How to run a Meetup
Motivation
Before we deep dive into a list of recommendations I urge you to reflect for a minute why you are doing this? There are many upsides like finding mentors, mentoring others, establishing connections, becoming famous or even earning money. What motivates you?
This is relevant to figure out what kind of community/meetup you want to establish and will impact a lot of your decisions. Is it a group of five smart people who meet every week or rather a monthly gathering with 150 people? Don’t forget your location implies certain restrictions …
Figure out what kind of community you want to establish and why.
When we started out I was interested in finding smart people to learn from. Nowadays, React Vienna is a thriving community where people start open source projects together, help each other with architectural challenges on a daily basis and even help each other to find better jobs. Being a part of establishing this community has been one of the most gratifying things I have ever done.
Getting started
Subject
You probably know already what your subject is going to be. Keep in mind the more specific the overall topic is the deeper you can immerse further into the subject matter. The more specific the overall topic the fewer people you most likely attract.
Team
I highly recommend not running it alone, but rather building a team of two to five people. It’s not only way more fun together, but also relaxing to know you have backup in case you don’t have time. We started out with a team of two and grew to four.
Establish a communication/planning strategy. In our case it’s a private channel in a Slack organisation for the four organisers.
Basics
First you need to define a program, settle for a date and find a location. Co-working spaces often allow you to host meetups for free, but companies also sometimes offer free space for relevant meetups
For the first couple meetups you can ask colleagues and friends interested in the meet-up’s topic to give a presentation. Regular meet-up attendees are a good source of new speakers afterwards.
Long term you might want to bring in world-class speakers every now and then. Most of them are happy to drop in if they are in the area. Nearby conferences or emigrated developers visiting their relatives are good chances to invite them to your meetup without paying for expensive flights. 🙂
Regarding the date you best make sure related meetups are not at the same day and possibly not even in the same week. From my experience people do not attend more than one meetup per week.
Online Platform
You want to pick one or more platforms to communicate events to the community. Find out what platforms other meetups in your area are using and see how well it works for them. For React Vienna we have a Meetup.com page, a Facebook page and a Twitter account to announce & promote the events. Using multiple ones is more work, but it is easier to reach more people.
Promoting an Event
I recommend to have the meetup announced at least two weeks ahead. Best case scenario you know the next date at the previous meetup and can announce it there. Send out reminders & tweet about it one to two days before the meet-up. Make sure you explain well how to get to the location.
Program
Having multiple presentations per meetup is pretty obvious, but we learned doing other formats now and then increased the audiences interest and learnings a lot. We regularly experiment with different formats. Here are two I recommend:
Showcase: A person guiding the audience through a codebase they are currently working on. Of course the person needs to have the permission to do that. Especially with a group smaller than 30 people very interesting discussions around architectural decision can evolve and the audience learns a lot.
Discussion circle: Place chairs in a circle, introduce a moderator and let people ask each other questions. This works best in smaller groups e.g. 15 people especially if people know each other already.
For presentations the best that can happen is an intense Q&A session afterwards. Make sure there is enough time to do so.
In general we try to pair more famous speakers with local newcomers. The way people are interested to come, but you provide a platform for the newcomers to get exposure and train their presentation skills.
Last, but not least, connect to other meetup groups and create mash-up meetups. At React Vienna we started to do this with other groups in Vienna, but also now and then have a such a mash-up in another city to connect communities.
Sponsors
To be honest we still haven’t streamlined this process and struggle a bit with it. In the beginning we were fortunate since the local web development agency Zensations was sponsoring for more than half a year. We mostly find companies sponsoring once or twice, but since it requires a lot of communication every time I recommend to find long term partners.
Meetup Day
Before the Meetup
- Come 30–45 min early & introduce yourself to the location host
- Make sure it’s obvious to find the location or put up navigational signs
- If you have a co-organiser, one of you should be welcoming attendees
- Setup the location (stage, chairs)
- Test the projector
- sync with speakers who wants to go first
- prepare a short slide deck with the schedule and the logos of the sponsors
- let the sponsors speak for 2–3 minutes
During the Meetup
- in a smaller group let everyone introduce themselves to connect (start with yourself to lead by example)
- make sure one of your co-organisers or you moderate the event
- have fun & enjoy 😎
After the Meetup 🎉
- after the last talk thank everybody for coming and how long they can stay
- clean up the location
- personally thank the location host
At React Vienna the organisers usually head to a restaurant or bar where people hang out afterwards. Everyone is welcome to join. This has a great community building aspect and has led to people forming teams working on side-projects and open source software.
Conclusion
Running a meetup group is a lot of work. Nevertheless I highly recommend doing it. As mentioned it turned out to be one of the most gratifying things I have done in the last couple years.
I hope you learned a thing or two. Keep in mind this is just our experience and I recommend you to never stop experimenting with your own ideas. You know your community best. In any case I’m curious what you do differently. Ping me on Medium or on Twitter @nikgraf.
