members by this time. We had three other co-organizers when the outgoing organizer chose to step away; this would be easy, or so I thought.

My first event as host and organizer was scheduled for January 2020. Inclement weather in the area on the night of our event forced our main speaker to cancel for the evening. We had no talks available as a backup, and the unusually heavy snowfall wreaked havoc on the highways as businesses closed early. My inaugural event…postponed.

Our rescheduled event took place in February. It was great! We had 15 “Gophers” in attendance, having 28 members RSVP. A 50% conversion for RSVPs to attendance is actually a pretty good rate. The food was on time, the presentation was engaging, and we had a follow-up event scheduled for March.

Enter a new reality…

As the world began to shutter its doors and windows due to the COVID pandemic, we wanted to keep our group cadence going. After all, we would be back together in person by May, or so we thought.

We hurriedly planned to have the March Meetup as our first virtual event, evaluating Crowdcast as our platform. We still had a decent turnout, with 18 members joining us for this initial “workaround.” We also started a new Twitter account to keep the community engaged during these awkward times.

As the pandemic continued to drag on, so too did our virtual meetups. We persevered, although we lost our strict cadence. We would miss a month here and there but were excited that our reach seemed to expand beyond the St. Louis area. We created a YouTube channel and began publishing our event recordings.

Our little group, in the midwest US hosted presentations from speakers in California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, and Utah. We even went international, having presenters speaking to us live from Poland and even Sri Lanka!

While our reach expanded, interest from both the steering committee and group members waned due to burnout and the recently labeled Zoom fatigue. We had two of our co-organizers opt out of the group. I, too, was burning out both in my career and with the group. Did all this effort even matter? Our meeting cadence slowed.

I’m a people person…

Early in 2022, my employer began offering personal budgets for those wishing to use co-working spaces. By Summer, I was mentally struggling with isolation and was ready to take them up on the offer. I began looking at spaces, one being the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) in the Cortex area of St. Louis.

The Cortex area is one of those up-and-coming hipster areas set to be an incubator for tech startups. For several years before the pandemic, I had attended many Meetup events there as the City of St. Louis attempted to attract high-tech jobs to the area.

From my home in the suburbs, it was a bit of a commute to the facility, but it would be worth it as this is where the “cool kids” worked and lived, especially those interested in the Go programming language. Even my sole remaining co-organizer was working from the facilities as his employer was letting space there for their local offices.

The fees for the space exceeded my company budget, but some initial promotional pricing was given in hopes that the additional foot traffic would generate more tenants for the facility, ultimately offsetting my costs. I eagerly ordered custom stickers and other swag anticipating our coming events.

A new beginning…

In September, we tried something new. We began holding “Open House” sessions. These would be open blocks of time for folks to drop by to talk about our favorite programming language. I scheduled the times to overlap the latter portion of the work day and after hours, hoping to catch locals on an afternoon coffee break or else the usual after-work attendee. Sadly, this concept didn’t take as I sat alone in conference rooms catching up on my day’s work.

By this time, I had also taken on the Kubernetes & Cloud Native STL group as well. The previous organizer was stepping down and knew I was already organizing the Go meetup. I happily accepted as the Cloud Native landscape provided for a much larger pool of topics and speakers, but what was I thinking?!

We scheduled our first post-pandemic in-person event in October of 2022. This would be the first partnership of the Cloud Native and Go meetups, one in which I would act as both host and speaker. Hoping to include any of our YouTube subscribers outside the St. Louis area, the plan was to live-stream the event using StreamYard.

Each event seemed to have its own set of technical challenges as I attempted to juggle responsibilities between hosting, running the live stream, and the occasional feature presentation. From the camera overheating, losing audio, or cables not being long enough. No matter how well I prepared, something would happen in mid-stream and go on too long without being noticed for me to fix it. Ugh…Murphy’s Law!

Mishaps and all, we maintain a fairly regular cadence. Even switching venues to the larger capacity Object Computing offices and my relocating to a new city having a two-hour commute to St. Louis on event days. I’m happy to say that we’ve more than doubled our membership since my becoming an organizer in January 2020. At this time, we sit at 675 members. A respectable number for a market of our size, I think.

What does the future hold?

I aim to continue growing the membership, adding more co-organizers to the steering committee, creating more events on a stricter cadence, and potentially expanding into Go workshops for hands-on learning. Someday I’d love to say that we are partnering with local groups to share events along the I-70 corridor to Columbia (MO), Kansas City, and beyond.

Whatever comes, we’ll continue to tweak and experiment with our group and share along the way as well as learn from the experience of others.

Getting Started

Congratulations! You’re making the first step!

Being part of a community can be greatly rewarding. I’m excited to be a part of GoBridge, assisting where I can with the Go Developer Network (GDN), Zoom scheduling, and even as part of the CFP review committee for GopherCon. I’ve also been honored to have been accepted as a CNCF Ambassador with the Spring 2023 entries. Spreading the word about the related technologies and promoting the inclusivity of these groups truly brings me joy, though it can be exhausting for an introvert such as myself.

Sadly, there is no perfect recipe for running a successful Meetup. I do feel that I can provide some insight from my experience thus far, but I’m still learning and experimenting.

Here are some things — in no particular order — you should take into consideration as you head down this road:

Just how committed are you?

Organizing a Meetup group takes some dedication. You should realistically consider whether you have the capacity to dedicate to the group. Half-hearted attempts will become obvious over time, and any initial gains will suffer. One should expect to spend at least 4 to 8 hours a month preparing for your event.

Don’t be afraid to start small and feel things out with the group. Each group will be unique as the individuals joining them, so trust your gut and ask for help.

Build a team, don’t go it alone

Burnout is real. Small tasks add up. Build a team of committed co-organizers to share the workload and split duties. Keep the team engaged. Hold steering committee meetings while having an agenda; respect the time for each of these volunteers.

Partner with a Meetup Pro organization

Check if there is a larger organization for your topic. This may take a bit of investigation, but it could save you from worrying about Meetup fees yourself.

In the case of the Go programming language, reach out to the GDN. We have information about joining, the GoBridge Code of Conduct, and other resources available in our GitHub repository.

Define your niche

What is the area of your group's interest? What is it that members will benefit from? Consider your vision and goals. Research existing groups in the area; there may be related groups that you could participate in or partner with.

How large do you expect your niche to be? Be real with yourself, as this affects things like hosting facilities, parking availability, the number of co-organizers you may wish, food budgets, etc.

Create your group

Go through the steps on Meetup.com to create your group. Ensure your description denotes what it is your group is about, why folks should join you, and what they can expect from joining. Practice your Marketing 101, as this is what future members will look at when evaluating whether or not to join — be genuine, and not gimmicky.

Establish a strict cadence

Settle on a regular schedule and stick to it. Your facility hosts and regular attendees will appreciate being able to count on a consistent calendar for events. Scheduling issues can and will happen, but try to keep calendar disruptions to a minimum.

Do yourself a favor and try to keep a backlog of potential topics on hand. This will make it easier to keep a consistent schedule. Ideally, you’ll always have one scheduled event on your group calendar.

Some partner groups may have a shared pool of speakers and topics to draw from. For example, potential speakers on topics for the Go programming language can complete a form to be placed into a pool of speakers, which may be utilized by multiple groups.

To Stream or Not to Stream?

With Meetup events, the best scenario is to have folks attend in person. Consider whether live-streaming your events would disincentivize members from attending live.

Live-streaming also introduces some technical challenges (lighting, audio, etc.), so possibly have someone dedicated to overseeing the setup.

Marketing your group

Spread the word. Have co-organizers and members post on their socials why this group is the best thing since sliced bread. Ask members to take pictures during presentations and tag speakers. For many speakers, Meetups are their entry into public speaking, so publicizing a great talk is appreciated.

Engage with your members

Use social media and the Meetup platform to keep your members up-to-date with what’s going on. For technical groups, consider creating a GitHub organization and repository to maintain things like past talks and demos. This is something we did for the StLGo org.

Make use of shared resources

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Research within your niche if there are resources available to support Meetup groups. When you find them, document them for posterity or to share them with like-minded groups.

For instance, with Go programming groups, there are things for branding and presentation templates to keep with the theme.

Swag…the stuff we all get

Everyone loves trinkets and stickers. This is a fun way to not only market the group but to add a sense of belonging. Many vendors provide reasonably priced swag options that you can research. Consider this an opportunity to reach out to potential sponsors to cover costs for these items and giveaways to help draw in attendees.

Always learn and adapt

There’s no perfect recipe for starting a Meetup group. Be accepting that some things will or will not work. Be accepting that you will not make everyone happy. Experiment and take note of the result.

Keep things fresh by trying new things. Folks get bored with the same old thing.

Be organized

Keeping on top of all the tasks within a group can become overwhelming. Create and maintain a process by which you can stay on top of things and maintain consistency. Members can tell if half-hearted attempts are made to keep the group going, and attendance will ultimately suffer.

Community partnerships

Cross-promote and partner with other groups. If an event topic overlaps with another group, reach out to collaborate. This can have the effect of gaining new members from those tangential groups.